A reprint from American Scientist the magazine of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society This reprint is provided for personal and noncommercial use. For any other use, please send a request to Permissions, American Scientist, P.O. Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, U.S.A., or by electronic mail to [email protected]. ©Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society and other rightsholders The Value of Positive Emotions The emerging science of positive psychology is coming to understand why it’s good to feel good Barbara L. Fredrickson ack in the 1930s some young (APA). Like many psychologists, Selig- positive psychology movement is BCatholic nuns were asked to write man had devoted much of his research changing that. Many psychologists short, personal essays about their lives. career to studying mental illness. He have now begun to explore the largely They described edifying events in their coined the phrase learned helplessness to uncharted terrain of human strengths childhood, the schools they attended, describe how hopelessness and other and the sources of happiness. their religious experiences and the in- negative thoughts can spiral down into The new discoveries generated by fluences that led them to the convent. clinical depression. positive psychology hold the promise of Although the essays may have been ini- At the start of his term as APA pres- improving individual and collective tially used to assess each nun’s career ident, Seligman took stock of the field functioning, psychological well-being path, the documents were eventually of psychology, noting its significant ad- and physical health. But to harness the archived and largely forgotten. More vances in curing ills. In 1947, none of power of positive psychology, we need than 60 years later the nuns’ writings the major mental illnesses were treat- to understand how and why “goodness” surfaced again when three psycholo- able, whereas today 16 are treatable by matters. Although the discovery that gists at the University of Kentucky re- psychotherapy, psychopharmacology people who think positively and feel viewed the essays as part of a larger or both. Although psychology had be- good actually live longer is remarkable, it study on aging and Alzheimer’s dis- come proficient at rescuing people raises more questions than it answers. ease. Deborah Danner, David Snowdon from various mental illnesses, it had Exactly how do positive thinking and and Wallace Friesen read the nun’s bio- virtually no scientifically sound tools pleasant feelings help people live longer? graphical sketches and scored them for for helping people to reach their higher Do pleasant thoughts and feelings help positive emotional content, recording ground, to thrive and flourish. Selig- people live better as well? And why are instances of happiness, interest, love man aimed to correct this imbalance positive emotions a universal part of hu- and hope. What they found was re- when he called for a “positive psychol- man nature? My research traces the pos- markable: The nuns who expressed the ogy.” With the help of psychologist Mi- sible pathways for the life-enhancing ef- most positive emotions lived up to 10 haly Csikszentmihalyi—who originat- fects of positive emotions and attempts years longer than those who expressed ed the concept of “flow” to describe to understand why human beings the fewest. This gain in life expectancy peak motivational experiences—Selig- evolved to experience them. is considerably larger than the gain man culled the field for scientists achieved by those who quit smoking. whose work might be described as in- Why So Negative? The nun study is not an isolated case. vestigating “that which makes life There are probably a number of reasons Several other scientists have found that worth living.” why the positive emotions received little people who feel good live longer. But This is how many research psychol- attention in the past. There is, of course, why would this be so? Some answers ogists, myself included, were drawn to the natural tendency to study something are emerging from the new field of pos- positive psychology. My own back- that afflicts the well-being of humanity— itive psychology. This branch of psy- ground is in the study of emotions. For and the expression and experience of chological science surfaced about five more than a dozen years, I’ve been negative emotions are responsible for years ago, as the brainchild of Martin studying the positive emotions—joy, much of what ails this world. But it may E. P. Seligman, then president of the contentment, gratitude and love—to also be that the positive emotions are a American Psychological Association shed light on their evolved adaptive little harder to study. They are compara- significance. Among scientists who tively few and relatively undifferentiat- study emotions, this is a rare specialty. ed—joy, amusement and serenity are not Barbara L. Fredrickson is the director of the Posi- Far more emotion researchers have de- easily distinguished from one another. tive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory at the University of Michigan. In 2000 she won the voted their careers to studying nega- Anger, fear and sadness, on the other Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology. Address: tive emotions, such as anger, anxiety hand, are distinctly different experiences. 