The Potency of Positive Emotions

Dr. Alice Isen

• in experiencing mild positive emotions, we are more likely to

  • help other people

  • be flexible in our thinking

  • come up with solutions to our problems

Dr. Barbara Fredrickson

• Broaden and Build Model

• explain the social-cognitive effects of positive emotional experiences

  • Negative Emotions: physical reactions (fight/flight)

  • Positive Emotions: cognitive reactions

• The experience of joy expands to the realm of what a person feels like doing at the time

  • the person who is happy listed more possibilities than a person who is in a negative state

• joy (positive emotions) appears to open up to many new thought and behaviors

Theories of Happiness

Need-Goal Satisfaction Theories

• Reduction of tension leads to happiness (psychoanalytic, humanist theories)

• We are happy because we have reached our goals

• Happiness as a target of our psychological pursuits

Process-Activity Theory

• Engaging in particular life activities generate happiness

• People who engage in FLOW in daily life tend to be happy

  • Flow: engagement in interesting activities that match or challenge task related skills

• Engagement in activity produce happiness

• Process of pursuing goals generate energy and happiness

Genetic-Personality Predisposition

• Costa and McRae (1988)

• biologically determined happiness

• genetic-factors contribute to positive emotionality (40%) and negative emotionality (55%)

• happiness dependent on temperament since individuals may vary in the type of adaptation to positive or negative external experiences

• more research is needed to strengthen the connection between happiness and personality

Emotional Experiences

Emotion-Focused Coping

• intense emotions were seen dysfunctional and opposed to rationality

• linking with maladaptive outcomes in life

• Stanton (1994) posits the potential of emotion-focused coping

• Emotional approach involves active moving towards, rather than away, from a stressful encounter

• Emotional Processing

  • attempts to understand emotions

  • Examples

    • I realize that my feelings are valid and important.

    • I take time to figure out what I am feeling.

    • I acknowledge my emotions.

• Emotional Expression

  • free and intentional displays of feeling

  • Examples

    • I feel free to express my emotions.

    • I take time to express my emotions.

    • I let my feelings come out freely.

• Benefits

  • most people benefit (short term) from expressing their emotions in a meaningful way

  • Emotional processing seem to be more adaptive as people learn more about what they feel and how they feel it

Emotional Intelligence

• array of non-cognitive capabilities, competencies and skills that help us deal with the demands of the environment

• measures personality and mood variables such as

  • self-regard, empathy, tolerance, happiness

• “higher form of intelligence”

• the ability to perceive and express emotions

• to use emotions and emotional understanding to facilitate thinking

• to understanding complex emotions, relationships among emotions and behavioral consequences

• to manage emotions

Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

• older adults are more able to

  • focus less on negative emotions

  • engage more deeply with emotional content

  • savor the positive in life

Emotional Storytelling

• written disclosure of emotional upheaval

• useful means to process intense negative emotions

Positive Cognitive States and Processes

Positive Thinking and Management

• The positive thinking that usually comes with optimism is a key part of effective stress management and effective stress management is associated with many health benefits

Advantages of Positive Thinking

• Research shows that people who feel confident in themselves can problem solve and make better decisions, take more risks, assert themselves and strive to meet their personal goals

• Advantages of positive thinking include less stress, better overall physical and emotional health, longer life span, and better coping skills

Self-Efficacy

• the belief that one’s skills and capabilities are enough to accomplish one’s desired goals in a specific situation

• what I believe I can do with my skills under certain conditions

• Learned Human Pattern

• Social Cognition Theory: humans actively shape their lives rather than passively reacting to situations

• S-E Components

  • performance accomplishment, vicarious learning, verbal encouragement, and emotional states

• Performance Appraisal: previous successes in similar situations

• Vicarious Learning: modeling on others in the same situations

• Verbal Encouragement: undergoing verbal persuasion by a powerful, trustworthy expert (or an attractive person)

• Emotional States: how level of arousal and state of emotion can be attached with the activity

Neurobiology of Self-Efficacy

• Frontal and Pre-Frontal Lobes: facilitate prioritization of goals and the strategic thinking that is crucial for self-efficacy

• Problem Solving: the right hemisphere reacts to the dilemmas as related by the linguistic left hemisphere

• Realistic self-efficacy can lessen cardiac reactivity and lower blood pressure -- which facilitates coping

Measures of Self-Efficacy

• Occupational Questionnaire (Teresa, 1991)

• Career Counseling Self-Efficacy Scale (O’Brien & Heppner, 1997)

• Hurricane Coping Self-Efficacy Survey

• Cultural Self-Efficacy Scale (Briones et.al., 2009)

Influence of Self-Efficacy

• building on successes through goal-setting and the incremental meeting of these goals

• allowing the person to imagine himself/herself behaving effectively

• teaching techniques for lowering arousal and to increase the likelihood of a more adaptive self-efficacious thinking