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Module 3 - 240220 - 113141

The document discusses positive affectivity, a stable trait associated with the experience of positive emotions and engagement with surroundings, contrasting it with negative affectivity. It explores the emergence of the concept, its hierarchical structure, and various measures of positive affectivity, emphasizing its heritability and neurobiological correlates. Additionally, it highlights the significance of positive affectivity in relation to psychopathology, job and marital satisfaction, and introduces the broaden-and-build model of positive emotions, which describes their role in enhancing personal resources and overall well-being.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
7 views42 pages

Module 3 - 240220 - 113141

The document discusses positive affectivity, a stable trait associated with the experience of positive emotions and engagement with surroundings, contrasting it with negative affectivity. It explores the emergence of the concept, its hierarchical structure, and various measures of positive affectivity, emphasizing its heritability and neurobiological correlates. Additionally, it highlights the significance of positive affectivity in relation to psychopathology, job and marital satisfaction, and introduces the broaden-and-build model of positive emotions, which describes their role in enhancing personal resources and overall well-being.

Uploaded by

harshithaa37
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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MODULE 3: EMOTIONAL APPROACHES

POSITIVE AFFECTIVITY

Positive affectivity is a trait that refers to stable individual differences in the experience of positive
emotions and active engagement with one’s surroundings.

Along with negative affectivity (the parallel tendency to experience negative emotions), positive
affectivity is one of the two basic dimensions that define long-term affective experiences. Individuals
who are high in positive affectivity tend to be cheerful, enthusiastic, energetic, confident, and alert. In
contrast, those who are low in positive affectivity tend to experience lower levels of happiness,
excitement, vigor, and confidence. Positive affectivity is a moderately stable trait over time and
individuals tend to report consistent levels across different situations, such as being alone, interacting
with others, or working

Positive and negative affectivity are relatively independent of one another, which means that they can
occur in a widely varying range of combinations (e.g., an individual can be high in both traits or low in
both traits). They may be seen as the subjective components of larger biobehavioural systems that have
evolved to promote the survival of animals.

Positive affectivity is related to the behavioral facilitation system, an approach system that directs
organisms towards rewarding and pleasurable situations, such as food, shelter, and sex. This system is
linked primarily to dopamine activity and the level of resting activity in the left prefrontal cortex.

Negative affectivity is related to the behavioral inhibition system, which protects organisms by
encouraging the cessation of actions that may result in injury or death. The behavioral inhibition system
is associated with activity in the right frontal cortex. Given the different evolutionary pressures that
gave rise to these biobehavioral systems, it is not surprising that positive and negative affectivity are
relatively independent and have different correlates.

EMERGENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF POSITIVE EFFECTIVITY

Throughout most of the 20th century, affect researchers typically studied basic negative emotions such
as fear/anxiety, sadness/depression, and anger/hostility; positive emotional states such as joy and
excitement were largely ignored. The dominant role of the negative emotions reflected, in part, the
seminal influence of Freud, who made the concept of anxiety a cornerstone of psychoanalytic thought
For instance, fear motivates organisms to escape from situations of potential threat or danger, whereas

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disgust helps to keep them away from noxious and toxic substances. The evolutionary functions of the
positive emotions are less obvious, however, and took much longer to establish. Gradually, however,
interest in positive emotionality emerged during the latter half of the century.

Meehl proposed that individual differences in hedonic capacity were present at birth and partly
heritable. Furthermore, he posited that these innate, genotypic differences were associated with
substantial phenotypic variations in positive emotionality and the related trait of surgency (now
typically called “extraversion”).

In support of Meehl’s argument, subsequent researchers have established that two largely independent
factors—negative affect and positive affect constitute the basic dimensions of emotional experience.
These two broad dimensions have been identified in both intra- and interindividual analyses, and they
emerge consistently across diverse descriptor sets, time frames, response formats, languages, and
cultures.

In brief, the Negative Affect dimension represents the extent to which an individual experiences
negative emotional states such as fear, anger, sadness, guilt, contempt, and disgust; conversely, positive
affect reflects the extent to which one experiences positive states such as joy, interest, confidence, and
alertness. Both of these dimensions can be assessed either as a short-term state or as a long term trait
(in which case they typically are referred to as “negative affectivity” and “positive affectivity,”
respectively).

THE HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE OF POSITIVE

AFFECTIVITY

Self-rated affect is hierarchically structured and must be viewed at two fundamentally different levels:
a higher order level that consists of the general Negative and Positive Affect dimensions and a lower
order level that represents specific types of affect

Researchers have had little trouble identifying specific types of negative emotionality. Most
theories of emotion recognize several different negative effects, and virtually every model
includes at least three basic negative moodstates:fear/anxiety, sadness/depression, and
anger/hostility .

In contrast, little agreement exists regarding the specific positive effects. The Differential
Emotions Scale for instance, contains scales assessing Interest (i.e., feeling excited, interested,
alert, and curious) and Enjoyment (i.e., feeling happy and joyful).

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The Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist-Revised also has two lower order positive mood scales but
subdivides the domain. rather differently, specifically, it includes a relatively broad measure of positive
affect containing descriptors relevant to both DES scales (e.g.,happy, glad, interested), as well as a
measure of sensation seeking that assesses feelings of energy, adventurousness, and daring that are not
systematically measured in the DES. Finally the Profile of Mood simply includes a single broad measure
of vigor (i.e., feeling cheerful, lively, alert, and energetic) and does not subdivide the domain at all.

STRUCTURE OF POSITIVE AFFECTIVITY


Self-rated affect is hierarchically structured and must be viewed at two fundamentally different levels:
a higher order level that consists of the general Negative and Positive Affect dimensions and a lower
order level that represents specific types of affect.

In this hierarchical model,the upper level reflects the overall valence of the affects (i.e., whether they
represent pleasant or unpleasant mood states), whereas the lower level reflects the specific content of
mood descriptors (i.e., the distinctive qualities of each specific type of affect).

Researchers have had little trouble identifying specific types of negative emotionality. Most theories of
emotion recognize several different negative affects, and virtually every model includes at least three
basic negative mood states: fear/anxiety, sadness/depression, and anger/hostility.

In contrast, little agreement exists regarding the specific positive affects. The Differential Emotions
Scale, for instance, contains scales assessing Interest (i.e., feeling excited, interested, alert, and curious)

The Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist-Revised also has two lower order positive mood scales but
subdivides the domain rather differently; specifically, it includes a relatively broad measure of positive
affect containing descriptors relevant to both DES scales (e.g.,happy, glad, interested), as well as a
measure of sensation seeking that assesses feelings of energy, adventurousness, and daring that are not
systematically measured in the DES.

MEASURES OF POSITIVE AFFECTIVITY


Positive Affectivity Scales
The assessment literature in this area is difficult to summarize briefly. This literature has never been
subjected to a thorough review, and convergent and discriminant validity data are lacking for many
measures.

Measures of positive affectivity can be divided into two basic types.

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First, many widely used affect inventories have a “general” form (in which respondents rate their
typical, average feelings) that can be used to measure this trait.
For instance, the DES, the MAACL-R, and the PANAS-X all have trait versions that allow one to assess
various aspects of the dimension.

Second, many multitrait personality inventories contain scales relevant to the construct; examples
include the Activity and Positive Emotions facet scales of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory the
Well-Being scale of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ;Tellegen, in press), and the
Positive Temperament scale of the General Temperament Survey.

Positive affectivity scales also are strongly and systematically related to general traits of personality,
particularly extraversion.

It will be helpful, in this regard, to examine positive affectivity in relation to the complete five factor
(or “Big Five”) model of personality. Researchers developed this model in studies in which they were
attempting to understand the natural language of trait descriptors.
Extensive structural analyses of these descriptors consistently revealed five broad factors: Extraversion,
Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. This structure is
remarkably robust, with the same five factors emerging in both self-ratings and peer ratings, in analyses
of both children and adults, and across a wide variety of languages and cultures.

CAUSES AND CORRELATES OF POSITIVE


AFFECTIVITY
1.Genetic evidence:
What causes mean-level differences in positive affectivity? First, this trait clearly is strongly heritable.
Most of the available data are based on measures of Extraversion. Heritability estimates for
Extraversion derived from twin studies generally fall in the .40 to .60 range, with a median value of
approximately .50. Adoption studies yield somewhat lower heritability estimates, but this largely may
be due to their failure to assess non additive genetic variance . Finally, based on results from both twin
and adoption studies, it appears that the common rearing environment (i.e., the effects of living together
In the same household) exerts little influence on this trait . Although the literature involving measures
of positive affectivity is much smaller, It has yielded very similar results.