3006 East Hall, 525 East University Avenue, and sadness. The study of optimism This lack of differentiation is evident University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI and positive emotions was seen by in how we think about the emotions. 48109–1109. Internet: [email protected] some as a frivolous pursuit. But the Consider that scientific taxonomies of 330 American Scientist, Volume 91 © 2003 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction with permission only. Contact [email protected]. Figure 1. Feeling joy in the pleasures of life, as depict- ed in Marc Chagall’s Fes- tival in the Village, offers rewards beyond those of simply experiencing the moment. There are bene- fits to personal health, de- velopment and longevity, as well as evolutionary reasons why human be- ings experience positive Corbis emotions. basic emotions typically identify one gry, sad or fearful faces. In contrast, fa- enson at Indiana University showed positive emotion for every three or cial expressions for positive emotions that anger, fear and sadness each elicit four negative emotions and that this have no unique signal value: All share distinct responses in the autonomic ner- imbalance is also reflected in the rela- the Duchenne smile—in which the cor- vous system. In contrast, the positive tive numbers of emotion words in the ners of the lips are raised and the mus- emotions appeared to have no distin- English language. cles are contracted around the eyes, guishable autonomic responses. Various physical components of emo- which raises the cheeks. A similar dis- The study of positive emotions has tional expression similarly reveal a lack tinction is evident in the response of the also been hindered because scientists at- of differentiation for the positive emo- autonomic nervous system to the ex- tempted to understand them with mod- tions. The negative emotions have spe- pression of emotions. About 20 years els that worked best for negative emo- cific facial configurations that imbue ago, psychologists Paul Ekman and tions. Central to many theories of them with universally recognized sig- Wallace Friesen at the University of Cal- emotion is that they are, by definition, nal value. We can readily identify an- ifornia, San Francisco, and Robert Lev- associated with urges to act in particular www.americanscientist.org © 2003 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction 2003 July–August 331 with permission only. Contact [email protected]. Figure 2. Negative emotions—like anger, fear and disgust—can be understood as evolutionary adaptations to threats our ancestors faced. Anger (left) elicits the urge to attack, fear (middle) the urge to escape and disgust (right) the urge to expel. In this view, the negative emotions nar- row our thoughts and actions to those that promoted survival in life-threatening situations. Because the positive emotions—joy, serenity, grat- itude and the like—were not so readily understood from this perspective, psychological science had not come up with with a satisfying expla- nation for their evolutionary significance until recently. ways. Anger creates the urge to attack, The Broaden-and-Build Theory figure. Neither choice is right or fear the urge to escape and disgust the We gain some insight into the adaptive wrong, but one comparison figure re- urge to expectorate (Figure 2). Of course, role of positive emotions if we aban- sembles the standard in global config- no theorist argues that people invari- don the framework used to under- uration, and the other in local, detailed ably act out these urges; rather, people’s stand the negative emotions. Instead of elements. Using this and similar mea- ideas about possible courses of action solving problems of immediate sur- sures, we found that, compared to narrow in on these specific urges. And vival, positive emotions solve prob- those in negative or neutral states, these urges are not simply thoughts ex- lems concerning personal growth and people who experience positive emo- isting in the mind. They embody spe- development. Experiencing a positive tions (as assessed by self-report or cific physiological changes that enable emotion leads to states of mind and to electromyographic signals from the the actions called forth. In the case of modes of behavior that indirectly pre- face) tend to choose the global config- fear, for example, a greater amount of pare an individual for later hard times. uration, suggesting a broadened pat- blood flows to the large muscle groups In my broaden-and-build theory, I pro- tern of thinking. to facilitate running. pose that the positive emotions broad- This tendency to promote a broader The models that emphasize the role en an individual’s momentary mind- thought-action repertoire is linked to a of these specific action tendencies typi- set, and by doing so help to build variety of downstream effects of posi- cally cast the emotions as evolved enduring personal resources.