Photo by Aline Kircchinbauer on Unsplash
Who's got time for laughter?
The world's heading toward catastrophe.
Some prophetically-minded, justice-seeking, climate-change activists are very suspicious of the positive psychology movement and its attention to fleeting, pleasureable emotions such as laughter and awe. They fear that focussing on positive emotions such as these leads to selfishness and escapism, contributing to an already toxic culture of narcissism. "Who's got time for positive emotions? The world's heading toward catastrophe."
What we really need to be doing, they add, is to focus on the problems of the world, especially the suffering of human beings and other animals; to be honest about the catastrophes we face as a species and planet; to roll up our sleeves and get going on practical solutions. Along the way we need to adopt more holistic worldviews that see us as part of, not apart from, the larger web of life. Otherwise, we are doomed.
The emotions they communicate - at least emphasize in public settings - are anxiety, anger, righteous indignation, and a sense of impending doom; not gratitude, awe, laughter, and love. Certainly there's no place for silliness.
Barbara Fredrickson, featured below, knows this critique and disagrees. Her research shows that micro-moments of positive emotions, including silliness, are nutrients for the psyche and for the body, helping us become more resilient and empowered, and helping us avoid debilitating negativity. In this she shares the views of process philosophers and theologians, who, as inspired by the philosophy of Whitehead, believe that moments of pleasurable vitality are part of the beauty of life, adding not only to the lives of individuals but also the life of the very Soul of the universe.
Neither Whitehead nor Fredrickson believe that negativity can or should be avoided altogether. The felt contrast (Whitehead's word) between positivity and negativity is part of what makes life rich. It is a contrast of what he calls subjective forms, or emotions. But the ratio, adds Fredrickson, needs to be greater on the positive side, if humans are to flourish not languish.
The lesson is clear. If we humans are to help build local communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, humane to animals, and good for the earth; if we are to work toward a world that is a community of communities of communities; if we are to grow into a truly ecological civilization that lives with respect and care for the community of life; we need to laugh.
- Jay McDaniel, 6/5/2021
What we really need to be doing, they add, is to focus on the problems of the world, especially the suffering of human beings and other animals; to be honest about the catastrophes we face as a species and planet; to roll up our sleeves and get going on practical solutions. Along the way we need to adopt more holistic worldviews that see us as part of, not apart from, the larger web of life. Otherwise, we are doomed.
The emotions they communicate - at least emphasize in public settings - are anxiety, anger, righteous indignation, and a sense of impending doom; not gratitude, awe, laughter, and love. Certainly there's no place for silliness.
Barbara Fredrickson, featured below, knows this critique and disagrees. Her research shows that micro-moments of positive emotions, including silliness, are nutrients for the psyche and for the body, helping us become more resilient and empowered, and helping us avoid debilitating negativity. In this she shares the views of process philosophers and theologians, who, as inspired by the philosophy of Whitehead, believe that moments of pleasurable vitality are part of the beauty of life, adding not only to the lives of individuals but also the life of the very Soul of the universe.
Neither Whitehead nor Fredrickson believe that negativity can or should be avoided altogether. The felt contrast (Whitehead's word) between positivity and negativity is part of what makes life rich. It is a contrast of what he calls subjective forms, or emotions. But the ratio, adds Fredrickson, needs to be greater on the positive side, if humans are to flourish not languish.
The lesson is clear. If we humans are to help build local communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, humane to animals, and good for the earth; if we are to work toward a world that is a community of communities of communities; if we are to grow into a truly ecological civilization that lives with respect and care for the community of life; we need to laugh.
- Jay McDaniel, 6/5/2021
About Barbara Fredrickson, PhD
"Among the most highly cited scholars in psychology, Barbara Fredrickson is most known for her “broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions,” foundational within Positive Psychology for providing a blueprint for how pleasant emotional states, as fleeting as they are, contribute to resilience, wellbeing, and health. She is Director of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory (PEP Lab) at UNC-Chapel Hill, Founding Co-Chair of the Association of Positive Emotion Laboratories (APEL), and current President of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA).
Dr. Fredrickson has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and her general audience books, Positivity (2009, www.PositivityRatio.com) and Love 2.0 (2013, www.PositivityResonance.com) have been translated for more than 30 foreign markets. Dr. Fredrickson’s research is funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NCI, NIA, NCCIM, NIMH, NINR) and has been recognized with numerous honors, including the inaugural Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology from the American Psychological Association, the Career Trajectory Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, and the inaugural Christopher Peterson Gold Medal from the International Positive Psychology Association.
In 2014, she was identified as the 13th most influential psychologist alive today contributing to counseling psychology. In 2015, through a partnership between UNC-Chapel Hill and Coursera, Dr. Fredrickson began teaching a free, on-line course on Positive Psychology that, in its first offering, attracted more than 57,000 learners worldwide. Through this and other means, her work influences scholars and practitioners worldwide, within education, business, healthcare, the military, and beyond."