2.. Neurobiological positive affectivity

Davidson, Tomarken,and their colleagues have demonstrated that happy individuals tend to show
relatively greater resting activity in the left prefrontal cortex than in the right prefrontal area; conversely,
dysphoric individuals display relatively greater right anterior activity. Unfortunately, it has Proven

4
difficult to isolate the specific effects of left versus right prefrontal activity in these studies. Based on
recent evidence, however, It appears that positive affectivity primarily reflects the level of resting
activity in the left prefrontal area, whereas negative affectivity Is more strongly associated with right
frontal activation.

3.demographic and environmental correlates

An enormous literature has examined how numerous demographic variables—age, gender, marital
status, ethnicity, income and socioeconomic status, and so on—are related to individual differences in
happiness, life satisfaction, and trait affectivity. From these studies, it is clear that objective
demographic factors are relatively weak predictors of happiness and positive affectivity. For instance,
as I discussed previously, positive affectivity scores are not systematically related to Age. Along these
same lines, variables such as annual income, level of educational attainment, and socioeconomic status
are, at best, weakly related to happiness and well-being.

SIGNIFICANCE OF POSITIVE EFFECTIVITY :-

Links to Psychopathology:

Low levels of positive affectivity are associated with a number of clinical syndromes, including social
phobia, agoraphobia, posttraumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, eating disorder, and the substance
disorders . low positive affectivity plays a particularly salient role in the mood disorders. 4). It also is
noteworthy that positive affectivity scores have predicted the subsequent development of depression in
prospective data. These findings raise the intriguing possibility that lack of positive affectivity may be
an important vulnerability factor for mood disorder.

Job and Marital Satisfaction:

Individuals who are high in positive affectivity feel good about themselves and their world.
Consequently, they report greater satisfaction with important aspects of their lives. For instance,
positive affectivity is a significant predictor of job satisfaction. Positive affectivity also is significantly
correlated with marital and relationship satisfaction.

BROADEN AND BUILD MODEL OF POSITIVE


EMOTIONS

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Traditional approaches to the study of emotions have tended to ignore positive emotions and squeeze
them into purportedly emotion-general models, confuse them with closely related affective states, and
describe their function in terms of generic tendencies to approach or continue. Sensing that these
approaches did not do justice to positive emotions, Professor Barbara Fredrickson developed an
alternative model that better captures their unique effects. He call this the broaden-and-build theory of
positive emotions because positive emotions appear to broaden people’s momentary thought-action
repertoires and build their enduring personal resources (Fredrickson, 1998).

He contrast this new model to traditional models based on specific action tendencies. Specific action
tendencies, work well to describe the form and function of negative emotions and thus should be
retained for models of this subset of emotions. Without loss of theoretical nuance, a specific action
tendency can be redescribed as the outcome of a psychological process that narrows a person’s
momentary thought-action repertoire by calling to mind an urge to act in a particular way (e.g., escape,
attack, expel). In a life-threatening situation, a narrowed thought-action repertoire promotes quick,
decisive action that carries direct and immediate benefit.

Specific action tendencies called forth by negative emotions represent the sort of actions that worked
best to save our ancestors’ lives and limbs in similar situations. Yet positive emotions seldom occur in
life threatening situations. He have argued that positive emotions have a complementary effect: They
broaden people’s momentary thought-action repertoires, widening the array of the thoughts and actions
that come to mind.

Joy, for instance, creates the urge to play, push the limits, and be creative, urges evident not only in
social and physical behavior but also in intellectual and artistic behavior.

Interest, a phenomenologically distinct positive emotion, creates the urge to explore, take in new
information and experiences, and expand the self in the process.

Contentment, a third distinct positive emotion, creates the urge to sit back and savor current life
circumstances and integrate these circumstances into new views of self and of the world.

Love, an amalgam of distinct positive emotions (e.g., joy, interest, and contentment) experienced within
contexts of safe, close relationships creates recurring cycles of urges to play with, explore, and savor
our loved ones.

These various thought-action tendencies—to play, to explore, or to savor and integrate—represent ways
that positive emotions broaden habitual modes of thinking or acting.

Social play, with its shared amusement and smiles, builds lasting social bonds and attachments, which
can become the locus of subsequent social support. Childhood play also builds enduring
intellectual resources by increasing levels of creativity and fueling brain development. Similarly, the

6
exploration prompted by the positive emotion of interest creates knowledge and intellectual complexity,
and the savoring prompted by contentment produces self-insight and alters worldviews. So each of these
phenomenologically distinct positive emotions shares the feature of augmenting individuals’ personal
resources, ranging from physical and social resources to intellectual and psychological resources.
through experiences of positive emotions people transform themselves, becoming more creative,
knowledgeable, resilient, socially integrated, and healthy individuals.

Figure: represents these three sequential effects of positive emotions (i.e., broadening, building,
transforming) and also suggests that initial experiences of positive emotions produce upward spirals
toward further experiences of positive emotions, a point I will return to in a subsequent section.

In short, the broaden-and-build theory describes the form of positive emotions in terms of broadened
thought-action repertoires and describes their function in terms of building enduring personal resources.
In doing so, the theory provides a new perspective on the evolved adaptive significance of positive
emotions. To the extent that the capacity to experience positive emotions is genetically encoded, this
capacity, through the process of natural selection, would have become part of our universal human
nature.

HAPPINESS AND SUBJECTIVE


WELL-BEING

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Definition

Subjective wellbeing is defined as a person’s cognitive and affective evaluations of his or her life.
These evaluations include emotional reactions to events as well as cognitive judgments of
satisfaction and fulfillment.

Thus, subjective well-being is a broad concept that includes experiencing pleasant emotions, low
levels of negative moods, and high life satisfaction.

The positive experiences embodied in high subjective well-being are a core concept of positive
psychology because they make life rewarding.

Theoretical Approach

Many theories of happiness have been proposed since Aristotle’s brilliant insights

These theories can be categorized into three groups:

(1) need and goal satisfaction theories,

(2) process or activity theories, and

(3) genetic and personality predisposition theories

The first constellation of theories centers around the idea that the reduction of tensions (e.g., the
elimination of pain and the satisfaction of biological and psychological needs) leads to happiness.

Goal theorists argue that individuals attain subjective well-being when they move toward an ideal state
or accomplish a valued aim (the standard).

Need and goal satisfaction theorists argue that the reduction of tension and satisfaction of biological
and psychological needs and goals will cause happiness.

One implication of tension-reduction theories is that happiness occurs after needs are met and goals are
fulfilled. In other words, happiness is a desired end state toward which all activity is directed.

Csikszentmihalyi (1975) suggested that people are happiest when they are engaged in interesting
activities that match their level of skill. He called the state of mind that results from this matching of
challenges and skill “flow,” and argued that people who often experience flow tend to be very happy
Another reason for the stability and consistency of subjective well-being is that there is a substantial
genetic component to it; to some degree people are born prone to be happy or unhappy.

8
Tellegen et al. (1988), for example, examined monozygotic twins who were reared apart and compared
them with dizygotic twins who were reared apart, as well as with monozygotic and dizygotic twins who
were raised together. After comparing the similarities of the various types of twins, Tellegen et al.
estimated that 40% of the variability in positive emotionality and 55% of the variability in negative
emotionality could be predicted by genetic variation.

These estimates allow for environmental influences, but genes do appear to influence characteristic
emotional responses to life circumstances.

Differences in subjective well-being also result from stable individual differences in how people think
about the world. Differences in the accessibility of pleasant versus unpleasant information, as well as
the accuracy and efficiency with which people process pleasant versus unpleasant information influence
subjective wellbeing. Certain people attend to and recall the pleasant aspects of life more than others.

Interventions

Interventions to increase subjective well-being are important not only because it feels good to be
happy but also because happy people tend to volunteer more, have more positive work behavior, and
exhibit other desirable characteristics.

However, Fordyce (1977, 1983) published several studies in which he evaluated a program designed
to boost people’s happiness. The program is based on the idea that people’s subjective well-being
can be increased if they learn to imitate the traits of happy people, characteristics such as being
organized, keeping busy, spending more time socializing, developing a positive outlook, and
working on a healthy personality.

Fordyce found that the program produced increases in happiness compared with a placebo control,
as well as compared with participants in conditions receiving only partial information.
Seligman, Reivich, Jaycox, and Gillham (1995) performed an experimental study with children in
which the treatment groups were exposed to optimism training. Through cognitive training and
social-problem solving, elementary school children who were at risk for depression were taught to
see the bright side of events. After the intervention, the treatment groups were significantly less
depressed than the control group, and this effect grew over the period of the study’s 2-year follow-
up. Clearly, more efforts to enhance subjective well-being are needed, along with rigorous methods
to evaluate these interventions.

