Submit summaries the 3 materials: ?1 video, 1 article and Chapter 3 from the textbook,?A Primer in Positive Psychology.? Each source’s summary must be at least 150 words total 450? ?includ

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Back in the 1930s some young Catholic nuns were asked to write

short, personal essays about their lives. They described edifying events in their childhood, the schools they attended, their religious experiences and the in- fluences that led them to the convent. Although the essays may have been ini- tially used to assess each nun’s career path, the documents were eventually archived and largely forgotten. More than 60 years later the nuns’ writings surfaced again when three psycholo- gists at the University of Kentucky re- viewed the essays as part of a larger study on aging and Alzheimer’s dis- ease. Deborah Danner, David Snowdon and Wallace Friesen read the nun’s bio- graphical sketches and scored them for positive emotional content, recording instances of happiness, interest, love and hope. What they found was re- markable: The nuns who expressed the most positive emotions lived up to 10 years longer than those who expressed the fewest. This gain in life expectancy is considerably larger than the gain achieved by those who quit smoking.

The nun study is not an isolated case. Several other scientists have found that people who feel good live longer. But why would this be so? Some answers are emerging from the new field of pos- itive psychology. This branch of psy- chological science surfaced about five years ago, as the brainchild of Martin E. P. Seligman, then president of the American Psychological Association

(APA). Like many psychologists, Selig- man had devoted much of his research career to studying mental illness. He coined the phrase learned helplessness to describe how hopelessness and other negative thoughts can spiral down into clinical depression.

At the start of his term as APA pres- ident, Seligman took stock of the field of psychology, noting its significant ad- vances in curing ills. In 1947, none of the major mental illnesses were treat- able, whereas today 16 are treatable by psychotherapy, psychopharmacology or both. Although psychology had be- come proficient at rescuing people from various mental illnesses, it had virtually no scientifically sound tools for helping people to reach their higher ground, to thrive and flourish. Selig- man aimed to correct this imbalance when he called for a “positive psychol- ogy.” With the help of psychologist Mi- haly Csikszentmihalyi—who originat- ed the concept of “flow” to describe peak motivational experiences—Selig- man culled the field for scientists whose work might be described as in- vestigating “that which makes life worth living.”

This is how many research psychol- ogists, myself included, were drawn to positive psychology. My own back- ground is in the study of emotions. For more than a dozen years, I’ve been studying the positive emotions—joy, contentment, gratitude and love—to shed light on their evolved adaptive significance. Among scientists who study emotions, this is a rare specialty. Far more emotion researchers have de- voted their careers to studying nega- tive emotions, such as anger, anxiety and sadness. The study of optimism and positive emotions was seen by some as a frivolous pursuit. But the

positive psychology movement is changing that. Many psychologists have now begun to explore the largely uncharted terrain of human strengths and the sources of happiness.

The new discoveries generated by positive psychology hold the promise of improving individual and collective functioning, psychological well-being and physical health. But to harness the power of positive psychology, we need to understand how and why “goodness” matters. Although the discovery that people who think positively and feel good actually live longer is remarkable, it raises more questions than it answers. Exactly how do positive thinking and pleasant feelings help people live longer? Do pleasant thoughts and feelings help people live better as well? And why are positive emotions a universal part of hu- man nature? My research traces the pos- sible pathways for the life-enhancing ef- fects of positive emotions and attempts to understand why human beings evolved to experience them.

Why So Negative? There are probably a number of reasons why the positive emotions received little attention in the past. There is, of course, the natural tendency to study something that afflicts the well-being of humanity— and the expression and experience of negative emotions are responsible for much of what ails this world. But it may also be that the positive emotions are a little harder to study. They are compara- tively few and relatively undifferentiat- ed—joy, amusement and serenity are not easily distinguished from one another. Anger, fear and sadness, on the other hand, are distinctly different experiences.

This lack of differentiation is evident in how we think about the emotions. Consider that scientific taxonomies of

330 American Scientist, Volume 91

The Value of Positive Emotions

The emerging science of positive psychology is coming to understand why it’s good to feel good

Barbara L. Fredrickson

Barbara L. Fredrickson is the director of the Posi- tive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory at the University of Michigan. In 2000 she won the Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology. Address: 3006 East Hall, 525 East University Avenue, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109–1109. Internet: [email protected]

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basic emotions typically identify one positive emotion for every three or four negative emotions and that this imbalance is also reflected in the rela- tive numbers of emotion words in the English language.