- University of Pennsylvania Author Profiles
Dr. Fredrickson has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and her general audience books, Positivity (2009, www.PositivityRatio.com) and Love 2.0 (2013, www.PositivityResonance.com) have been translated for more than 30 foreign markets. Dr. Fredrickson’s research is funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NCI, NIA, NCCIM, NIMH, NINR) and has been recognized with numerous honors, including the inaugural Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology from the American Psychological Association, the Career Trajectory Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, and the inaugural Christopher Peterson Gold Medal from the International Positive Psychology Association.
In 2014, she was identified as the 13th most influential psychologist alive today contributing to counseling psychology. In 2015, through a partnership between UNC-Chapel Hill and Coursera, Dr. Fredrickson began teaching a free, on-line course on Positive Psychology that, in its first offering, attracted more than 57,000 learners worldwide. Through this and other means, her work influences scholars and practitioners worldwide, within education, business, healthcare, the military, and beyond."
- University of Pennsylvania Author Profiles
Short Barbara Fredrickson Videos
Positive emotions transform us for the betterPositive emotions open us and change our outlook. |
How much positive emotion do we need?Micro-moments of love. |
Positive Emotions as Nutrients
They are micro-moments of connection
that change us for the better.
"Among our birthrights as humans is the experience of the subtle and fleeting pleasant feelings of positivity. It comes in many forms and flavors. Think of the times you feel connected to others and loved; when you feel playful, creative, or silly; when you feel blessed and at one with your surroundings; when your soul is stirred by the sheer beauty of existence; or when you feel energized and excited by a new idea or hobby. Positivity reigns whenever positive emotions—like love, joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, and inspiration—touch and open your heart.”
- Barbara Fredrickson in Positivity
POSITIVE EMOTIONS are subtle and fleeting pleasant moments of positivity. In their evanescence, their fleeting quality, they are like occasions of experence in the philosophy of Whitehead. Whitehead believes that such experiences are the building blockS of human life but of the whole of reality. What we call energy at the subatomic level, so he suggrests, is what we call experience at the biological and human level.
For Whitehead all moments of experience are fleeting, including negative emotions. But it is the positive ones that especially interest Barbara Fredrickson in her book Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive (Three Rivers Press, NY, 2009) She shows how positive emotgions change the way our minds work and how they can minimize negativity. They are, in her words, nutrients.
When I say "positive emotions" I have in mind, along with Frederickson, emotions such as joy, curiosity, contentment, love, amusement, gratitude, and self-confidence. And when I say "negative emotions" I have in mind emotions such as sadness, anger, jealousy, listlessness, terror, and self-hatred. I realize that these various emotions can be interpreted differently by different people; what some might find desirable, others find undesirable. I know that all emotions can be transformed or transmuted into positive terms in different circumstances. And I know that all of these emotions, including the negative emotions, can have cognitive value: revealing truths. For example, if we really are headed for disaster, a sense of gloom would be a truthful emotion. And if the world truly carries myriad forms of beauty, a sense of awe would likewise be a truthful emotion. With these caveats, back to the positive emotions:
Fredrickson does research on positive emotions such as those I've just named, and develops the idea, drawn from her research, that they are indeed nutrients for life. They do not replace negative emotions. Negative emotions are necessary,and need to be recognized and expressed. But we cannot live on negative emotions alone. Her research suggests that, order to flourish, we need at least three heart-opening positive emotions for every one negative emotion: a ration of 3 - 1. We are like ships trying to sail. The mast going up is positivity, the keel beneath the water is negativity. In order to sail we need to both.
What to do? Don't Try to "Be Positive." That will backfire. When people try too hard to be positive, a toxic insincerity takes over. They are fake. The better motto is: "Be open, be kind, be curious, and be real." Recognize that the positive emotions, the nutrients, occur in small doses, in micro-moments. Be grateful for them and adopt practices that provide fertile soil for their emergence: volunteering, daily prayer, gardening, mindfulness practices, gratitude journals. The lovingkindness meditation, says Barbara Fredrickson, is especially helpful.
It is tempting to imagine these emotions in substantialist terms: as if they were self-contained happenings that occur inside us and belong to us alone. But those of us in the process world, influenced by Whitehead, think of them as moments of connection: that us, moments when we awaken to the positve connections we might have with ourselves, other people, the natural world, the heavens, and God.
