Chapter 3

Why Do Positive Emotions Matter?

  • It feels good to experience positive emotions

  • Positive emotions shape our personalities

  • Most people say happiness is important to them

  • Positive emotions are related to good outcomes

    • Longevity

    • Physical health

    • Social Relationships

    • Cognitive outcomes

Broaden and Build Model

Broaden

  • Positive emotions broaden thinking about possible actions - opening awareness to a larger range of thoughts and actions than is typical.

    • Serenity - urge to savor and integrate

    • Joy - urge to play and be creative

    • Interest - urge to explore and learn

Build

  • Positive emotions are related to survival and reproduction on a larger time scale.

  • Positive emotions, expansive awareness, building resources, better equipped to handle later threats

  • Resources garnered in the build

    • Learning (cognitive resources)

    • Relationships (social resources)

    • Fighting and foraging skills (physical resources)

    • Other positive emotions (psychological resources)

    • Neural growth (neural resources)

The Nun Study - Danner et al.

  • Asked to write 2-3 page autobiographical sketch as part of vows

  • Nuns were about 22 years old on average

  • Coded with positive, negative, and neutral emotions words and sentences

  • Very few had negative emotions

Since the Nun Study…

  • Meta-analytic evidence suggests a link between mortality and subjective well-being.

    • Martin-Maria et al. (2017) reviewed 62 studies with 1,259,949 participants

      • Stronger for men than women

    • Chida and Steptoe (2008) conducted 56 studies in samples of both healthy participants and those with existing diseases from many countries (representing Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America)

      • association between both positive emotions and positive affectivity and mortality in both healthy and diseased samples, independent of negative affect

Synthesis on Mortality Data

  • Not all positive affect is created equally

  • The relation between positive affect and mortality is particularly strong when considering “active” positive affect (Petrie et al. 2017)

    • The relation between PANAS and mortality

      • Including age, gender, education, relationship status, smoking, exercise, alcohol consumption, BMI, blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, and myocardial infarction in the model

    • I felt active — the strongest effect

Undoing Hypothesis

  • Negative emotions have particular physiological effects

  • Induction of positive emotion after induction of negative emotion is associated with faster return to baseline physiological functioning

    • Cardiovascular effects

    • Most of the delay in the sadness induction condition

  • Protective physiological effects

    • Rhinovirus infection

Mills College Yearbook Study

  • Harker & Keltner (2001)

  • 1958 and 1960 yearbook pictures

    • All but three women were smiling

    • Average Duchenne level on 10-point scale = 3.8

  • Duchenne level predicted marital status and happiness in marriages

    • Attractiveness did not predict a satisfying relationship

Happiness is Contagious

  • 4,739 people followed over 20 years (1983 - 2003)

  • Happy and unhappy people clustered together

  • Happiness extends up to 3 degrees of separation in a social network

  • Happiness spread over time

    • If someone in your network becomes happier over time, you are also likely to become happier over time.

Positive Affective Experiences and Money

  1. Does having more money make you happier?

    • Weak relationship between income and happiness

    • Debt and life satisfaction are weakly related

    • Income is more strongly related to life satisfaction than positive affect

    • At lower levels of income, income is more strongly associated with positive affect

    • Wealthier nations are happier than poorer nations

  2. Does How You Spend Your Money Matter?

    • Spending money on things shorter happiness boosts than spending money on experiences

      • Hedonic adaption

    • Spending money on buying back time associated with happiness

      • Time Scarcity

    • Spending money on others is associated with happiness

Happiest Countries in the World — Based on Life Evaluation (2016 - 2018)

  1. Finland

  2. Denmark

  3. Norway

  4. Iceland

  5. Netherlands

  6. Switzerland

  7. New Zealand

  8. Canada

  9. Austria