Various physical components of emo- tional expression similarly reveal a lack of differentiation for the positive emo- tions. The negative emotions have spe- cific facial configurations that imbue them with universally recognized sig- nal value. We can readily identify an-

gry, sad or fearful faces. In contrast, fa- cial expressions for positive emotions have no unique signal value: All share the Duchenne smile—in which the cor- ners of the lips are raised and the mus- cles are contracted around the eyes, which raises the cheeks. A similar dis- tinction is evident in the response of the autonomic nervous system to the ex- pression of emotions. About 20 years ago, psychologists Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen at the University of Cal- ifornia, San Francisco, and Robert Lev-

enson at Indiana University showed that anger, fear and sadness each elicit distinct responses in the autonomic ner- vous system. In contrast, the positive emotions appeared to have no distin- guishable autonomic responses.

The study of positive emotions has also been hindered because scientists at- tempted to understand them with mod- els that worked best for negative emo- tions. Central to many theories of emotion is that they are, by definition, associated with urges to act in particular

2003 July–August 331www.americanscientist.org

Figure 1. Feeling joy in the pleasures of life, as depict- ed in Marc Chagall’s Fes- tival in the Village, offers rewards beyond those of simply experiencing the moment. There are bene- fits to personal health, de- velopment and longevity, as well as evolutionary reasons why human be- ings experience positive emotions. C

or bi

s

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ways. Anger creates the urge to attack, fear the urge to escape and disgust the urge to expectorate (Figure 2). Of course, no theorist argues that people invari- ably act out these urges; rather, people’s ideas about possible courses of action narrow in on these specific urges. And these urges are not simply thoughts ex- isting in the mind. They embody spe- cific physiological changes that enable the actions called forth. In the case of fear, for example, a greater amount of blood flows to the large muscle groups to facilitate running.

The models that emphasize the role of these specific action tendencies typi- cally cast the emotions as evolved adaptations. The negative emotions have an intuitively obvious adaptive value: In an instant, they narrow our thought-action repertoires to those that best promoted our ancestors’ survival in life-threatening situations. In this view, negative emotions are efficient solutions to recurrent problems that our ancestors faced.

Positive emotions, on the other hand, aren’t so easily explained. From this evolutionary perspective, joy, serenity and gratitude don’t seem as useful as fear, anger or disgust. The bodily changes, urges to act and the fa- cial expressions produced by positive emotions aren’t as specific or as obvi- ously relevant to survival as those sparked by negative emotions. If posi- tive emotions didn’t promote our an- cestors’ survival in life-threatening sit- uations, then what good were they? Did they have any adaptive value at all? Perhaps they merely signaled the absence of threats.

The Broaden-and-Build Theory We gain some insight into the adaptive role of positive emotions if we aban- don the framework used to under- stand the negative emotions. Instead of solving problems of immediate sur- vival, positive emotions solve prob- lems concerning personal growth and development. Experiencing a positive emotion leads to states of mind and to modes of behavior that indirectly pre- pare an individual for later hard times. In my broaden-and-build theory, I pro- pose that the positive emotions broad- en an individual’s momentary mind- set, and by doing so help to build enduring personal resources. We can test these ideas by exploring the ways that positive emotions change how people think and how they behave.

My students and I conducted experi- ments in which we induced certain emotions in people by having them watch short, emotionally evocative film clips. We elicited joy by showing a herd of playful penguins waddling and slid- ing on the ice, we elicited serenity with clips of peaceful nature scenes, we elicited fear with films of people at pre- carious heights, and we elicited sadness with scenes of deaths and funerals. We also used a neutral “control” film of an old computer screen saver that elicited no emotion at all.

We then assessed the participant’s ability to think broadly. Using global- local visual processing tasks, we mea- sured whether they saw the “big pic- ture” or focused on smaller details (Figure 3, left). The participant’s task is to judge which of two comparison fig- ures is more similar to a “standard”

figure. Neither choice is right or wrong, but one comparison figure re- sembles the standard in global config- uration, and the other in local, detailed elements. Using this and similar mea- sures, we found that, compared to those in negative or neutral states, people who experience positive emo- tions (as assessed by self-report or electromyographic signals from the face) tend to choose the global config- uration, suggesting a broadened pat- tern of thinking.

