In this article, the author describes a new theoretical perspective on positive emotions and situates this new perspective within the emerging field of positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory posits that experiences of positive emotions broaden people's momentary thought-action repertoires, which in turn serves to build their enduring personal resources, ranging from physical and intellectual resources to social and psychological resources. Preliminary empirical evidence supporting the broaden-and-build theory is reviewed, and open empirical questions that remain to be tested are identified. The theory and findings suggest that the capacity to experience positive emotions may be a fundamental human strength central to the study of human flourishing.

http://www.elaborer.org/cours/A13/lectures/Fredrickson2001.pdf

The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.

Numerous studies show that happy individuals are successful across multiple life domains, including marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health. The authors suggest a conceptual model to account for these findings, arguing that the happiness-success link exists not only because success makes people happy, but also because positive affect engenders success. Three classes of evidence--crosssectional, longitudinal, and experimental--are documented to test their model. Relevant studies are described and their effect sizes combined meta-analytically. The results reveal that happiness is associated with and precedes numerous successful outcomes, as well as behaviors paralleling success. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that positive affect--the hallmark of well-being--may be the cause of many of the desirable characteristics, resources, and successes correlated with happiness. Limitations, empirical issues, and important future research questions are discussed.

/pdf/the-benefits-of-frequent-positive-affect-does-happiness-lead-4k0h6bmoho.pdf

The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?

Part I. Experimental Studies: 2. Experiment in psychology 3. Experiments on perceiving III Experiments on imaging 4-8. Experiments on remembering: (a) The method of description (b) The method of repeated reproduction (c) The method of picture writing (d) The method of serial reproduction (e) The method of serial reproduction picture material 9. Perceiving, recognizing, remembering 10. A theory of remembering 11. Images and their functions 12. Meaning Part II. Remembering as a Study in Social Psychology: 13. Social psychology 14. Social psychology and the matter of recall 15. Social psychology and the manner of recall 16. Conventionalism 17. The notion of a collective unconscious 18. The basis of social recall 19. A summary and some conclusions.

Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge (University Press) 1964.

Attachment--and loss.

Many people are exposed to loss or potentially traumatic events at some point in their lives, and yet they continue to have positive emotional experiences and show only minor and transient disruptions in their ability to function. Unfortunately, because much of psychology’s knowledge about how adults cope with loss or trauma has come from individuals who sought treatment or exhibited great distress, loss and trauma theorists have often viewed this type of resilience as either rare or pathological. The author challenges these assumptions by reviewing evidence that resilience represents a distinct trajectory from the process of recovery, that resilience in the face of loss or potential trauma is more common than is often believed, and that there are multiple and sometimes unexpected pathways to resilience. M ost people are exposed to at least one violent or life-threatening situation during the course of their lives (Ozer, Best, Lipsey, & Weiss, 2003). As people progress through the life cycle, they are also increasingly confronted with the deaths of close friends and relatives. Not everyone copes with these potentially disturbing events in the same way. Some people experience acute distress from which they are unable to recover. Others suffer less intensely and for a much shorter period of time. Some people seem to recover quickly but then begin to experience unexpected health problems or difficulties concentrating or enjoying life the way they used to. However, large numbers of people manage to endure the temporary upheaval of loss or potentially traumatic events remarkably well, with no apparent disruption in their ability to function at work or in close relationships, and seem to move on to new challenges with apparent ease. This article is devoted to the latter group and to the question of resilience in the face of loss or potentially traumatic events. The importance of protective psychological factors in the prevention of illness is now well established (Taylor, Kemeny, Reed, Bower, & Gruenewald, 2000). Moreover, developmental psychologists have shown that resilience is common among children growing up in disadvantaged conditions (e.g., Masten, 2001). Unfortunately, because most of the psychological knowledge base regarding the ways adults cope with loss or potential trauma has been derived from individuals who have experienced significant psychological problems or sought treatment, theorists working in this area have often underestimated and misunderstood resilience, viewing it either as a pathological state or as something seen only in rare and exceptionally healthy individuals. In this article, I challenge this view by reviewing evidence that resilience in the face of loss or potential trauma represents a distinct trajectory from that of recovery, that resilience is more common than often believed, and that there are multiple and sometimes unexpected pathways to resilience.

/pdf/loss-trauma-and-human-resilience-have-we-underestimated-the-2kd7sl9mfq.pdf

Loss, Trauma, and Human Resilience Have We Underestimated the Human Capacity to Thrive After Extremely Aversive Events?

Sadness and grief.

