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

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

Low self-esteem and depression are strongly related, but there is not yet consistent evidence on the nature of the relation. Whereas the vulnerability model states that low self-esteem contributes to depression, the scar model states that depression erodes self-esteem. Furthermore, it is unknown whether the models are specific for depression or whether they are also valid for anxiety. We evaluated the vulnerability and scar models of low self-esteem and depression, and low self-esteem and anxiety, by meta-analyzing the available longitudinal data (covering 77 studies on depression and 18 studies on anxiety). The mean age of the samples ranged from childhood to old age. In the analyses, we used a random-effects model and examined prospective effects between the variables, controlling for prior levels of the predicted variables. For depression, the findings supported the vulnerability model: The effect of self-esteem on depression (β = -.16) was significantly stronger than the effect of depression on self-esteem (β = -.08). In contrast, the effects between low self-esteem and anxiety were relatively balanced: Self-esteem predicted anxiety with β = -.10, and anxiety predicted self-esteem with β = -.08. Moderator analyses were conducted for the effect of low self-esteem on depression; these suggested that the effect is not significantly influenced by gender, age, measures of self-esteem and depression, or time lag between assessments. If future research supports the hypothesized causality of the vulnerability effect of low self-esteem on depression, interventions aimed at increasing self-esteem might be useful in reducing the risk of depression.

/pdf/does-low-self-esteem-predict-depression-and-anxiety-a-meta-4osmkc6ooo.pdf

Does low self-esteem predict depression and anxiety? A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies.

Positive emotions are hypothesized to undo the cardiovascular aftereffects of negative emotions. Study 1 tests this undoing effect. Participants (n = 170) experiencing anxiety-induced cardiovascular reactivity viewed a film that elicited (a) contentment, (b) amusement, (c) neutrality, or (d) sadness. Contentment-eliciting and amusing films produced faster cardiovascular recovery than neutral or sad films did. Participants in Study 2 (n = 185) viewed these same films following a neutral state. Results disconfirm the alternative explanation that the undoing effect reflects a simple replacement process. Findings are contextualized by Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (B. L. Fredrickson, 1998).

/pdf/the-undoing-effect-of-positive-emotions-1shaloa04x.pdf

The Undoing Effect of Positive Emotions

This paper provides an overview of our current research program focusing on the relationships between humor, self-concept, coping with stress, and positive affect. This research builds upon past work demonstrating a moderating effect of humor, wherein high humor individuals display less negative affect for adverse life circumstances than low humor individuals. The three studies described here address several limitations ofthis moderator research. These include a need to empirically document the precise relationship between humor and self-concept, a need tofocus on the cognitive appraisals underlying the moderator effect, and a need to specifically examine the enhancing effects of humor by measuring positive mood states in response to various life events. Overall, the findings from these studies indicate that greater levels of humor are associated with (1) a more positive self-concept when considered in terms of actual-ideal discrepancies, self-esteem, and Standards for self-worth evaluation. (2) more positive and self-protective cognitive appraisals in theface of stress, and (3) greater positive affect in response to both positive and negative life events. Tahen together, these findings offer empirical supportfor the proposal that humor, in addition to buffering the effects of stress, may also play an important role in enhancing the enjoyment of positive life experiences. We conclude by briefly describing future research directions in the empirical study of humor. Ever since Norman Cousins (1979) published an account of bis recovery from a serious disease through humor and laughter, much attention has been given in the populär media to the importance of humor for physical and psychological health. Over the years a number of psychological theorists, including Sigmund Freud, Rollo May, Gordon Allport, and Humor 6-1 (1993), 89-104. 0933-1719/93/0006-0089 $2.00

Humor, coping with stress, self-concept, and psychological well-being

Aptitude-treatment interaction research in the clinical setting: a review of attempts to dispel the "patient uniformity" myth.

Sense of humour and enhanced quality of life

Research in social cognition suggests that the self can be conceptualized as a cognitive schema that is involved in the encoding, organization, and retrieval of personally meaningful information. The application of this self-schema model to depression is presented here, along with an emphasis on self-schema distinctions at various levels of depression. Also considered is the nature of the self-schema in individuals proposed to be cognitively vulnerable to depression. Following this, it is argued that the self-schema model of depression would benefit from the inclusion of social roles as an explicit and fundamental aspect of self. Accordingly, the literature implicating role loss and role strain with the onset of depression is integrated with the self-schema model. This integration is considered further in terms of a self-worth contingency model of depression. In this contingency model it is proposed that a cognitive vulnerability to depression may be manifested in certain individuals as a propensity to evaluate self-schema role performance according to excessively rigid and perfectionistic criteria. Thus, depressive symptoms may be viewed as a result of diminished self-worth, stemming from either actual or perceived self-schema role disruptions. Further theoretical and empirical implications of this model are then considered.

Self-schemata, social roles, and a self-worth contingency model of depression.

Summary.-Affect intensity was significantly related to both the number of self-relevant roles endorsed by an individual and the overlap of these roles for 62 undergraduates (43 women) of mean age 21.5 yr. Affect intensity was not related to specific judgments concerning the importance, stressfulness, and perceived satisfaction of these roles but did yield a significant relationship with a more general measure of dysfunctional self-evaluative standards. These findings are related to previous 1990 research by Calloni and Ross on trait self-schemata and affect intensity. Information-processing models of the self have been concerned, in part, with the role of mood in self- and other-referent evaluative judgments (Kuiper & Olinger, 1989). In this research it is well documented that mood-congruent self-referent information is processed more efficiently and is recalled better than mood-incongruent information (Kuiper & Olinger, 1989). This research also indicates that severity of mood influences self-referent information processing, with clinically depressed subjects processing negative information more readily than do mildly depressed subjects. In addition to current mood, other factors may also bear on the nature of self-referent information processing. Larsen, Diener, and Emmons (1986) have proposed that individuals differ in the characteristic intensity of their emotional responses (both positive and negative) to typical life situations (as assessed by the Affect Intensity Measure). Calloni and Ross (1990) suggested that these characteristic differences in intensity of affect may, in part, also lead to increased efficiency for processing certain types of self-relevant information. This proposal was tested in their research, with some limited effects on evaluative judgments. In particular, high scorers on intensity of affect endorsed fewer positive self- than other-referent traits (low scorers on intensity of affect did not differ on this comparison). Also, high and low scorers on intensity of affect did not differ in terms of the number of traits endorsed, suggesting that intensity of affect is not related to trait self-conceptions. Calloni and Ross (1990) conclude by suggesting a clear need to examine more fully the reIationships between intensity of affect, self-evaluative judgments, and self-concept. The present report provides such an examination and begins with the

http://prx.sagepub.com/content/67/1/347.full.pdf

Kathryn A. Dance

Papers

Humor, coping with stress, self-concept, and psychological well-being

Aptitude-treatment interaction research in the clinical setting: a review of attempts to dispel the "patient uniformity" myth.

Sense of humour and enhanced quality of life

Self-schemata, social roles, and a self-worth contingency model of depression.

Intensity of affect, role self-concept, and self-evaluative judgments