Feeling sad? Consider making your way to the nearest florist, because a recent study shows that flowers really do have power.

Jeannette Haviland-Jones, Rutgers University psychology professor and lead researcher on the study, admitted she was initially cynical about the project, assuming the study would find people simply like flowers because they associate them with happy events.

“I thought that it wasn’t really a psychological phenomenon,” she said. “But it turned out that nobody could be more wrong than I was.”

According to the study, the simple presence of flowers has an immediate impact on a person’s emotional state.

During a series of exercises used for a controlled study, Haviland-Jones and her students delivered several gift packages, one being a bouquet of flowers, to a wide range of women. Once the gifts were hand-delivered, Haviland-Jones’ students would record the facial expression of each woman. The most important expression the students looked for was the Duchenne smile, often called a “genuine” smile, that results in crinkles by the eye. What the study found was shocking, she said.

“One hundred and fifty subjects later, data showed 100 percent of them had a Duchenne smile,” Haviland-Jones said. “One of the few things I know that gives a 100 percent reaction is if you drop a snake on somebody, which incites 100 percent fear in people. So I thought this was amazing.”

A similar study was conducted to see the effect flowers had on men. What this round of data showed, Haviland-Jones said, is that “it’s every bit as true for men as it is for women.”

“Flowers do so many things for people,” said Vance Weber, co-owner of Open Air Flowers in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

For instance, Weber believes that flowers help with memory.