This tendency to promote a broader thought-action repertoire is linked to a variety of downstream effects of posi- tive emotions on thinking. Two decades of experiments by Alice Isen of Cornell University and her colleagues have shown that people experiencing posi- tive affect (feelings) think differently. One series of experiments tested cre- ative thinking using such tests as Med- nick’s Remote Associates Test, which asks people to think of a word that re- lates to each of three other words. So, for example, given the words mower, atomic and foreign, the correct answer is power (Figure 3, right). Although this test was originally designed to assess indi- vidual differences in the presumably stable trait of creativity, Isen and col- leagues showed that people experienc- ing positive affect perform better on this test than people in neutral states.

In other experiments, Isen and col- leagues tested the clinical reasoning of practicing physicians. They made some of the physicians feel good by giving them a small bag of candy, then asked all of them to think aloud while they solved a case of a patient with liver dis-

332 American Scientist, Volume 91

Figure 2. Negative emotions—like anger, fear and disgust—can be understood as evolutionary adaptations to threats our ancestors faced. Anger (left) elicits the urge to attack, fear (middle) the urge to escape and disgust (right) the urge to expel. In this view, the negative emotions nar- row our thoughts and actions to those that promoted survival in life-threatening situations. Because the positive emotions—joy, serenity, grat- itude and the like—were not so readily understood from this perspective, psychological science had not come up with with a satisfying expla- nation for their evolutionary significance until recently.

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ease. Content analyses revealed that physicians who felt good were faster to integrate case information and less like- ly to become anchored on initial thoughts or come to premature closure in their diagnosis. In yet another exper- iment, Isen and colleagues showed that negotiators induced to feel good were more likely to discover integrative so- lutions in a complex bargaining task. Overall, 20 years of experiments by Isen and her colleagues show that when people feel good, their thinking becomes more creative, integrative, flexible and open to information.

Even though positive emotions and the broadened mindsets they create are themselves short-lived, they can have deep and enduring effects. By momentarily broadening attention and thinking, positive emotions can lead to the discovery of novel ideas, actions and social bonds. For example, joy and playfulness build a variety of resources. Consider children at play in the schoolyard or adults enjoying a game of basketball in the gym. Al- though their immediate motivations may be simply hedonistic—to enjoy the moment—they are at the same time building physical, intellectual, psychological and social resources. The physical activity leads to long- term improvements in health, the game-playing strategies develop prob- lem-solving skills, and the cama- raderie strengthens social bonds that may provide crucial support at some time in the future (Figure 4). Similar links between playfulness and later gains in physical, social and intellectu- al resources are also evident in nonhu- man animals, such as monkeys, rats and squirrels. In human beings, other positive states of mind and positive ac- tions work along similar lines: Savor- ing an experience solidifies life priori- ties; altruistic acts strengthen social ties and build skills for expressing love and care. These outcomes often endure long after the initial positive emotion has vanished.

My students and I recently tested these ideas by surveying a group of people to examine their resilience and optimism. The people were originally interviewed in the early months of 2001, and then again in the days after the September 11th terrorist attacks. We asked them to identify the emo- tions they were feeling, what they had learned from the attacks and how opti- mistic they were about the future. We

learned that after September 11 nearly everyone felt sad, angry and somewhat afraid. And more than 70 percent were depressed. Yet the people who were originally identified as being resilient in the early part of 2001 felt positive emotions strongly as well. They were also half as likely to be depressed. Our statistical analyses showed that their tendency to feel more positive emo-

tions buffered the resilient people against depression.

Gratitude was the most common positive emotion people felt after the September 11th attacks. Feeling grate- ful was associated both with learning many good things from the crisis and with increased levels of optimism. Re- silient people made statements such as, “I learned that most people in the

2003 July–August 333www.americanscientist.org

global-local visual processing

Mednick’s Remote Associates Test

mower atomic foreign

?

Figure 3. Psychological tests reveal that people tend to think broadly when they experience positive emotions. A global-local visual processing test (left) asks participants to judge which of two comparison figures (bottom) is most similar to a standard figure (top). People experiencing positive emotions tend to choose the figure that resembles the standard configuration in global configuration (the triangles). Similarly, people experiencing positive emotions score highly on tests of creativity such as Mednick’s Remote Associates Test (right), which asks people to think of a word that relates to each of three other words. (The answer is in the text on the previous page.) The positive emotions broaden people’s mindsets, which allows them to solve problems like this more readily.

