Major perspectives concerning stress are presented with the goal of clarifying the nature of what has proved to be a heuristic but vague construct. Current conceptualizations of stress are challenged as being too phenomenological and ambiguous, and consequently, not given to direct empirical testing. Indeed, it is argued that researchers have tended to avoid the problem of defining stress, choosing to study stress without reference to a clear framework. A new stress model called the model of conservation of resources is presented as an alternative. This resource-oriented model is based on the supposition that people strive to retain, project, and build resources and that what is threatening to them is the potential or actual loss of these valued resources. Implications of the model of conservation of resources for new research directions are discussed.

Conservation of resources. A new attempt at conceptualizing stress.

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?

This article opens by noting that positive emotions do not fit existing models of emotions. Consequently, a new model is advanced to describe the form and function of a subset of positive emotions, including joy, interest, contentment, and love. This new model posits that these positive emotions serve to broaden an individual's momentary thought-action repertoire, which in turn has the effect of building that individual's physical, intellectual, and social resources. Empirical evidence to support this broadenand-build model of positive emotions is reviewed, and implications for emotion regulation and health promotion are discussed. Even though research on emotions has this new perspective are featured. My hope is flourished in recent years, investigations that that this article will unlock scientific curiosity expressly target positive emotions remain few and far between. Any review of the psychological literature on emotions will show that psychologists have typically favored negative emotions in theory building and hypothesis testing. In so doing, psychologists have inadvertently marginalized the emotions, such as joy, about positive emotions, not only to test the ideas presented here, but also to build other new models that might illuminate the nature and value of positive emotions. Psychology sorely needs more studies on positive emotions, not simply to level the uneven knowledge bases between negative and positive emotions, but interest, contentment, and love, that share a more critically, to guide applications and pleasant subjective feel. To date, then, psychology's knowledge base regarding positive emotions is so thin that satisfying answers to the question "What good are positive emotions?" have yet to be articulated. This is unfortunate. Experiences of positive emotion are central to human nature and contribute richly to the quality of people's lives (Diener & Larsen,

http://www.gruberpeplab.com/teaching/psych3131_spring2015/documents/15.1_Fredrickson1998_WhatGoodarePositiveEmotions.pdf

What Good Are Positive Emotions

Few microorganisms are as versatile as Escherichia coli. An important member of the normal intestinal microflora of humans and other mammals, E. coli has also been widely exploited as a cloning host in recombinant DNA technology. But E. coli is more than just a laboratory workhorse or harmless intestinal inhabitant; it can also be a highly versatile, and frequently deadly, pathogen. Several different E. coli strains cause diverse intestinal and extraintestinal diseases by means of virulence factors that affect a wide range of cellular processes.

Pathogenic Escherichia coli

The broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001) hypothesises that positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought-action repertoires. Two experiments with 104 college students tested these hypotheses. In each, participants viewed a film that elicited (a) amusement, (b) contentment, (c) neutrality, (d) anger, or (e) anxiety. Scope of attention was assessed using a global-local visual processing task (Experiment 1) and thought-action repertoires were assessed using a Twenty Statements Test (Experiment 2). Compared to a neutral state, positive emotions broadened the scope of attention in Experiment 1 and thought-action repertoires in Experiment 2. In Experiment 2, negative emotions, relative to a neutral state, narrowed thought-action repertoires. Implications for promoting emotional well-being and physical health are discussed.

Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought‐action repertoires

Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire

Preliminary TOC Chapter 1 Introduction to the Psychology of Humor Chapter 2 Theories and Early Research I: Psychoanalytic and Superiority Theories Chapter 3 Theories and Early Research II: Arousal, Incongruity, and Reversal Theories Chapter 4 The Cognitive Psychology of Humor Chapter 5 The Social Psychology of Humor Chapter 6 The Psychobiology of Humor and Laughter Chapter 7 Personality Approaches to Sense of Humor Chapter 8 The Developmental Psychology of Humor Chapter 9 Humor and Mental Health Chapter 10 Humor, Laughter, and Physical Health Chapter 11 Applications of Humor to Psychotherapy, Education, and the Workplace

The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach

Three studies are reported that investigated the hypothesis, long held by theorists, therapists, and laypersons alike, that a sense of humor reduces the deleterious impact of stressful experiences. In each study a negative-life-events checklist was used to predict stress scores on a measure of mood disturbance. These studies made use of different measures of subjects' sense of humor, including four selfreport scales and two behavioral assessments of subjects' ability to produce humor under nonstressful and mildly stressful conditions. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that five of the six humor measures produced a significant moderating effect on the relation between negative life events and mood disturbance. Subjects with low humor scores obtained higher correlations between these two variables than did those with high humor scores. These results provide initial evidence for the stress-buffering role of humor. The notion that humor possesses therapeutic properties has long enjoyed popular support. This idea can be traced at least as far back as the ancient biblical maxim that "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine" (Proverbs 17:22), and it has gained recent support from the account of Norman Cousins's (1979) recovery from a serious collagen disea.se through massive doses of laughter and vitamin C. Recently, Dixon (1980) cogently argued that humor may have evolved as a uniquely human strategy for coping with stress.

Sense of humor as a moderator of the relation between stressors and moods.

All published research examining effects of humor and laughter on physical health is reviewed. Potential causal mechanisms and methodological issues are discussed. Laboratory experiments have shown some effects of exposure to comedy on several components of immunity, although the findings are inconsistent and most of the studies have methodological problems. There is also some evidence of analgesic effects of exposure to comedy, although similar findings are obtained with negative emotions. Few significant correlations have been found between trait measures of humor and immunity, pain tolerance, or self-reported illness symptoms. There is also little evidence of stress-moderating effects of humor on physical health variables and no evidence of increased longevity with greater humor. More rigorous and theoretically informed research is needed before firm conclusions can be drawn about possible health benefits of humor and laughter.

Humor, laughter, and physical health: methodological issues and research findings.

According to recent theory, many of the interpersonal functions of humor derive from its inherently ambiguous nature due to the multiple concurrent meanings that it conveys. Because of this ambiguity, humor is a useful vehicle for communicating certain messages and dealing with situations that would be more difficult to handle using a more serious, unambiguous mode of communication. Importantly, a message communicated in a humorous manner can be retracted more easily than if it were expressed in the serious mode, allowing both the speaker and the listener to save face if the message is not well received. These insights concerning the ambiguity and face-saving potential of humor have been applied by theorists and researchers to account for a wide variety of social uses of humor, including self-disclosure and social probing, decommitment and conflict de-escalation, enforcing social norms and exerting social control, establishing and maintaining status, enhancing group cohesion and identity, discourse management, and social play. The multiple interpersonal functions of humor suggest that it may be viewed as a type of social skill or interpersonal competence. Employed in an adept manner, humor can be a very useful tool for achieving one's interpersonal goals.

Rod A. Martin

Papers

Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire

The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach

Sense of humor as a moderator of the relation between stressors and moods.

Humor, laughter, and physical health: methodological issues and research findings.

CHAPTER 5 – The Social Psychology of Humor