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.

Attachment--and loss.

Erik Eriksen is a remarkable individual. He has no college degrees yet is Professor of Human Development at Harvard University. He came to psychology via art, which explains why the reader will find him painting contexts and backgrounds rather than stating dull facts and concepts. He has been a training psychoanalyst for many years as well as a perceptive observer of cultural and social settings and their effect on growing up. This is not just a book on childhood. It is a panorama of our society. Anxiety in young children, apathy in American Indians, confusion in veterans of war, and arrogance in young Nazis are scrutinized under the psychoanalytic magnifying glass. The material is well written and devoid of technical jargon. The theme of the volume is that it is human to have a long childhood which will leave a lifelong residue of emotional immaturity in man. Primitive groups and

Childhood and Society.

We are in the midst of a technological revolution whereby, for the first time, researchers can link daily word use to a broad array of real-world behaviors. This article reviews several computerized text analysis methods and describes how Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) was created and validated. LIWC is a transparent text analysis program that counts words in psychologically meaningful categories. Empirical results using LIWC demonstrate its ability to detect meaning in a wide variety of experimental settings, including to show attentional focus, emotionality, social relationships, thinking styles, and individual differences.

/pdf/the-psychological-meaning-of-words-liwc-and-computerized-4sd1bn03dk.pdf

The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods

Policy-makers are considering large-scale programs aimed at self-control to improve citizens’ health and wealth and reduce crime. Experimental and economic studies suggest such programs could reap benefits. Yet, is self-control important for the health, wealth, and public safety of the population? Following a cohort of 1,000 children from birth to the age of 32 y, we show that childhood self-control predicts physical health, substance dependence, personal finances, and criminal offending outcomes, following a gradient of self-control. Effects of children's self-control could be disentangled from their intelligence and social class as well as from mistakes they made as adolescents. In another cohort of 500 sibling-pairs, the sibling with lower self-control had poorer outcomes, despite shared family background. Interventions addressing self-control might reduce a panoply of societal costs, save taxpayers money, and promote prosperity.

/pdf/a-gradient-of-childhood-self-control-predicts-health-wealth-5fdg5ylocq.pdf

A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety

Parents generally take pains to insure that their children adopt their own religious beliefs and practices, so what happens psychologically to adolescents who find themselves less religious than their parents? We examined the relationships among parents' and adolescents' religiousness, adolescents' ratings of parent-adolescent relationship quality, and adolescents' psychological adjustment using data from 322 adolescents and their parents. Adolescent boys who had lower organizational and personal religiousness than their parents, and girls who had lower personal religiousness than their parents, had more internalizing and externalizing psychological symptoms than did adolescents whose religiousness better matched their parents'. The apparent effects of subparental religiousness on adolescents' psychological symptoms were mediated by their intermediate effects on adolescents' ratings of the quality of their relationships with their parents. These findings identify religious discrepancies between parents and their children as an important influence on the quality of parent-adolescent relationships, with important implications for adolescents' psychological well-being.

/pdf/adolescents-who-are-less-religious-than-their-parents-are-at-4bmmr2tteg.pdf

Adolescents who are less religious than their parents are at risk for externalizing and internalizing symptoms: the mediating role of parent-adolescent relationship quality.

We conducted a series of meta-analytic tests on experiments in which participants read perspective-taking instructions-that is, written instructions to imagine a distressed persons' point of view ("imagine-self" and "imagine-other" instructions), or to inhibit such actions ("remain-objective" instructions)-and afterwards reported how much empathic concern they experienced upon learning about the distressed person. If people spontaneously empathize with others, then participants who receive remain-objective instructions should report less empathic concern than do participants in a "no-instructions" control condition; if people can deliberately increase how much empathic concern they experience, then imagine-self and imagine-other instructions should increase empathic concern relative to not receiving any instructions. Random-effects models revealed that remain-objective instructions reduced empathic concern, but "imagine" instructions did not significantly increase it. The results were robust to most corrections for bias. Our conclusions were not qualified by the study characteristics we examined, but most relevant moderators have not yet been thoroughly studied.

/pdf/is-empathy-the-default-response-to-suffering-a-meta-analytic-4nwd41e15r.pdf

Is Empathy the Default Response to Suffering? A Meta-Analytic Evaluation of Perspective Taking's Effect on Empathic Concern.

To Forgive Is Human

Imagine for a moment that instead of being interested in forgiveness, you are inter-ested in the athletic performance of mountain climbers. One morning, fi ve climb-ers are dropped by helicopter at random points between 1,000 and 5,000 feet above 
sea level. They climb for the next 12 hours. Your climbers are carrying altimeters that 
record their altitude at the beginning and at the end of the 12-hour period. At the end 
of the observation period, you want to fi gure out how much each of your climbers progressed. What would you do with the available data to get an answer?

Forgiveness as Change

Treatment for breast cancer affects psychological adaptation and related neuroendocrine stress indicators. Previously, a 10-week cognitive behavioral stress management (CBSM) group intervention decreased cortisol over 12-months among women receiving treatment for breast cancer. The current re-analysis tested whether changes in stress management skills at 6-month follow-up predict the magnitude of cortisol reductions at 12-months in a time-lagged analysis. Women (N = 128) with non-metastatic breast cancer recruited post-surgery were randomized to the CBSM intervention or 1-day psychoeducational seminar. Participants reported perceived CBSM skills and provided late afternoon blood samples for serum cortisol at baseline and 6- and 12-month follow-ups. Improved perceived ability to relax and use cognitive reappraisal skills at 6-months statistically mediated intervention-associated cortisol reduction from 6- to 12-months. This is the first study showing that improved perceived CBSM skills predict the magnitude of cortisol reductions over 1 year in this population and may guide development of more focused interventions.

Michael E. McCullough

Papers

Adolescents who are less religious than their parents are at risk for externalizing and internalizing symptoms: the mediating role of parent-adolescent relationship quality.

Is Empathy the Default Response to Suffering? A Meta-Analytic Evaluation of Perspective Taking's Effect on Empathic Concern.

To Forgive Is Human

Forgiveness as Change

Stress management skills and reductions in serum cortisol across the year after surgery for non-metastatic breast cancer