Longitudinal research has associated the disposition toward self-enhancing biases with better adjustment following potentially traumatic events (PTEs). However, self-enhancement was always measured in these studies after the PTE, thus confounding it with exposure. This study used a prospective design that tracked PTEs in college students over a 4-year period using an online checklist (n 69). Most participants experienced at least 1 PTE, and the mean number of PTEs was 4.40. Trait self-enhancement, measured at the beginning of the study and prior to the PTEs, was associated with reduced distress in both the first and fourth year of college. Participants with greater exposure to PTEs had greater distress in their fourth year; however, individuals high in self-enhancement were relatively unaffected by PTE exposure. High self-enhancement participants were also rated as better copers in anonymous ratings obtained from participants’ close friends. Overall, these results offer the first prospective evidence demonstrating that self-enhancement serves as a buffer against the potentially harmful effects of trauma.

Trait self-enhancement as a buffer against potentially traumatic events: A prospective study.

Particular emotion regulation (ER) strategies are beneficial in certain contexts, but little is known about the adaptiveness of switching strategies after implementing an initial strategy. Research and theory on regulatory flexibility suggest that people switch strategies dynamically and that internal states provide feedback indicating when switches are appropriate. Frequent switching may predict positive outcomes among people who respond to this feedback. We investigated whether internal feedback (particularly corrugator activity, heart rate, or subjective negative intensity) guides people to switch to an optimal (i.e., distraction) but not nonoptimal (i.e., reappraisal) strategy for regulating strong emotion. We also tested whether switching frequency and responsiveness to internal feedback (RIF) together predict well-being. While attempting to regulate emotion elicited by unpleasant pictures, participants could switch to an optimal (Study 1; reappraisal-to-distraction order; N = 90) or nonoptimal (Study 2; distraction-to-reappraisal order; N = 95) strategy for high-arousal emotion. A RIF score for each emotion measure indexed the relative strength of emotion during the initial phase for trials on which participants later switched strategies. As hypothesized, negative intensity, corrugator activity, and the magnitude of heart rate deceleration during this early phase were higher on switch than maintain trials in Study 1 only. Critically, in Study 1 only, greater switching frequency predicted higher and lower life satisfaction for participants with high and low corrugator RIF, respectively, even after controlling for reappraisal success. Individual differences in RIF may contribute to subjective well-being provided that the direction of strategy switching aligns well with regulatory preferences for high emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record

When to throw the switch: The adaptiveness of modifying emotion regulation strategies based on affective and physiological feedback.

Expressive flexibility in combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder and depression.

Objective: Prospectively identifying individuals at heightened risk for depression can alleviate the disease burden of distal physical and mental health consequences after cancer onset. Our objective was to identify heterogeneous trajectories of adjustment in cancer patients, using treatment-type as a predictor. Methods: Participants were followed for 6 years within the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a prospective population-based cohort study. The sample consisted of 1,294 middle-aged participants who were assessed once before and 3 time points after their report of an initial cancer diagnosis. In addition to self-reported depressive symptoms, subjects indicated receipt of surgical, radiological, or chemical interventions as part of their usual oncological care. Results: Four symptom trajectories were identified with Latent Growth Mixture Modeling: an increasing depression (10.5%), chronic depression (8.0%), depressed-improved (7.8%), and stable-low depression (73.7%). A conditional model using participants with available predictor data (n 545) showed individuals in the emerging depression class were significantly more likely to have received chemo/medication therapy when compared with the remitting depression, stable-low, and chronic depression classes. Participants in the chronic and depressed-improved classes generally had worse baseline health, and the depressedimproved were also younger in age. Conclusion: Patients who exhibited increasing depressive symptoms had a greater probability of receiving chemo/medication therapy than any other adjustment trajectory group, although the majority of chemotherapy patients did not exhibit depressive symptom changes. These data underscore the diversity of ways that patients adjust to cancer, and suggest cancer treatment, baseline health, and age may influence long-term patterns of psychological adjustment.

Treatment type and demographic characteristics as predictors for cancer adjustment: Prospective trajectories of depressive symptoms in a population sample.

George A. Bonanno

Papers

Sadness and grief.

Trait self-enhancement as a buffer against potentially traumatic events: A prospective study.

When to throw the switch: The adaptiveness of modifying emotion regulation strategies based on affective and physiological feedback.

Expressive flexibility in combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder and depression.

Treatment type and demographic characteristics as predictors for cancer adjustment: Prospective trajectories of depressive symptoms in a population sample.