Figure 4. Positive emotions broaden people’s momentary thought-action repertoires. Joy, for example, encourages playful behavior. These broadened thought-action repertoires in turn build intellectual, physical, social and psychological resources for the future. Such resources translate into greater odds of survival and reproductive success.

social resources � solidify bonds

� make new bonds

intellectual resources � develop problem-solving skills

� learn new information

physical resources � develop coordination

� develop strength and cardiovascular health

psychological resources � develop resilience and optimism

� develop sense of identity and goal orientation

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world are inherently good.” Put differ- ently, feeling grateful broadened posi- tive learning, which in turn built opti- mism, just as the broaden-and-build theory suggests.

My students and I have recently completed an experimental test of the building effect of positive emotions. Over the course of a month-long study of daily experiences, we induced one group of college students to feel more positive emotions by asking them to find the positive meaning and long- term benefit within their best, worst and seemingly ordinary experiences each day. At the end of the month, compared to others who did not make this daily effort to find positive mean- ing, those who did showed increases in psychological resilience.

So “feeling good” does far more than signal the absence of threats. It can transform people for the better, making them more optimistic, resilient and so- cially connected. Indeed, this insight might solve the evolutionary mystery of positive emotions: Simply by experi- encing positive emotions, our ancestors would have naturally accrued more personal resources. And when later

faced with threats to life or limb, these greater resources translated into greater odds of survival and greater odds of liv- ing long enough to reproduce.

The Undoing Hypothesis We might also ask whether there are other immediate benefits to experienc- ing positive emotions, aside from the tautology that they make us “feel good.” One effect relates to how people cope with their negative emotions. If negative emotions narrow people’s mindsets and positive emotions broad- en them, then perhaps positive emo- tions undo the lingering effects of neg- ative emotions.

Such effects may extend to the phys- iological realm. The negative emotions have distinct physiological responses associated with them—autonomic ac- tivity (as mentioned earlier), including cardiovascular activity, which repre- sents the body’s preparation for specif- ic action. A number of studies suggest that the cardiovascular activity associ- ated with stress and negative emo- tions, especially if prolonged and re- current, can promote or exacerbate heart disease. Experiments on nonhu-

man primates reveal that recurrent emotion-related cardiovascular activi- ty also appears to injure the inner walls of arteries and initiate atherosclerosis. Because the positive emotions broad- en people’s thought-and-action reper- toires, they may also loosen the hold that negative emotions gain on both mind and body, dismantle preparation for specific action and undo the physi- ological effects of negative emotions.

My colleagues and I tested this undo- ing hypothesis in a series of experi- ments. We began by inducing a negative emotion: We told participants that they had one minute to prepare a speech that would be videotaped and evaluated by their peers. The speech task induced the subjective feeling of anxiety as well as increases in heart rate, peripheral vaso- constriction and blood pressure. We then randomly assigned the participants to view one of four films: two films evoked mild positive emotions (amuse- ment and contentment), a third served as a neutral control condition and a fourth elicited sadness.

We then measured the time elapsed from the beginning of the randomly as- signed film until the cardiovascular re-

334 American Scientist, Volume 91

1 2 3anxiety-provoking situation short films shown cardiovascular recovery

amusement

contentment

no emotion

sadness

0 10 20 30 40 50 time (seconds)

Figure 5. Undoing hypothesis suggests that positive emotions “undo” the lingering effects of negative emotions. This was examined by pro- voking anxiety in a group of participants by asking them to prepare a speech under time pressure. After learning that they did not have to de- liver their speeches after all, the participants were shown one of four films, eliciting either amusement, contentment, no emotion or sadness. Measurements of the participants’ heart rate, blood pressure and peripheral vasoconstriction revealed that feeling positive emotions leads to the quickest recovery to baseline measures obtained before they were placed in the anxiety-provoking situation. These undoing effects may part- ly explain the longevity of people who experience positive emotions more often.

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actions induced by the speech task re- turned to each participant’s baseline levels. The results were consistent: Those individuals who watched the two positive-emotion films recovered to their baseline cardiovascular activity sooner than those who watched the neutral film. Those who watched the sad film showed the most delayed re- covery (Figure 5). Positive emotions had a clear and consistent effect of un- doing the cardiovascular repercussions of negative emotions.

