Positive Emotions in Relationships

Benefits of Positive Emotions

• Increased resilience and optimism
• Less likely to have hypertension
• Longer lifespan

Positive Emotions and Relationships

• More flexible thinking
• Affect Infusion Model
• Self-expansion through relationships
• Emotional contagion

Self-Expansion

• Self-expansion occurs through relationships with others

Emotional Cognition

• Positivity self-test determines balance of positive to negative emotions
• Goal is to achieve a positive score of at least 3, and ideally 5
• High levels of positive interactions are key to healthy, flourishing relationships

John Gottman's Research

• Predicts relationship success with 94% accuracy
• Happy marriages have a ratio of positive to negative affect of 5:1
• Two key messages: conflict is important, and positivity should outweigh negativity

Savouring

• Defined as attending to, appreciating, and enhancing positive experiences
• Increases wellbeing
• Ways to savour positive events: anticipation, being in the moment, and gratitude

Positive Interpretation Bias

• Through positive reframing, individuals see life as more manageable, meaningful, and coherent
• Associated with increased self-esteem

Positive Attentional Bias

• Individuals with trait gratitude have lower incidence of anxiety and depression
• Decreased attentional bias towards threat-relevant and negative stimuli

Psycho-Social Framework

• Increased social support through trait gratitude
• Saying thanks increases social support to the person saying 'thank you'
• Reciprocal altruism and upstream altruism increase relationship quality and satisfaction

Reminiscing

• Savouring increases relationship wellbeing
• Capitalising on positive events increases wellbeing and health

Responses to Good News

• Two dimensions: constructive/active and destructive/passive
• Active constructive responses amplify positive experiences

Character Strengths

• Development of character strengths through intervention studies
• 6 virtues: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence
• The Golden Mean: finding balance in character strengths

BMAC and PTSD

• The Broadminded Affective Coping Procedure (BMAC) can be useful for PTSD or trauma victims in two ways: reducing feelings of anhedonia and boosting resilience.
• In a study, participants who filled out the BMAC reported no significant effects on calmness, happiness, and sadness/defeat at 1 hour, 2 hours, and 2 days after.

The Undoing Effect

• The undoing effect occurs when initial negative emotions generate a clear pattern of heightened sympathetic cardiovascular reactivity typical of anxiety, fear, and other health-damaging negative emotions.
• This effect is not limited to women and occurs in men as well.

Positive and Negative Emotions

• Positive emotions (PE) broaden attention, cognition, and action, and carry adaptive significance not in the immediate moment but later through building resources.
• PE are more than just "happy feelings" and can expand cognition, increase creativity, and increase the number of potential behavioral options.
• Negative emotions (NE) narrow thought-action tendency, carry adaptive significance in the moment, and are linked to the activation of the autonomic nervous system.
• NE help reproduce genes and prepare the body physically and psychologically to act in quick and specific ways.

Resilience

• Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity or to thrive despite negative life circumstances.
• Factors that influence resilience include cognitive behavioral therapy, learning to recognize and challenge unhelpful thinking traps, and using the ABC model.

Mind and Body

• The physical body's aim is to rejuvenate, and factors that influence this include spike, energize, numb, and chill activities.
• Exercise influences mental well-being through psychological, biological, and social mechanisms.
• Mindfulness involves paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally, and can activate the left prefrontal cortex (PFC).

Big Data and Positive Institutions

• Top-down and bottom-up approaches can be used with Big Data to influence individual and community levels.
• Examples of Big Data applications include Google Flu Trends and predicting psychological resources and depressive symptoms.

LKM and Positive Emotions

• Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) can increase feelings of warmth and caring for the self and others, and build personal resources that hold positive consequences for mental health and overall life satisfaction.
• A study found that LKM increased daily experiences of positive emotions, which in turn built a variety of personal resources that held positive consequences for mental health and overall life satisfaction.