For example, more diverse dependent variables and measuring instruments would be salutary, as
well as explorations of which interventions are most beneficial, and why. The positive benefits of
the few existing experiments, however, suggest that programs designed to enhance subjective well-

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being can be quite effective.

COMPLETE MENTAL HEALTH


Around the world, governments are reforming the way they address mental health care in response to
the rising burden of mental illness. Mental illness represents a complex issue underpinned by individual,
interpersonal, societal, and environmental factors made more complicated still by philosophical and
political differences regarding where responsibility to solve the issues lie. To illustrate this complexity,
stakeholders may include clinicians, practitioners, policy-makers, advocacy groups, funders,
governments, lived experience groups, and end users, all of whom may have conflicting priorities and
agendas. As a result of these differences, efforts to prevent, reduce, treat, and recover from mental
illness often become siloed and fragmented. The South Australian government declared its vision to
become the ‘State of Wellbeing,’ inspired by Martin Seligman’s recommendation that the state could
become the first political entity to take a state-wide approach to measure and build the wellbeing of all
its citizens (Seligman, 2013). The Wellbeing and Resilience Centre was established at the South
Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) to progress the state government’s
ambition, particularly through the delivery of large-scale resilience interventions. A significant
challenge for the Centre has been demonstrating to public and private organisations where and how
preventative mental health interventions, such as resilience skills training, fit within the complex mental
illness landscape. To overcome this challenge, the Centre has found a useful tool in Keyes’ (2005) dual-
continua model of mental health.

Ryff and Keyes (1995; Keyes & Lopez, 2002; Keyes & Magyar-Moe, 2003) combine many principles
of pleasure to define complete mental health.

Specifically, they view optimal functioning as the combination of emotional well-being (as they refer
to subjective well-being; defined as the presence of positive affect and satisfaction with life and the
absence of negative affect), social well-being (incorporating acceptance, actualization, contribution,
coherence, and integration), and psychological well-being (combining self-acceptance, personal
growth, purpose in life, environmental mastery, autonomy, positive relations with others)

Taking the symptoms of mental illness into consideration, they define “complete mental health” as the
combination of “high levels of symptoms of emotional well-being, psychological wellbeing, and social
well-being, as well as the absence of recent mental illness”

This view of mental health combines all facets of well-being into a model that is both dimensional
(because extremes of mental health and illness symptomatology are reflected) and categorical (because
assignment to distinct diagnostic categories is possible). This complete state model suggests that

10
combined mental health and mental illness symptoms may be ever-changing, resulting in fluctuations
in states of overall well-being ranging from complete mental illness to complete mental health.

Keyes’ (2005) landmark publication revealed that mental illness and positive mental health (or
wellbeing) are two separate, correlated, unipolar dimensions. In other words, mental illness and mental
health are two separate but related concepts and are not two opposite ends of the same spectrum, as was
previously thought (Figure 1). Since this publication, a modest amount of research has been published
to support and better understand this phenomenon. In particular, some have replicated the original study
(Westerhof & Keyes, 2010), described its potential application in fields such as recovery (Slade, 2010)
and trauma-informed positive education (Brunzell, Stokes, & Waters, 2016), and investigated mediators
of mental health and mental illness (Venning, Kettler, Zajac, Wilson, & Eliott, 2011). To the best of our
knowledge, only one publication has investigated this phenomenon longitudinally in response to an
intervention (Trompetter, Lamers, Westerhof, Fledderus, & Bohlmeijer, 2017).

Confusingly, this phenomenon has been described using multiple names including the dual-factor
model of mental health (Suldo & Shaffer, 2008), two-continua model of mental health (Westerhof &
Keyes, 2010), and complete-state model of mental health (Keyes, 2005). For simplicity, the name
complete state model (CSM) of mental health will be used, which describes ‘complete mental health’
as a state in which an individual has both a high level of wellbeing and a low level of mental illness
symptoms (or is without a diagnosis of mental illness; Figure 1). Mental illness refers to mainly

11
depression, anxiety, and mood disorders (following Keyes’ original evidence), but does not discount
that this model could include psychoses and other severe mental illnesses. The author suggests that the
finding that wellbeing and mental illness are separate, but related, phenomena presents incredible
implications that could revolutionise how individuals and societies structure mental health care. An
attempt to describe these implications is described here, and feedback is welcomed from the
International Positive Psychology Association network.

Consider measuring an entire population using a tool for both wellbeing and mental illness, and
subsequently ‘plotting’ the individuals on the CSM map (Figure 1). The author suggests that individuals
experience a range of ‘forces’ that would influence their position on the map, displayed in Figure 2.
The term forces is used to describe individual, interpersonal, social, and environmental factors that
individuals experience that may moderate their mental illness and wellbeing. For example, individuals
may experience the ‘actual’ force of their physical health or the social determinants of health that may
predict or contribute to their position on the map. These ‘actual’ forces are represented by green arrows
in Figure 2, and may include a myriad of factors such as physical health, housing security, education
level, quality of employment, exposure to nature, air quality, discrimination, oppression, etc.

Additionally, individuals may also experience the ‘potential’ forces of interventions, which are
generally designed to either reduce mental illness symptoms or improve the ‘symptoms’ of wellbeing.
For example, ‘traditional mental illness interventions’ may include services currently included in mental
health care systems such as psychological, psychiatric, or counselling services, or online resources such

12
as beyondblue.org.au and lifeline.org.au in Australia. Wellbeing interventions may include activities
with an emerging evidence-base that may not yet be included within mental health care systems, such
as mindfulness courses, gratitude practices, or resilience skills training. Of course, it is to be anticipated
that many interventions will serve to both reduce mental illness symptoms and improve wellbeing (see
Bolier et al., 2013).

Ryff and Keyes (1995; Keyes & Lopez, 2002; Keyes & Magyar-Moe, 2003) combine many principles
of pleasure to define complete mental health.

Specifically, they view optimal functioning as the combination of emotional well-being (as they refer
to subjective well-being; defined as the presence of positive affect and satisfaction with life and the
absence of negative affect), social well-being (incorporating acceptance, actualization, contribution,
coherence, and integration), and psychological well-being (combining selfacceptance, personal growth,
purpose in life, environmental mastery, autonomy, positive relations with others)

PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING
Psychological well-being is a core feature of mental health, and may be defined as including hedonic
(enjoyment, pleasure) and eudaimonic (meaning, fulfillment) happiness, as well as resilience (coping,
emotion regulation, healthy problem solving). At the most basic level, psychological wellbeing (PWB)
is quite similar to other terms that refer to positive mental states, such as happiness or satisfaction, and
in many ways it is not necessary, or helpful to worry about fine distinctions between such terms. If I
say that I’m happy, or very satisfied with my life you can be pretty sure that my psychological wellbeing
is quite high!

Psychological wellbeing has two important facets.

 The first of these refers to the extent to which people experience positive emotions and feelings
of happiness.
 Sometimes this aspect of psychological wellbeing is referred to as subjective wellbeing
(Diener, 2000).

13
Why Your Psychological Well-Being Matters

Creating Purpose
Positive Thinking
Fostering Relationships

The phrase “psychological well-being” is used to describe an individual’s emotional health and
overall functioning. The author of a study published in Applied Psychology: Health and Well‒
Being describes psychological well-being as “the combination of feeling good and functioning
effectively.”

Researchers also have found that the absence of distress doesn’t necessarily indicate a person
has high psychological well-being. High psychological well-being is about feeling happy and
doing well. People with high psychological well-being report feeling capable, happy, well-
supported, and satisfied with life.
Why Your Psychological Well-Being Matters

Studies have discovered that people with higher psychological well-being are more likely to
live healthier and longer lives. They are also more likely to enjoy a better quality of life.2 Better
psychological well-being also is associated with fewer social problems.

14
For instance, research has found that people with high psychological well-being are less likely
to engage in criminal activity or abuse drugs and alcohol. In addition, positive psychological
well-being tends to predict higher earnings and more prosocial behavior, such as volunteering.

People also are more likely to enjoy positive psychological well-being when they have their
basic needs met. Living in a safe area, having enough food, and having adequate shelter are all
important factors for emotional health.

If you’re looking to improve your psychological well-being, there are several things you can
do to feel and function better. Here’s an overview of four things you an do to improve your
overall sense of well-being.

How to Find More Happiness in Your Life


Creating Purpose
Living a life with meaning and purpose is key to improving your psychological well-
being.2 Your purpose doesn’t necessarily have to involve changing the world or finding a
career devoted to helping others though.
Instead, you might make it your purpose to be kind every day. Or, your purpose might involve
making the world better by encouraging others to take care of the environment or adopt pets
from the shelter. Maybe your purpose is being an advocate for those who are hurting like
bullied students, the homeless, or victims of abuse.

