What good are positive emotions? The innovative researcher, Barb Fredrickson, first posed this question. After decades of this research, she shared two core truths: 1). Positive emotions open our hearts and minds, and 2). Positive emotions transform us. Over time, positive emotions broaden and build our resources and transform the ways we engage with the world and with one another. Positive emotions enhance skill acquisition, problem solving, and creativity.
Develops the hypothesis that intervention strategies that cultivate positive emotions are particularly suited for preventing and treating problems rooted in negative emotions, such as anxiety, depression, aggression, and stress related health problems. B. L. Fredrickson's (1998) broaden-and-build model of positive emotions provides the foundation for this application. According to this model, the form and function of positive and negative emotions are distinct and complementary. Negative emotions narrow an individual's momentary thought–action repertoire toward specific actions that served the ancestral function of promoting survival. By contrast, positive emotions broaden an individual's momentary thought–action repertoire, which in turn can build that individual's enduring personal resources. One implication of the broaden-and-build model is that positive emotions have an undoing effect on negative emotions. A range of intervention and coping strategies are reviewed. These strategies optimize health and well-being to the extent that they cultivate positive emotions. Cultivated positive emotions not only counteract negative emotions, but also broaden individuals' habitual modes of thinking and build their personal resources for coping. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Happiness—a composite of life satisfaction, coping resources, and positive emotions—predicts desirable
life outcomes in many domains. The broaden-and-build theory suggests that this is because positive
emotions help people build lasting resources. To test this hypothesis, the authors measured emotions
daily for 1 month in a sample of students (N 86) and assessed life satisfaction and trait resilience at
the beginning and end of the month. Positive emotions predicted increases in both resilience and life
satisfaction. Negative emotions had weak or null effects and did not interfere with the benefits of positive
emotions. Positive emotions also mediated the relation between baseline and final resilience, but life
satisfaction did not. This suggests that it is in-the-moment positive emotions, and not more general
positive evaluations of one’s life, that form the link between happiness and desirable life outcomes.
Change in resilience mediated the relation between positive emotions and increased life satisfaction,
suggesting that happy people become more satisfied not simply because they feel better but because they
develop resources for living well.
Positive emotions are hypothesized to undo the cardiovascular aftereffects of negative emotions. Study 1 tests this undoing effect. Participants (n = 170) experiencing anxiety-induced cardiovascular reactivity viewed a film that elicited (a) contentment, (b) amusement, (c) neutrality, or (d) sadness. Contentment-eliciting and amusing films produced faster cardiovascular recovery than neutral or sad films did. Participants in Study 2 (n = 185) viewed these same films following a neutral state. Results disconfirm the alternative explanation that the undoing effect reflects a simple replacement process. Findings are contextualized by Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (B. L. Fredrickson, 1998).
The broaden-and-build theory describes the form and function of a subset of positive emotions, including joy, interest, contentment and love. A key proposition is that these positive emotions broaden an individual's momentary thought-action repertoire: joy sparks the urge to play, interest sparks the urge to explore, contentment sparks the urge to savour and integrate, and love sparks a recurring cycle of each of these urges within safe, close relationships. The broadened mindsets arising from these positive emotions are contrasted to the narrowed mindsets sparked by many negative emotions (i.e. specific action tendencies, such as attack or flee). A second key proposition concerns the consequences of these broadened mindsets: by broadening an individual's momentary thought-action repertoire–whether through play, exploration or similar activities–positive emotions promote discovery of novel and creative actions, ideas and social bonds, which in turn build that individual's personal resources; ranging from physical and intellectual resources, to social and psychological resources. Importantly, these resources function as reserves that can be drawn on later to improve the odds of successful coping and survival. This chapter reviews the latest empirical evidence supporting the broaden-and-build theory and draws out implications the theory holds for optimizing health and well-being.
This article opens by noting that positive emotions do not fit existing models of emotions. Consequently, a new model is advanced to describe the form and function of a subset of positive emotions, including joy, interest, contentment, and love. This new model posits that these positive emotions serve to broaden an individual’s momentary thought–action repertoire, which in turn has the effect of building that individual’s physical, intellectual, and social resources. Empirical evidence to support this broaden-and-build model of positive emotions is reviewed, and implications for emotion regulation and health promotion are discussed.
