Enhancing Positive Emotions

Emotions, including the negative ones, exist for a real purpose — they help us adapt to a constantly changing environment, and are important for both survival and overall well-being. Negative emotions such as fear, anger or disgust prepare a person mentally and physically to take immediate action against a threatening stimulus — for example, it is precisely the presence of fear that would stop a person from ever picking up a poisonous snake with their bare hand. But while negative emotions protect us in such situations, using them excessively or inappropriately can itself become dangerous — it can harm the body's immune system and lead to serious consequences for physical health.

Positive emotions, by contrast — hope, joy, optimism, contentment, and gratitude among them — energise a person and enhance their overall sense of emotional well-being. When a person experiences positive affect, they display a noticeably greater openness to a wide variety of actions and ideas; they are able to think of more possibilities and options for solving whatever problem they face, and, as a result, tend to become more proactive. In one line of research, people who were shown films depicting joy and contentment generated more ideas about things they would like to do, compared with people shown films evoking anger and fear. Positive emotions also give people a greater ability to cope with adverse circumstances and to return more quickly to a normal emotional state after a setback; they help people set up long-term plans and goals, and support the formation of new relationships. …