If you feel like your life lacks purpose, don’t worry. There are many ways you can find purpose
in life and build a life that has more meaning. Begin by thinking about the legacy you would
like to leave behind. Write down how you’d like to be remembered at the end of your life, or
think about the impact you want to leave on the planet. Then, establish some objectives that
can help you reach those goals.

Positive Thinking
Thinking positively also improves your psychological well-being. In turn, as your psychological well-
being improves, it becomes easier to think positively and feel good overall. Fortunately, you can begin
creating that positive cycle with a few simple strategies. Here’s an overview of the ways you can
increase the positivity in your life.

Write About a Better Future


Take a few minutes and write down all the good things that could happen to you in the future. Imagine
how you could be spending your time and who you would be spending it with if you were living your
best life.

You also may want to devise a plan on how you can make that happen. Make small, measurable goals
that will help you achieve that better future. Then, put a plan into place. When you’re working toward
a better future—even if the steps are really small—it gives you a sense of purpose and something to
look forward to.

15
Recall Positive Life Events
Spend time thinking about some of the best memories of your life. Whether it’s a family vacation you
went on 10 years ago or an award you won at work two years ago, recalling the happiest times in your
life can bring more positivity to your mindset.

Recognizing the good things that have happened to you over time—the people you have built memories
with or the good times that you have experienced—is an important part of improving your well-being.
They serve as reminders of the fullness life has to offer, especially when circumstances may be pulling
you down.

Perform Acts of Kindness


Doing nice things for other people reminds you that you have the power to make a difference in the
world. Giving to others also helps you think more positively and feel happier. Helping a neighbour in
need, volunteering for a community activity, or raising money for a charity are just a few simple ways
to improve your psychological well-being.

Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness, which means staying in the moment, has been linked to a multitude of benefits, ranging
from increased happiness to better resilience.1 Although mindfulness is a skill that takes practice and
dedication, over time you can get better at learning how to be present and in the moment. Doing so has
a number of benefits too.

For instance, studies suggest that mindfulness helps people manage stress, cope with serious illnesses,
and reduce anxiety and depression. In fact, people who practice mindfulness are better able to relax,
have improved self-esteem, and possess more enthusiasm over life.

What’s more studies have found a link between mindfulness meditation and changes in the parts of the
brain responsible for memory, learning, and emotion. This discovery is not surprising because
mindfulness requires you to pay attention to your thoughts, your actions, and your body.

Express Gratitude
Whether you send letters to people telling them how much you appreciate them or you write about the
things you feel thankful for in a journal, expressing your gratitude will keep you focused on all the good
things in life. You can even express gratitude on social media.

Learning to be grateful in everything you do will become a way of life. You’ll discover you can be
thankful for little things like the beauty of sunset as well as the big things like a new job or a visit from
friend. Finding things to be thankful for everyday is a simple but effective way to boost your
psychological well-being.

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Identify Your Strengths
Feeling capable and confident is important. One of the best ways to accomplish this task is to remind
yourself of the things you’re good at or the character strengths you possess. Try reflecting on your past
achievements and the qualities that helped you succeed.

Write down these things as a reminder of what you have to offer the world. And, if there’s an area that
you feel needs improvement, don’t be afraid to list that too. Working on improving yourself is a great
way to impact your overall well-being.

Practice Forgiveness
Letting go of past hurt and anger is key to good psychological well-being. Forgiving someone doesn’t
mean you have to allow that person to hurt you again. Instead, forgiveness is about releasing yourself
of the anger that’s holding you back and keeping you bound to that person.

Forgiving another person frees you to put your energy into more positive things rather than ruminating
on past hurts and offenses. If the person who wounded you is still a threat to your overall well-being, it
also may help to erect some boundaries to safeguard yourself from further unnecessary pain.

SOCIAL WELL BEING


Social wellbeing can be defined as developing and maintaining positive interactions with other people
and with local and global communities.

This is mainly assessed through subjective and individual measures, where people assess the quality of
those interactions according to their own perception.

Emotional well-being ties into social well-being because we can better form and sustain relationships
with others when we are able to regulate our own emotions.

Negativity and unpredictable extremes make forming and keeping close relationships more difficult. At
the same time, having meaningful relationships tends to make us feel better and is a good motivator for
managing our emotions.

What is social well-being?

Social well-being can be defined as the sharing, developing, and sustaining of meaningful relationships
with others. This allows you to feel authentic and valued, and provides a sense of connectedness and
belonging.

For example, when you work on a team over a period of months, or years, even remotely, you have an
opportunity to get to know more about your colleagues than just their skills with a spreadsheet. Some

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become good acquaintances. You share glimpses of your personal lives and develop routines or inside
jokes. They ask you about your sick pet or kid. They notice if you’re not there.

Some become friends. You have deeper conversations, about how you got to where you are, or about
your hopes and aspirations for the future. You likely see them on bad days when you can lend a hand
and on great days when they return the favor. Both of these types of relationships contribute to social
well-being by bringing enjoyment and allowing you to be seen, appreciated, and valued for yourself.

Why is social well-being important?

We are social creatures who need each other. We evolved from chimpanzees, and still share a common
part of the human brain: the limbic system. This part of the brain is responsible for our desire to be with
others, around others, and connected to others. It generates feelings of safety and happiness within us
when we are with our “troop.”

Without awareness, development, and maintenance of our social well-being, we run the risk of
becoming socially isolated. This is different from choosing to have some time alone to enjoy solitude.
Social isolation isn’t really a choice. Withdrawal from human relationships becomes a self-reinforcing
spiral, as isolation leads to negative feelings of fear and threat that lead to more isolating behaviors.
Social isolation leads to loneliness, which can be incredibly damaging.

Emotional well-being
Emotional well-being is the ability to safely express or manage your emotions, as well as generate
positive emotions. It begins with awareness of what you are feeling,

However, many people struggle with emotional illiteracy. That is, they’re unable to label what they are
feeling, and therefore unable to communicate it. It can be helpful to simply start by trying to categorize
what you are feeling into the four main groups: sad, mad, scared, or glad.

You can then try journaling to ask yourself open questions to explore that a little further. For example,
“What kind of mad am I feeling?” Journaling is a fantastic way to express and explore our emotions
safely without causing harm to others.

Expressing our feelings to others in a non-blaming way can also contribute to our sense of emotional
well-being, while allowing others to express their feelings to you. You can do this by beginning
sentences with, “I feel…”

Taking time to engage with activities that generate positive emotion in you is as important as managing
negative emotions. For example, research has pointed again and again to the power of gratitude for

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generating positive feelings. Make a practice of taking a pause every day to be grateful for three specific
things. Happiness researcher Shawn Achor suggests they be three new things, every day, to prime your
brain to be always looking for something new and positive.

Emotional well-being ties into social well-being because we can better form and sustain relationships
with others when we are able to regulate our own emotions. Negativity and unpredictable extremes
make forming and keeping close relationships more difficult. At the same time, having meaningful
relationships tends to make us feel better and is a good motivator for managing our emotions.

6 tips for improving your social health


Make connections.

Take care of yourself while caring for others.

Get active with a friend or family member.

Bond with your kids.

Build healthy relationships.

Shape your family’s health habits

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Emotional intelligence is a person’s ability to understand their own emotions, the emotions of others,
and to act appropriately using these emotions.

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EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: ABILITY OR PERSONALITY
In recent research emotional intelligence has been conceptualised in two distinct ways.

First, it has been conceptualised as a set of abilities for processing emotional information. This position
has been championed by Professors Jack Mayer, Peter Salovey and David Caruso at the University of
New Hampshire (Mayer, Caruso and Salovey, 2000).

Second, it has been conceptualized as a set of personality traits. This approach has been taken by
Professor Reuven Bar-On (2000) in Denmark, author of the Emotional Quotient Inventory, by Daniel
Goleman and colleagues (Goleman, 1995; Boyatzis et al., 2000), and by Professor Richard Cooper
(1996/1997) author of the EQ Map.

MAYER, SALOVEY AND CARUSO’S ABILITY MODEL OF


EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
According to Mayer, Caruso and Salovey’s (2000) ability model, emotional intelligence refers to the
abilities used to process information about one’s own emotions and the emotions of others. Within the
model, there are four branches: emotional perception, emotional integration, emotional understanding
and emotional management.

EMOTIONAL PERCEPTION is the ability to register, attend to and decipher emotional


messages as they are expressed in a variety of contexts including facial expressions, tone of voice and
works of art. People who are skilled at perceiving emotions are better informed about their environment
and so may adapt better it.

