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Archive for 29. January 2009

The Four Best Predictors of More Positive Emotions

This weekend, I was fortunate to attend Claremont Graduate School’s Stauffer Symposium on ‘Applying the science of positive psychology to improve society.’

 Speakers there included Kim Cameron (Positive Organizational Scholarship), Mike Csikszentmihalyi (Flow), David Cooperrider (Aprreciative Inquiry), Ed Diener (University of Illinois), Barbara Fredrickson (Broaden and build theory), Nansook Park, Chris Peterson (VIA Strengths and Virtues), Martin Seligman (positive psychology) and Shelley Taylor (UCLA, stress and resiliency, tend-and-befriend model).

 It was one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended.

One of the snippets…

 According to Ed Diener, the 4 best predictors of degree and frequency of positive emotions experienced are…

  • The feeling that you can count on others
  • The perception that you have autonomy and are in control of your own life
  • Whether you learned something new yesterday
  • Whether you did what you do best yesterday

If you have loved ones and friends you can count on, if you feel autonomous, if you learn something new daily, and if you use your strengths on a daily basis, you will create more moments of happiness in your life. String together enough tiny moments of happiness and you have a contented mood.

According to Barbara Fredrickson (UNC Chapel Hill), as we learn to unpack happiness, we discover that it is positive emotions that lay at the heart of a number of things such as resiliency, happiness, life satisfaction and subjective well-being.

In other words, when you increase the frequency with which you experience positive emotions, you improve your psychological resources (e.g., resiliency) and subsequently, you become more satisfied with life.

Pretty soon, you may even approach Fredrickson’s positivity ratio of 3:1 for a thriving, happy life. This is where you feel three times as much positive emotions as negative emotions. Currently, only approximately 10% of the U.S. population meets this ratio.

Think of it as a goal for all of us to strive towards! 

Best,

Dr. John Schinnerer

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