At this point the cognitive and phys- iological mechanisms of the undoing effect are unknown. It may be that broadening one’s cognitive perspective by feeling positive emotions mediates the physiological undoing. Such ideas need further exploration.

Ending on a Positive Note So how do the positive emotions pro- mote longevity? Why did the happy nuns live so long? It seems that posi- tive emotions do more than simply feel good in the present. The undoing ef- fect suggests that positive emotions can reduce the physiological “damage” on the cardiovascular system sustained by feeling negative emotions. But some other research suggests that there’s more to it than that. It appears that ex- periencing positive emotions increases the likelihood that one will feel good in the future.

My colleague Thomas Joiner and I sought to test whether positive affect and broadened thinking mutually en- hance each other—so that experiencing one produces the other, which in turn encourages more of the first one, and so on in a mutually reinforcing ascent to greater well-being. We measured positive affect and broadened thinking strategies in 138 college students on two separate occasions, five weeks apart (times T1 and T2), with standard psychological tests. When we com- pared the students’ responses on both occasions we found some very inter- esting results: Positive affect at T1 pre- dicted increases in both positive affect and broadened thinking at T2; and broadened thinking at T1 predicted in- creases in both positive affect and broadened thinking at T2. Further sta- tistical analyses revealed that there was indeed a mutually reinforcing effect be- tween positive affect and broadened thinking. These results suggest that people who regularly feel positive emotions are in some respects lifted on

an “upward spiral” of continued growth and thriving.

But positive emotions don’t just transform individuals. I’ve argued that they may also transform groups of peo- ple, within communities and organiza- tions. Community transformation be- comes possible because each person’s positive emotion can resound through others. Take helpful, compassionate acts as an example. Isen demonstrated that people who experience positive emo- tions become more helpful to others. Yet being helpful not only springs from positive emotions, it also produces pos- itive emotions. People who give help, for instance, can feel proud of their good deeds and so experience contin- ued good feelings. Plus, people who re- ceive help can feel grateful, and those who merely witness good deeds can feel elevated. Each of these positive emotions—pride, gratitude and eleva- tion—can in turn broaden people’s mindsets and inspire further compas- sionate acts. So, by creating chains of events that carry positive meaning for others, positive emotions can trigger upward spirals that transform commu- nities into more cohesive, moral and harmonious social organizations.

All of this suggests that we need to develop methods to experience more positive emotions more often. Al- though the use of humor, laughter and other direct attempts to stimulate posi- tive emotions are occasionally suitable, they often seem poor choices, especially in trying times. Based on our recent ex- periment with college students, my ad- vice would be to cultivate positive emo- tions indirectly by finding positive meaning within current circumstances. Positive meaning can be obtained by finding benefits within adversity, by in- fusing ordinary events with meaning and by effective problem solving. You can find benefits in a grim world, for instance, by focusing on the newfound strengths and resolve within yourself and others. You can infuse ordinary events with meaning by expressing ap- preciation, love and gratitude, even for simple things. And you can find posi- tive meaning through problem solving by supporting compassionate acts to- ward people in need. So although the active ingredient within growth and re- silience may be positive emotions, the leverage point for accessing these bene- fits is finding positive meaning.

So, what good is it to think about the good in the world? The mind can be a

powerful ally. As John Milton told us, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” The new science of positive psychology is beginning to unravel how such transformations can take place. Think about the good in the world, or otherwise find positive mean- ing, and you seed your own positive emotions. A focus on goodness cannot only change your life and your com- munity, but perhaps also the world, and in time create a heaven on earth.

Acknowledgments The author would like to thank the Univer- sity of Michigan, the National Institute of Mental Health (MH59615) and the John Templeton Foundation for supporting some of the research described in this article.

Bibliography Aspinwall, L. G., and U. M. Staudinger. 2003. A

Psychology of Human Strengths: Fundamental Questions and Future Directions for a Positive Psychology. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Danner, D. D., D. A. Snowdon and W. V. Friesen. 2001. Positive emotions in early life and longevity: Findings from the nun study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80:804–813.

Fredrickson, B. L. 1998. What good are posi- tive emotions? Review of General Psychology 2:300–319.

Fredrickson, B. L. 2000. Cultivating positive emotions to optimize health and well-being. Prevention and Treatment 3. http:// journals.apa.org/prevention/volume3/ toc-mar07-00.html

Fredrickson, B. L. 2001. The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emo- tions. American Psychologist 56:218–226.

Fredrickson, B. L.,

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