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EMOTIONAL INTEGRATION refers to the ability to access and generate feelings which
facilitate thought. people skilled in emotional integration are more likely to view things from an
optimistic perspective when happy, a pessimistic perspective when sad and a threat-oriented perspective
when anxious or angry. This capacity to shift perspective depending upon mood state means that people
with well-developed emotional integration skills can see things from multiple perspectives as their
mood alters.

EMOTIONAL UNDERSTANDING is the ability to comprehend the implications of


emotions. People with well-developed emotional understanding can understand how one emotion leads
to another, how emotions change over time, and how the temporal patterning of emotions can affect
relationships.

EMOTIONAL MANAGEMENT is the ability to regulate emotions, to choose to be open to


experiencing emotions and to control the way in which these are expressed. A person with well-
developed emotional management abilities has the option of choosing to experience emotions, or
blocking the experience of them.

BAR-ON’S PERSONALITY MODEL OF SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL


INTELLIGENCE

Reuven Bar-On’s (2000) personality-trait model of emotional intelligence distinctions are made
between five domains: the intrapersonal, the interpersonal, adaptability, stress management and mood.

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INTRAPERSONAL domain, emotional self-awareness is the ability to recognise and understand
one’s own emotions. Assertiveness is the ability to express one’s thoughts, beliefs and feelings in a non-
aggressive way so as to defend one’s rights. Independence is the ability to be self-directed and self-
controlled in one’s thinking and actions and to be free of emotional dependency. Self-regard refers to
the ability to understand, accept and respect oneself. Self-actualisation is the ability to realise one’s
potential and to achieve goals that one wants to attain.

INTERPERSONAL domain empathy is the ability to be aware of, understand and appreciate the
feelings of others. Social responsibility is the ability to co-operate and contribute constructively to one’s
social group. Maintaining interpersonal relationships refers to the capacity to make and maintain
friendships characterised by emotional closeness and psychological intimacy.

ADAPTABILITY domain, problem solving is the ability to identify social and interpersonal
problems, define them in solvable terms and generate and implement effective solutions. Reality testing
is the ability to evaluate the correspondence between subjective experiences and external objective
situations. Flexibility is the ability to modify one’s thoughts, feelings and behaviour to fit with changing
situations.

STRESS MANAGEMENT domain stress tolerance refers to the capacity to withstand the build-
up of adversity, challenges, stresses and strong emotions without decompensating or emotionally
‘falling apart’. Impulse control refers to the capacity to resist or delay acting on an impulse and to
control one’s emotions

General mood domain maintaining happiness is the ability to enjoy oneself and others, to have fun, to
express positive feelings and to be satisfied with life. Optimism is the ability to look on the bright side
of things even in the face of adversity.

Reuven Bar-On (1997) has developed a questionnaire—The Emotional Quotient Inventory—to


evaluate emotional intelligence. The questionnaire contains 133 items.

GOLEMAN’S MODEL OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Dr Daniel Goleman’s model of emotional intelligence was initially articulated in his two bestselling
books on the subject (Goleman, 1995, 1998) and later operationalized in the Emotional Competency
Inventory (ECI), (Boyatzis et al., 1999). The inventory, which has self-report and colleague-rated
versions, was developed in collaboration with Professor Richard Boyatzis, an organizational
psychologist at Case Western Reserve University. The aim of the inventory is to evaluate emotional

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intelligence competencies important for outstanding performance in commercial businesses. The
inventory distinctions are made between the competencies necessary for self-awareness, social
awareness, self-management and social skills.

Cooper’s EQ Map

Dr Richard Cooper (1996/1997) developed an instrument called the Emotional Quotient Map or EQ
Map which evaluates the respondent’s current environment, emotional literacy, EQ competencies, EQ
values and attitudes and EQ outcomes. The factors assessed by this instrument are current environment,
emotional literacy, EQ competencies, EQ values and attitudes, EQ outcomes.

ENHANCING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN ADULTHOOD

Empirical findings from the field of cognitive-behaviour therapy, however, suggest that training in the
skills for self-monitoring, self-regulation, communication and problem solving might usefully be
included in programmes to enhance emotional intelligence.

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DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTIONAL COMPETENCE

Research on the development of emotional competence offers insights into probable

developmental precursors of emotional intelligence in adulthood. Emotional regulation skills, the skills
for expressing emotions and the skills for managing relationships involving emotional give-and-take
develop gradually from infancy to adolescence.

Infancy

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During the first year of life infants develop rudimentary self-soothing skills such as rocking and feeding
for regulating their emotions. They also develop skills for regulating their attention to allow themselves
and their caregivers to coordinate their actions to sooth them in distressing situations. They rely on their
caregivers to provide emotional support or ‘scaffolding’ during such stress. During the first year of life
there is a gradual increase in non-verbal emotional expression in response to all classes of stimuli
including those under the infant’s control and those under the control of others. At birth infants can
express interest as indicated by sustained attention and disgust in response to foul tastes and odours.
Smiling, reflecting a sense of pleasure, in response to the human voice appears at 4 weeks. Sadness and
anger in response to removing a teething toy are first evident at 4 months.

Facial expressions reflecting fear following separation become apparent at 9 months. Infants also show
an increasingly sophisticated capacity to discriminate positive and negative emotions expressed by
others over the course of their first year of life. The capacity for turn taking in games such as peek-a-
boo develops once children have the appropriate cognitive skills for understanding object constancy.
Social referencing also occurs towards the end of the first year where children learn the appropriate
emotions to express in a particular situation by attending to the emotional expressions of their
caregivers.

The second year

During the second year of life toddlers show increased awareness of their own emotional responses.
They show irritability when parents place limits on the expression of their needs for autonomy and
exploration. This irritability is often referred to as the ‘terrible twos. In their second-year infants show
increased verbal expression of emotional states, and increased expression of emotions involving self-
consciousness and self-evaluation such as shame, pride or coyness. This occurs because their cognitive
skills allow them to begin to think about themselves from the perspective of others. In relationships
they can increasingly anticipate feelings they will have towards others in particular situations. They
show rudimentary empathy and altruistic behaviour.

Pre-schoolers

Pre-schoolers between the ages of 2 and 5 years increasingly use language for regulating emotions.
They use both internal speech and conversations with others to modulate their affective experience.
During this period children increasingly pretend to express emotions in play when teasing or being
teased by other children. There is increased insight into the emotions being experienced by others.
During this period there is an increased awareness that we can mislead others about what we are feeling

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by falsely expressing emotions. More sophisticated empathy and altruistic behaviour also develops
during the pre-school years.

Kindergarten

Children in kindergarten between the ages of 5 and 7 years increasingly regulate emotions involving
self-consciousness such as embarrassment. There is also increased autonomy from caregivers in
regulating emotions. Children at this age present a ‘cool’ emotional front to peers. There is also an
increased use of social skills to deal with emotions of self and others. During this period children
develop an understanding of consensually agreed emotional scripts and their roles in such scripts.

Middle childhood

Children in middle childhood between the ages of 7 and 10 years prefer to autonomously regulate their
emotional states rather than involving caregivers in this process, as they would have done earlier in their
lives. Distancing strategies are used to manage emotions if children have little control over emotionally
demanding situations. There is increased use of emotional expression to regulate closeness and distance
within relationships. Children become aware that they can feel multiple conflicting emotions about the
same person, that they can be angry with someone they like. They use information and memories about
the emotions of self and others in multiple contexts as aids to making and maintaining friendships.

Pre-adolescence

During pre-adolescence between the ages of 10- and 13-years children show increased efficiency in
using multiple strategies for autonomously regulating emotions and managing stress. They make
distinctions between genuine emotional expression with close friends and managed emotional displays
with others. They develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the place of social roles and
emotional scripts in making and maintaining friendships.

Adolescence

During adolescence from 13 to 20 years there is an increased awareness of complex emotional cycles,
for example feeling guilty about feeling angry, feeling ashamed or feeling frightened. In adolescence,
youngsters increasingly use complex strategies to autonomously regulate emotions. These self-
regulation strategies are increasingly informed by moral principles, beliefs about what is right and good
and what is wrong and evil. However, alongside this concern with morality, self-presentation strategies
are increasingly used for impression management. Adolescents gradually become aware of the
importance of mutual and reciprocal emotional self-disclosure in making and maintaining friendships.

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ATTACHMENT AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTIONAL
COMPETENCE

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Children who develop secure attachments to their caregivers develop emotional competence. Children
develop secure emotional attachments if their parents are attuned to their needs for safety, security and
being physically cared for and if their parents are responsive to children’s signals that they require their
needs to be met.

