Week 5 Feb. 6 - Negative & Positive Emotions
Happiness and Wellbeing
Happiness
Is happiness an emotion?
Happiness is often considered an emotional state characterized by feelings of joy, contentment, and fulfillment, and it plays a crucial role in overall wellbeing
Emotions have adaptive function (serve some sort of purpose)
Subjective Well being
Varieties of Well-being
Hedonic
Example Dr. Van Hedger at the spa
Eudaimonic
Example: Motherhood can evoke a complex mix of emotions, including profound joy and deep frustration
Both contribute to the idea if well being
What Predicts Happiness?
People generally feel happier when they have supportive relationships
40% heritability in happiness
Adaptive function of happiness
We expect happiness that it would be related to a variety of factors of environment
Consistent happiness is connected to extraversion
Extraverts tend to welcome more social bonds that lead to higher levels of subjective well being
Personality and Happiness
Life Events and Happiness
Major life events on life satisfaction:
Example: If your expecting a death of a spouse there is a decline
Wealth and Happiness
Getting more money does cause happiness, though it is short lived
The graph’s relationship: More money is better though it stops at a point
Income Satiation
If you can’t afford what everyone else is buying, it can lead to feelings of inadequacy and frustration, highlighting the complex interplay between financial status and emotional well-being
Your missing out on things that everyone gets to have
Other Predictors of Happiness
Activities that Promote Happiness
Textbook Chapter 12 - Is Happiness an Emotion? What predicts happiness?
Is Happiness an Emotion?
Hedonic Wellbeing
A general feeling that one’s life is pleasant and good, characterized by high positive affect, low negative affect, and high life satisfaction
Eudaemonic Wellbeing
the sense that one’s life is meaningful, consistent with personal values, and fulfilling one’s potential
The Top-Down Theory of Happiness
Top down means that your personality determines your happiness and bottom up means life events do
Extraversion appears to be a predictor of happiness
Extraverted social behaviour may offer a better explanation
Happier people tend to engage more with others; happiness causes social interaction
Luke Smilie and Colleagues
Instructed participants to behave in a more or less extraverted way while interacting with a stranger
Results showed those who acted more outgoing reported enjoying the interaction more and a more positive affect
Dispositional Positivity
A personality characteristic defined by high self-esteem, a tendency toward optimism, and positive appraisals of one’s life and future
People characterized by dispositional positivity generally have a good attitude
Wealth and Happiness
Income does predict levels of subjective wellbeing around the world
The effect is especially strong below a certain threshold allowing basic security and comfort
How much is enough?
Income satiation
The cutoff in annual income beyond which more money fails to predict an increase in happiness
People who spent more money in ways that bought them extra time:
Like hiring house cleaners, or people to run errands, they reported greater happiness
Spending money on experiences
Greater impact on happiness than buying more stuff
When we pay for experiences we typically share those experiences with other people and talk about them long after
Happiness tends to be greater in countries where minority groups are treated well
Men and women have equal status
Happy people also tend to have happier friends
Researchers in one study found that when one person becomes happier, within some time that person’s friends become happier too (Happiness is contagious)
The Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotions
Barbara Fredrickson
Proposed that we think about the effects of positive emotions in a different way than we think about the functions of negative emotions
(negative emotions are thought to enhance fitness by promoting immediate actions that deflect threats in the environment)
Positive emotions may enhance fitness by changing the way we think about the world around us, helping us to gather information and resources that will be helpful in the future
Broad and Build Theory
Positive emotions promote broadened attention to the environment, as well as greater flexibility in thought/action repertoires
So that we are more likely to notice opportunities in the environment, as well as greater flexibility in the actions we might use to take advantage of those opportunities
In One Study…
Fredrickson and her colleague
Used film clips to induce feelings of amusement, contentment, anger and anxiety and neutral affect in participants
They then gave participants a series of test items that look something like this:
As a study participant, your task is to look quickly at the image in the upper row and then decide which of the two images below is more like it. Do it quickly—don’t think too hard; your answer should be instinctive. Which did you choose—A or B?