Indeed, Whitehead offers us a metaphysica of feeling, at the heart of which are eight ideas that resonate with what Fredrickson proposes: (1) every actuality in the universe is a moment of feeling; (2) our feelings connect us with the past actual world, including our own pasts, our environment, our social worlds, and God; (3) the very aim of every moment is to find satisfying connections with those many worlds, (4) the "positive prehensions" are those that integrate aspects of the world into our lives in positive ways, (5) positive prehensions from the past, including positive emotions, can build over time, becoming emotional habits that us grow into wise, kind, creative persons, (6) the purpose of it all is not simply to be 'happy' in a private way but to dwell in creative harmony with the world and held build societies conducive to such harmony, otherwise called ecological civilizations; (7) the very lure of the divine, within each person and within societies as a whole, is to grow into build communities that embody the spirit of ecological civilization, and (8) research on positive emotions can play an important role in helping build and sustain such communities.
Excerpts from What Good are Positive Emotions? by Barbara Fredrickson
What good are Positive Emotions?
This article opens by noting that positive emotions do not fit existing models of emotions. Consequently, a new model is advanced to describe the form and function of a subset of positive emotions, including joy, interest, contentment, and love. This new model posits that these positive emotions serve to broaden an individual's momentary thought-action repertoire, which in turn has the effect of building that individual's physical, intellectual, and social resources. Empirical evidence to support this broadenand-build model of positive emotions is reviewed, and implications for emotion regulation and health promotion are discussed.
Why the relative neglect of Positive Emotions?
A second reason for the relative neglect of positive emotions is that, as a field, psychology gravitates toward problems and works to solve them. Not surprisingly, negative emotions pose a huge array of problems for individuals and for society, whereas positive emotions pose just a few. Anger and its management, for instance, have been implicated in the etiology of heart disease (Barefoot, Dahlstrom, & Williams, 1983; Fredrickson et al., 1998; Scheier & Bridges, 1995; Williams, Haney, Lee, Kong, Blumenthal, & Whalen, 1980) and some cancers (Eysenck, 1994; Greer & Morris, 1975), as well as in aggression and violence, especially in men and boys (Lemerise & Dodge, 1993). Relatedly, sexual jealousy has been implicated in domestic violence (Buss, 1994). Fear and anxiety fuel phobias and other anxiety disorders (Ohman, 1993). For some individuals, sadness and grief may swell into unipolar depression (NolenHoeksema, Morrow, & Fredrickson, 1993), which is the single most common psychological disorder of the present time, affecting 17 percent of adults (based on life-time prevalence in a U.S. sample; 13% for male participants, 21% for female participants; Kessler et al., 1994), and a likely trigger of suicide (Chen & Dilsaver, 1996). Shame may be another route to depression (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997; Lewis, 1971) and to eating disorders (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997; Noll & Fredrickson, in press; Silberstein, Striegel-Moore, & Rodin, 1987) and sexual dysfunction (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). The list could go on. In contrast, positive emotions have been implicated in just a few problems: bipolar disorder is marked by experiences of excessive mania or euphoria alternating with depression. Some theorists view unipolar depression as a deficit in positive affect (Davidson, 1993; Heller, 1990; Lewinsohn, 1974), and a subset of psychoactive drugs (e.g., heroin, cocaine, alcohol, marijuana, amphetamines) act on the neurochemical systems associated with positive emotions, in effect hijacking these systems and creating risks for addiction and substance abuse (Nesse & Berridge, 1997). Given the vast array of human suffering and loss that stems from excessive or inappropriately expressed negative emotions, the press to understand these emotions is immense. Arguably, efforts to understand positive emotion should take a backseat to solving these problems. The misfortune of this triage strategy, I argue, is that even though positive emotions may not spark problems of the same magnitude as negative emotions, they may in fact provide some important solutions to the problems negative emotions generate. I return to this point in a later section.
Positive Emotions Broaden and Build
Not only do the positive emotions of joy, interest, contentment, and love share the feature of broadening an individual's momentary thought-action repertoire, but they also appear to share the feature of building the individual's personal resources, ranging from physical resources to intellectual resources to social resources. Importantly, these resources are more durable than the transient emotional states that led to their acquisition. By consequence, then, the often incidental effect of experiencing a positive emotion is an increment in durable personal resources that can be drawn on later in other contexts and in other emotional states. I refer to this as the broaden-and-build model of positive emotions....
I offer a new model for understanding the form and function of a subset of positive emotions, including joy, interest, contentment, and love. Specifically, I propose that these positive emotions broaden (rather than narrow) an individual's thought-action repertoire, with joy creating the urge to play, interest the urge to explore, contentment the urge to savor and integrate, and love a recurrent cycle of each of these urges. In turn, these broadened thoughtaction repertoires can have the often incidental effect of building an individual's personal resources, including physical resources, intellectual resources, and social resources. I call this the broaden-and-build model of positive emotions and suggest that it can explain why the propensity to experience positive emotions has evolved to be a ubiquitous feature of human nature and how, in contemporary society, positive emotions might be tapped to promote individual and collective well-being and health. My hope is that this new model might spark readers' interest and thereby prompt further empirical exploration of positive emotions and related affective phenomena.