RELATED CONSTRUCTS

There are a number of constructs related to emotional intelligence. These include practical intelligence,
autistic spectrum disorders, the factor of openness to experience, psychological mindedness from the
literature on suitability for psychodynamic psychotherapy, alexithymia, levels of emotional awareness,
and emotional creativity

PRACTICAL INTELLIGENCE

practical intelligence is the application of analytical and memory skills to solving everyday problems
in family, work and leisure situations. People use practical intelligence to adapt to the current social
environments, to change or shape current social environments or to select new social environments in
which there is a better fit between their analytical abilities and the types of problems they must solve to
adapt to those environments. Practical intelligence involves the skills for recognising problems, defining
problems in solvable terms, forming mental representations of problems, formulating strategies for
solving problems, allocating resources to implement these problem-solving strategies, monitoring the
implementation of these strategies and evaluating the effectiveness of solutions.

AUTISTIC SPECTRUM DISORDER TRAITS

The inability of people with autistic spectrum disorders (even those with very high IQs) to recognise
and process information about the emotional states of others and to respond in emotionally appropriate
ways suggests that there may be a conceptual similarity between the lower end of the emotional
intelligence dimension and autistic spectrum disorder traits. Autistic spectrum disorders are a group of
conditions which include Asperger’s syndrome at the high functioning end of the spectrum and autism
at the other. Autistic spectrum disorders are characterised by abnormalities in social development,
language and behaviour.

OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE

Openness to experience is one of the factors within the Five Factor Model of Personality, Openness has
the following six facets: openness to fantasy; openness to aesthetics; openness to novel feelings;
openness to novel actions; openness to new ideas; and openness to different values. As predicted,
moderate positive relationships have been found between openness to experience and emotional
intelligence.

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ALEXITHYMIA

The term alexithymia was coined by the psychoanalyst Sifneos in 1973. The term alexithymia is from
the Greek a=lack, lexis=word, and thymos= emotion. alexithymia is strongly associated with low
emotional intelligence and the trait openness to experience from the Five Factor Model of Personality.

PSYCHOLOGICAL MINDEDNESS

Psychological mindedness is the disposition to be motivated to learn more about current and past
cognitive, affective and Behavioral factors that cause or arise from particular experiences.
Psychologically minded people do not look exclusively to the current external environment or
biological factors for explanations of their experiences, but are prepared to entertain complex
psychological explanations

LEVELS OF EMOTIONAL AWARENESS

Emotional awareness, according to Richard Lane (2000), is a cognitive skill that undergoes
developmental changes in a manner similar to that described by Piaget for cognition in general.
Individual differences in emotional awareness reflect differences in maturity level reached for this
construct. A person’s maturity in their capacity to recognise and describe emotions in themselves and
others can by evaluated with the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale

EMOTIONAL CREATIVITY

Emotionally creative people are able to have emotional experiences characterised by novelty,
effectiveness and authenticity. Three levels of emotional creativity or transformation may be
distinguished. First, a common emotion may be authentically and effectively expressed in a novel
context. Second, a common emotion might be sculpted and refined to meet the needs of an individual
or group. Finally, a person may develop a new way of emotionally responding. The Emotional
Creativity Inventory (ECI), (Averill, 1999) may be used to evaluate individual differences in emotional
creativity.

SOCIOEMOTIONAL SELECTIVITY
Laura Carstensen's (1998; Carstensen & Charles, 1998) socioemotional selectivity theory, she posits
that youth may be overrated and that our later years (the "golden years") may be valuable as we focus
less on negative emotions, engage more deeply with the emotional content of our days, and savor the
"good stuff" in life (e.g., establishing and enhancing relationships).

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Carstensen reasons that we are able to appreciate these benefits in our advanced years because we come
to realize that we have a short amount of time left. In her laboratory, Carstensen has demonstrated that
young people and their older counterparts manage emotion-laden material quite differently. In tests of
attention to novel stimuli, for example, the younger participants have attended to negative images more
quickly, whereas the older participants oriented faster to images laden with positive emotions (smiling
face, happy baby, puppy)

Regarding recall of emotional events, Charles et al. found that young people (college age and a bit
older) remembered the positive and negative material to the same degree, but the older person had a
positivity bias in which they recalled the positive material more quickly than the negative material.
These studies suggest that process of interacting with emotions is different for young adults and older
adults.

Irrespective of our tendencies to attend and remember certain types of events, life provides all of us
with blessings and burdens. Carstensen and her colleagues have found that there are age cohort effects
for how we handle positive and negative daily life experiences.

After monitoring the moods of 184 people (age 18 and up) for a week, Carstensen, Pasupathi, Mayr,
and Nesselroade (2000) discovered that their older research participants not only did not "sweat the
small stuff" (which is how they viewed negative events), but they also savored the positive events
(experienced the good residuals of positive events for longer periods than their younger counterparts
did). Given these findings, it appears that positive experiences and positive emotions become our
priority as we age and consider our mortality.

Finally, contrary to young people's fascination with future-oriented goals pertaining to acquiring
information and expanding horizons, older people seem to orient to here-and-now goals that foster
emotional meaning (Kennedy, Fung, & Carstensen, 2001). Recall of positive experience, savoring the
good times, and setting and investing in emotion-focused goals systematically influence social
preferences, emotion regulation, and cognitive processing. Overall, therefore, the aging process appears
to be linked to the striving for a deeper emotional life.

Socioemotional selectivity theory is a life-span theory of motivation. The theory maintains that as time
horizons shrink, as they typically do with age, people become increasingly selective, investing greater
resources in emotionally meaningful goals and activities.

According to the theory, motivational shifts also influence cognitive processing. Aging is associated
with a relative preference for positive over negative information in individuals who have had rewarding
relationships. This selective narrowing of social interaction maximizes positive emotional experiences
and minimizes emotional risks as individuals become older. According to this theory, older adults

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systematically hone their social networks so that available social partners satisfy their emotional needs.
The theory also focuses on the types of goals that individuals are motivated to achieve.

Knowledge-related goals aim at knowledge acquisition, career planning, the development of new social
relationships and other endeavors that will pay off in the future. Emotion-related goals are aimed at
emotion regulation, the pursuit of emotionally gratifying interactions with social partners and other
pursuits whose benefits can be realized in the present.

When people perceive their future as open ended, they tend to focus on future-oriented and
development- or knowledge-related goals, but when they feel that time is running out and the
opportunity to reap rewards from future-oriented goals' realization is dwindling, their focus tends to
shift towards present-oriented and emotion- or pleasure-related goals. Research on this theory often
compares age groups (e.g., young adulthood vs. old adulthood), but the shift in goal priorities is a
gradual process that begins in early adulthood. Importantly, the theory contends that the cause of these
goal shifts is not age itself, i.e., not the passage of time itself, but rather an age-associated shift in time
perspective.

It’s important to understand that as much as socioemotional selectivity theory tends to emphasize age-
related changes in goals, those changes aren’t the result of chronological age. Instead, they come about
because of people’s perceptions of the time they have left. Because people perceive their time dwindling
as they age, adult age differences are the easiest way to see socioemotional selectivity theory at work.
However, people’s goals may shift in other situations too. For example, if a young adult becomes
terminally ill, their goals will shift as their time is truncated.

Similarly, if one knows a specific set of circumstances is coming to an end, their goals may shift as
well. For instance, if one is planning to move out of state, as the time of their departure draws closer,
they will be more likely to spend time cultivating the relationships that matter most to them while
worrying less about expanding their network of acquaintances in the town they will be leaving.

Thus, socioemotional selectivity theory demonstrates that the human ability to perceive time impacts
motivation. Whereas the pursuit of long-term rewards makes sense when one perceives their time as
expansive, when time is perceived as limited, emotionally fulfilling and meaningful goals take on new
relevance. As a result, the shift in goals as time horizons change outlined by socioemotional selectivity
theory is adaptive, enabling people to focus on longer term work and family goals when they’re young
and achieving emotional gratification as they get older.

POSITIVITY EFFECT
Research on socioemotional selectivity theory also revealed that older adults have a bias towards
positive stimuli, a phenomenon called the positivity effect. The positivity effect suggests that, in
contrast to young adults, older adults tend to pay more attention to and remember positive information

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over negative information. Studies have shown that the positivity effect is the result of both enhanced
processing of positive information and diminished processing of negative information as we age.