According to Fredrickson and Branigan, choosing A indicates that your attention is focused on local details of the upper figure (the little triangles), rather than the “big picture” of the shape
Choosing B indicates attention focused on the target figure’s overall configuration—a square. Individuals who had just viewed the funny or contentment-inducing film were much more likely to choose B, and similar options in other items, suggesting that the positive emotion biased their attention toward global features rather than details
Researchers have reported other effects linking positive emotions with big-picture thinking and open-mindedness as well
Face Recognition Study
where people were less affected by racial biases in face recognition after experiencing positive emotions
Positive emotions help us take advantage of opportunities and adapt to our surroundings
Specific Positive Emotions
Learning Objectives
Basic and discrete emotions: enthusiasm, contentment, pride, love, amusement, awe and hope/optimism
Enthusiasm to appetitive pleasure and approach motivation
Definitions of love
Basic/discrete emotions theory
Emotions evolved to help solve specific kinds of problems related to adaptive fitness , such as finding food, forming social bonds, and avoiding danger, thereby enhancing survival and reproductive success
They helped our ancestors increase their genes in future generations in some way
Negative emotions seem to help us address threats
Positive emotions should help us respond to opportunities to enhance fitness presented by the environment
Enthusiasm: The Anticipation of Reward
Enthusiasm
Pleasure from anticipating a reward
How might the pleasurable anticipation of some upcoming reward enhance adaptive fitness?
The pleasurable anticipation of a reward keeps you motivated to persist in effortful behaviours (e.g., climbing a tree for fruit, chasing prey, searching for water)
Anticipation helps sharpen focus, improve reaction time, and increase physical readiness
Nucleus Accumbent
Increase activity in rewarding situations
In One Study…
How enthusiasm affects the body physiologically when people anticipate and experience a reward
Participants were shown slides simulating a lottery win:
The first slide displayed target numbers and a reward schedule ($5 for three matches, $7 for four, and $10 for five)
Each following slide revealed a lottery ball, gradually showing that they were winning
By the final slide, participants had won the maximum prize ($10)
As participants watched the slides and saw themselves winning, their bodies reacted physically:
Increased heart rate & blood pressure → The body became more alert and energized
Higher skin conductance (sweating) → A sign of heightened emotional excitement
Shortened cardiac pre-ejection period (faster heart contractions) → Indicates activation of the sympathetic nervous system (the body’s "fight-or-flight" response)
Reduced respiratory sinus arrhythmia → Suggests increased physiological arousal and focus
Contentment
Contentment
Positive emotion felt after consuming a meal or other reward
People experiencing contentment after consuming a reward. Although it does not look like much is happening, the body is working hard to digest the recently eaten food, and the brain may be consolidating memory of the path to reward as well
Dopamingeric activation in the nucleus accumbens calms down and is replaced by B-endorphin activity, which slows overall behaviour
How do humans know when they’ve had enough to eat?
As the stomach fills up, it sends a message through the vagal branch of the parasympathetic nervous system back to the hypothalamus
Other pathways involving the neurotransmitter cholecystokinin lead from the small intestine to the brain, sending messages about the nutritional content of the meal
Messages from the hypothalamus to other regions then convey the command to stop eating
What effect does contentment have on cognition?
The increase in blood flow to the stomach, while supporting digestion, comes at the expense of blood flow to the brain. As a result, cognitive activity slows down—a phenomenon commonly known as “food coma.”
Pride
Pride
An emotional response to one’s own achievement (including achievements of the group) and/or being admired by other people
Authentic Pride
Pride based on an accurate assessment of one’s achievement
By one’s actions rather than based on assumption of one’s innate superiority
Hubristic pride
Pride based on belief in one’s inherent superiority over others
Love
Instead of considering love an emotion, some psychologists consider it a lasting attitude or affective disposition toward a particular individual
Attitude
A combination of beliefs, feelings, and behaviours directed toward a person, object or category
This definition above is consistent with Elaine Hatfield and Susan Sprecher’s description of passionate love as intense infatuation and longing for union with another person
Others have described love, especially romantic love as a script
Script
A culturally learned set of expectations about events, thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that should accompany experience
Positivity Resonance
A momentary state shared by two people, defined by shared experience of positive emotions, behavioural and physiological synchrony, and mutual caring for each other’s well-being
Physiological Linkage
A state in which two people’s physiological changes, such as changes in heart rate or electrodermal activity, are correlated with each other over some period of time
Amusement and Humour
People experience humour in response to a cognitive shift
Transition from thinking about some target from one perspective to thinking about it from a completely different, but still appropriate, perspective
Humour lies in your mind’s shift from an assumption that one is trying to save the lawyer’s life to a focus on choosing the method of death
Amusement
An emotional response to the opportunity of learning presented by play
Awe
Emotional response to vast stimuli that are challenging for us to comprehend
Cognitive accommodation
Attending to and encoding new information from the environment, rather than filtering perception through expectations and assumptions
Hope and Optimism
Hope
High agency in a challenging situation, combined with active generation of plans that can facilitate the desired outcome
Optimism
Expectation that mostly good things will happen
Positive Emotion and Behaviour Change
Learning objectives
Ways in which positive emotion can support behaviour change efforts + example
Associate that desired behaviour with an immediate reward in people’s minds
Study, Bradley Turnwald and colleagues (2019)