EMOTIONAL STORYTELLING
Written disclosure of emotional upheaval, what we generally call emotional storytelling, is now referred
to as the Pennebaker paradigm (systematic written disclosure across brief sessions). Every now and
again, we experience life events that shake us to our core. Traumatic events that cause emotional
upheaval may outstrip the resources of good emotion-focused copers, the emotionally intelligent, and
the young and old alike. It is quite likely (with a 95% probability) that, when we experience an
overwhelming emotional event, we will share the experience with a friend or family member within the
same day of its occurrence, typically in the first few hours. It is almost as if we were compelled to tell
the story of our emotional suffering. This technique has been used to address the emotions associated
with job loss, diagnosis of illness, and relationship breakup.

The positive long-term effects of emotional storytelling are fairly robust, yet it does appear that people
with hostility (which typically suggests personal difficulty managing emotions) have greater positive
immune response than people with low hostility, and participants high in the trait of alexithymia
(difficulty identifying and making sense of emotions) experienced more salutary effects than those low
in the trait. We reference these findings in particular because they may suggest that people who typically
do not have the tendency (or skills) to work with the emotionally-laden content of life may benefit the
most from this means of processing intense negative emotions.

The theoretical explanations for the benefits of emotional storytelling in response to traumatic events
continue to be refined. It does appear that disinhibition (letting go of emotion-related stress), cognitive
processing, and social dynamics (when disclosure occurs outside the laboratory) are at work when
someone experiencing emotional upheaval shares his or her story. Plainly stated, "Putting upsetting
experiences into words allows people to stop inhibiting their thoughts and feelings, to begin to organize
their thoughts and perhaps find meaning in their traumas, and to reintegrate their social networks". We
believe these explanations for the potency of emotional storytelling can be summed up as strategically
working with emotions within a social context. The more we know about the, benefits of telling ones
emotional story in the wake of stressful events, the better equipped we are to harness these process to
promote our own and other people’s healing and growth following life stress, and to fight tendencies
towards helplessness, bitterness, or despair that traumas may provoke.

Putting a traumatic event into words can transform the event and add new, potentially hopeful meanings
to it, so that our stressful experiences can become a source of personal empowerment and inspiration to
live a fuller, more meaningful life, help relieve the suffering of others, or bring about positive changes
in social institutions. It can transform one’s experience from a personal tragedy to a collective moral

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account. In their potential ability to touch the humanity and hearts of other people, to provoke moral
indignation, instill compassion, and inspire action, words can provide the writer with a sense of purpose
and potential control over future events that can counteract the helplessness and loss of meaning, which
characterize the experience of victimization.

H OW TH E BRAIN S TOR ES TRAUMATIC


M EMOR I ES AND THE EFF EC TS OF
NARRATIVE
The incongruity and emotional intensity of trauma memories can lead the traumatized individual to
repeatedly reexperience the events and associated affect at unexpected or inappropriate times, thereby
prolonging the emotional stress and interfering with normal life activities. Some individuals try to avoid
the pain of reexperiencing by cognitive avoidance, deliberately blocking their thoughts and feelings
about the trauma, or behavioral avoidance, avoiding situations and people that may trigger the memories
(Horowitz, 1986). Some degree of reexperiencing is a normal stress response, resulting from the trauma
being stored in active, short-term memory until it can be reconciled with other experiences and
perceptions and cognitively filed away in long-term memory. However, for some people, the intensity
of affect associated with the memory or excessive use of avoidance interfere with the mind’s ability to
integrate the trauma into long-term memory storage and reduce its chronic intrusiveness. These people
then, may repeatedly and uncontrollably experience thoughts, images, and emotions associated with the
trauma, such that this becomes a chronic source of stress and interferes with ongoing relationships and
activities.

Some theorists suggest that unprocessed traumatic events are stored in memory in a fragmented,
disorganized way, consisting of brief, horrific images, such as of body parts flying in the air following
a bomb blast, or sudden feelings of terror or overwhelming sadness that are not linked to any current
experience, or the person unconsciously re-enacting the trauma, such as an abused child marrying an
abusive spouse. This fragmentation may be due to the fact that extreme emotional arousal at the time
of the event may interfere with memory processing and organization by the hippocampus, the brain
structure responsible for memory.

Individuals with posttraumatic stress symptoms may need professional help to deliberately confront and
stay with these frightening memories and images until the affect abates somewhat and the individual
can think clearly enough to make sense of them and organize them into a coherent story. Converting
the memory pieces into an organized, emotional narrative allows the individual to match and integrate
this information with other knowledge and experiences, potentially resulting in new meanings that

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resolve the incongruity. Emotional storytelling then, serves to integrate the memory of the trauma more
explicitly with other experiences and views of self, thereby enhancing the individual’s ability to cope
with it. When trauma reminders trigger feelings of victimization and helplessness, the individual is now
able to counterbalance this perspective with memories of other situations in which she acted
competently and effectively to deal with stress. The memory of being betrayed or deceived by an abuser
might be counterbalanced by memories of other loving and supportive relationships. Emotional
storytelling then, should promote cognitive integration and acceptance of the trauma and enhance the
individual’s repertoire of coping strategies to deal with the painful affect. Trauma is placed in context
as one experience within an individual’s life, rather than being the sole defining feature of that life.

P SY CHOLOGI CAL E FFE CT S OF TRAU MA


AND THE POW ER OF NA R RATIVE
Traumatic or highly stressful events force us to confront physical and psychological danger and loss,
often highlighting our own limitations and vulnerabilities or those of our family members, communities,
and the societal institutions in which we have placed our faith. question our basic assumptions about
the world or our spiritual beliefs. When innocent people are victimized, whether by a deliberate
aggressor, as an unintended consequence of another person’s carelessness, or by forces of nature and
human indifference, there is often a senselessness to this suffering that defies meaningful explanation.
Furthermore, these events challenge our sense of safety and invulnerability in the world and our faith
in the goodness of human nature. In trying to make sense of experiences of victimization or loss, the
survivor might conclude that these outcomes were deserved; that his own actions brought them about.
In some cases, such as rape, spousal battery, or child abuse, the perpetrator may actually tell the victim
that this was all her own fault or was brought about by her personal inadequacy and lack of worth.

Telling one’s emotional story may serve as a way of confronting these potential negative meanings, of
laying out the facts and evaluating the evidence for and against them. In the course of the narrative,
alternative, more positive meanings may emerge. In comparing a traumatic event, such as a rape or act
of terrorism, with other knowledge and experiences, the individual may come to see it as an incongruous
experience in a life characterized by loving connection to others or by meaningful progression toward
personal goals. For some, the meaning of a trauma may be in not letting this event define the self or the
course of one’s life and in not becoming a victim of it. Other narratives may serve to reaffirm the
individual’s faith in human nature or in a higher power, despite this event. For example, the trauma may
be interpreted as a lesson from God or as a message from God to turn one’s life around. The individual
may interpret his survival as a blessing from God or as due to the heroism or competent efforts of others.
For example, a cancer survivor may have faith in the power of her medical team to combat the disease.
For some people, such as the woman who wrote the poem at the beginning of this chapter, there may

36
be positive meaning just in her ability to survive and speak her own truth. Alternatively, the unfolding
narrative may inevitably point toward a new possible value-driven direction and purpose in life; one
that provides a counterpoint to the purposeless or betrayal of values embodied by the trauma. This theme
is evident in Dr. Wiesel’s narrative and in Oprah Winfrey’s deliberate public disclosure of her sexual
abuse at the age of nine, as a way of empowering both herself and others to resist abuse.

Telling our emotional stories then gives authentic voice to these inner struggles, allows us to bear
witness to our own suffering and that of others, and can help us to reconnect with and respect our own
reactions, without judging them. The act of sharing one’s story with a real or imagined compassionate
other also has the potential to strengthen relational bonds, thereby providing an antidote to feelings of
loss, alienation, or victimization evoked by stressful events. In imagining another person listening
empathically to her story or being deeply affected by it, the writer is able to restore her faith in human
benevolence and interconnectedness. This need to tell one’s story as a way of maintaining connection
with others may explain why people write letters to geographically distant friends and family members
or why Internet chat rooms have gained such explosive popularity. Telling one’s emotional story often
has an explicit or implicit social component, as I discuss in the next section. We tell our emotional
stories to evoke affirming reactions from others that help to rebuild the assumptions of self-worth and
human benevolence that have been challenged by stressful events.

IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT INTERPERSONAL


ASPECTS OF STORYTELLING
For many people, the reactions of the real or imagined audience are what give meaning to their stories;
the desired reactions are as individual as the events themselves. For a victim of incest whose experience
of reality may have been constantly challenged by her oppressor or other family members, the
experience of telling her story and being believed and affirmed may be a prerequisite for emotional
healing. For the cancer patient telling her family about her diagnosis, the empathic connection and
support she receives from her loved ones may be a source of shared strength that is needed to face the
future with cancer. For the family of a murder victim, testifying about what suffering the murderer’s
actions have caused and what value the life had that was wiped out may serve to provoke moral outrage
in the listener and motivate actions against past or future aggressors.

For a patient with chronic pain or fatigue who feels that others do not understand the disabling nature
of her illness, her personal narrative may be a way to validate her own experience, and convince others
of the reality of her pain. For the individual who has been rejected by a former spouse or lover, the
imagined outcome of emotional storytelling may be for the lover to be overcome by remorse or regret
and, perhaps, to return to the relationship. For the gay youth who is in the closet or the African American

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who encounters racial prejudice, writing or telling his emotional story may convey the wish to be
understood in his shared humanity, and, ultimately, accepted and embraced, rather than being excluded
by a prejudiced society.

For all of these individuals, writing their stories of stress may help them to view their own experiences
through the eyes of an empathic other, thereby implicitly lending validity to their experiences and
reactions. Also, implicit in the stories may be a hope for a certain emotional reaction by others that can
provide needed support and strength and promote healing and recovery. In recognizing these implicit
interpersonal needs, individuals may be empowered to act in the world so as to bring about the desired
relational outcomes.

Writing down one’s story in private may be the first step in an empowerment process that eventually
involves confronting or confiding in others with whom one is in relationship or who have the power to
do something about the situation. If the stories are actually told to another, the reaction of the listener
may influence the storyteller’s emotions about the event. Empathic listening, acceptance, and support
may promote emotional healing, whereas refusing to listen, minimizing the magnitude of the event, or
judging the person’s reactions may silence the speaker or lead him to question the validity of his own
reactions, potentially interfering with the healing power of storytelling.

WHY AND FOR WHOM DOES EMOTIONAL


STORYTELLING WORK?
Not everybody benefited equally from emotional storytelling; those who had experienced and chose to
disclose a subjectively highly stressful event had the greatest health benefits. People who had not
experienced highly stressful events might not need to tell their emotional stories in this way; their
normal coping skills and support networks might be sufficient to handle the situation. The person needs
to admit the stressful nature of the event and be willing to confront the associated feelings to experience
the benefits of emotional storytelling.

The individual needs to have a subjectively stressful event to disclose and must write or talk about this
event in a deeply personal and emotionally engaging way. Telling stories from a distanced, impersonal
perspective, without accessing heartfelt emotions is not sufficient for physiological or psychological
release. Just because a person has a medical diagnosis does not guarantee they will have an authentic
emotional story to tell or be willing to engage emotionally with their past traumas or current stresses.
Some study findings suggest that being able to maintain some level of positive mood, even when telling
stories about highly stressful events, may be one key aspect of why emotional storytelling is beneficial.

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WHY DOES QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVE
FOLLOWING ENGAGED EMOTIONAL
STORYTELLING?
Unresolved traumas and associated cognitive ruminations may divert attentional resources from current
life tasks. If writing facilitates greater resolution and acceptance of these past or ongoing stressors, the
individual is free to live more in the moment, with greater participation in and enjoyment of current
activities and relationships and, potentially, greater academic or job success. If writing facilitates greater
resolution and acceptance of these past or ongoing stressors, the individual is free to live more in the
moment, with greater participation in and enjoyment of current activities and relationships and,
potentially, greater academic or job success.

In a recent expressive writing study in early-stage female breast cancer patients (Creswell et al., 2007)
objective raters coded the essays for content. Expressive writing group participants’ essays contained
an average of two statements per essay that fit the category of self-affirmation, or reflecting positively
on a valued aspect of self or one’s life. For example, participants described having a loving, stable
marriage, having a positive view of life that helped them through the cancer, or having spiritual faith
and strength. Furthermore, self-affirmation accounted for the effects of essay writing on decreased
physical symptoms at follow-up. Therefore, when participants are instructed to tell their emotional
stories, they may include self-affirming statements in the stories that remind them of their strengths and
the things in life they are grateful for, which may enhance their resilience in the face of an adverse
event, such as breast cancer or unemployment.

EMOTIONAL STORYTELLING AND PERCEIVED


CONTROL
If telling one’s emotional story in words or images leads people to perceive more control over the
stressor or one’s reactions to it, we might expect such storytelling to lead to reductions in blood pressure
and heart rate and a more variable heart rate, as the person begins to discriminate more completely the
difference between the stressor memory and the current safe context. Expressive writing led to short-
term improvements on cardiac parameters in this population and helps to held back angry feelings
derived long-term health benefits as well. Providing a safe context for emotional storytelling may be
most helpful to those who deliberately hold back from expressing stress-related feelings in their daily
lives, either because they are frightened of being overwhelmed by these feelings, or because they are
concerned about the negative reactions of others or harm to others that may result from their disclosures.

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E MO TIONAL STORY TE LL I NG AND SE LF -
E FFI CA CY FO R HANDL IN G EMOT IONS
Writers from various theoretical orientations within psychology have argued that one of the effects of
severe trauma is an increase in the intensity of one’s emotional reactions as well as the number of
situations that evoke them. The trauma survivor seems to have lost some ability to discriminate current
situations from aspects of the trauma; sensory or emotional memories of aspects of the trauma are cued
too easily by situations with only the slightest similarity to the original event. To the outside observer,
the person’s emotional reactions seem inappropriate or too intense for the apparently provoking
situations. For example, a soldier returning from Iraq who lost his best buddy in a bomb blast might
feel overwhelmed by terror when he hears an unexpected loud noise or may experience intense anxiety
when he embraces his children. Although the soldier may not be aware of the source of his distress, it
could be that the loud noise triggers memories of the bomb blast whereas the warm, affectionate feelings
experienced while hugging his children trigger reminders of his affection for his murdered friend, with
associated anger and sadness.

As a result of experiencing frequent, intense bursts of emotion at unpredictable times, when


circumstances or thoughts consciously or unconsciously cue memory structures related to the trauma,
the trauma survivor often becomes frightened of and tries to avoid any type of emotional experience, or
experiences his emotions in an ‘‘all or none’’ manner. The individual also learns to discriminate
between the present, relatively safe circumstances and the threatening circumstances in which the
trauma occurred. As a result of such repeated, deliberate, controlled confrontations, the trauma survivor
should begin to perceive more control over and have more understanding and acceptance of his
emotional reactions, thereby freeing him to react more spontaneously and openly to people and events
in his current life, potentially leading to reduced chronic stress and anxiety, greater intimacy with others,
and improved quality of life.

In support of this argument, a statistical reanalysis of several expressive writing studies found that
participants who had the greatest increases across subsequent sessions in the proportion of words
describing causes of events or insights in their written stress narratives evidenced the greatest longer-
term physical health benefits. Other studies have found that physiological and emotional reactions
become less intense from the first to the last session of emotional essay writing, a phenomenon known
as habituation, or lessening of the stress response with repeated exposure.

EMOTIONAL STORYTELLING AND POSITIVE


PSYCHOLOGY
40
Emotional storytelling, then, represents a particular application of positive psychology, one that
emphasizes confronting one’s memories of and reactions to stressful and traumatic events to increase
perceptions of control over these reactions and to uncover the potential for psychological growth
inherent in these events. Growth does not mean an end to distress or that the person is glad these stressful
or traumatic events happened. Rather, it is a process that involves deriving positive meaning from a
stressful event, or using the event as an impetus for reconstructing one’s life in a positive way. Positive
meanings are individually and voluntarily constructed; they cannot be imposed on people. Regardless
of their specific form, positive meanings can have longstanding protective effects on health and quality
of life. This phenomenon is illustrated by two studies examining written narratives of individuals
affected by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

It is clear that telling one’s emotional story involves not only a recounting of past events but is a dynamic
reconstruction that carries the potential to deepen human relationships, transform the meaning of the
events in positive ways, and highlight new paths and directions for living a more purposeful life and
preventing trauma recurrence for oneself and future generations. Emotional storytelling, therefore,
represents a powerful tool for positive psychology. Although we know much about the processes
involved, there is still much to learn so that we may most effectively harness the power of narrative to
help people survive and grow from stressful experiences.

REFERENCES
 Snyder, C. R., Lopez, S. J., & Pedrotti, J. T. (2010). Positive Psychology: The Scientific and

Practical Explorations of Human Strengths (Second Edition). SAGE Publications, Inc.


 Carstensen, L. L. (1992). "Motivation for social contact across the life span: A theory of
socioemotional selectivity". Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. 40: 209–54. PMID
1340521
 Snyder, C. R., & Lopez, S. J. (Eds.). (2002). Handbook of positive psychology. Oxford
University Press.

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