Psychologist reveals impact of positive emotions on health

A leading psychologist challenged her audience to view love as co-experienced positive emotions during a presentation last month at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

The talk, the 20th annual Lawrence & Nancy Golden Memorial Lectureship on Mind-Body Medicine, was given by Barbara L. Fredrickson, Kenan Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, and director the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The title of the lecture was “The Goods in Everyday Love: Implications for Mental, Physical and Public Health.”

“I’m talking about research on emotions; it’s my home discipline — emotion science — and within that I study positive emotions and I am trying to make the case that everyday positive emotions that are shared between people, no matter who it is, when you share a positive emotional state in a caring context — that is what I call everyday love,” Fredrickson said.

“As humans, this is fuel for health, and we see connections to individual mental health, physical health, relationship health and also public health,” she added.

One thing that all emotions have in common, both positive and negative, is they are very short-lived, Fredrickson noted.

“We’re definitely targeting things the mind and body experience together,” she said. “We can’t just talk emotions as a mental phenomena. They are equally a body phenomena.”

Fredrickson explained that the framework for the research in her lab is her broaden-and-build theory (BBT), which suggests experiencing all of these varieties of positive emotions fundamentally change the way the human brain takes in information.

“Pleasant emotions open our awareness, allowing us to see more on the periphery, even if we do not intend to,” Fredrickson said. “We know this from behavioral studies and brain-imaging studies.

“Positive emotions broaden our thinking. Over time, having a steady diet of broadened awareness helps people to learn and grow.”

Fredrickson said she used to think that all positive emotions were very similar, but has come to the conclusion that there is one super-nutrient for growth and resilience: positive emotions that are co-experienced.

“Some may call this love, but in the scientific literature, I call this positivity resonance — any moment when you co-experience a positive experience with another person,” she said. “It could be laughing with a friend or it could be celebrating a success at work with a co-worker.”

Fredrickson called positivity resonance the “most elemental building block of love.”

She further defined it as an interpersonally situated experience marked by momentary increases in:

• co-experienced positive affect.
• caring non-verbal synchrony.
• biological synchrony.

Which, over time, she said builds:

• embodied rapport (chemistry).
• social bonds.
• commitment, loyalty and trust.

“Knowing this theory will help you to know how to repair a bond that matters to you, but has seemingly gone awry,” Fredrickson said.

She noted one cannot simply ask others to trust them — it must be earned.

“People trust you because they have these caring moments of positivity resonance with you over time,” Fredrickson said, using the trust between a physician and a patient as an example.

“We know that being empathetic or being a good listener is associated with positivity resonance, so these are some science-based tips on how to create a better bedside manner,” she added.

Fredrickson said her research team was also interested in looking at how positivity resonance related to things that allow communities to function.

“Like many, we have a concern about the basic fabric of society — how we are seemingly constantly pulling at it, creating such great divisions culturally and in communities,” she said.

Fredrickson said her research found that quality of positivity resonance predicted virtue and prosocial tendencies.

“That turned out to be important because that predicted the degree in which people engaged in behaviors to promote public health, such as washing their hands frequently or wearing a mask,” she said.

“So these tendencies to be kind to one another affect public health. These are behaviors we know affect rates of transmission. The quality of your interactions with people determines whether you care enough to protect public health.

“You see, we think positivity resonance is equally for the common good, not just for health.”

In her remarks before the lecture, Allison Brashear, vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School, noted the Golden lectureship was founded in 2001 with an initial gift of $50,000 to expand the traditional medical model to a bio-psycho-social and spiritual model of care.

“Named for cardiologist Lawrence Golden and longtime family therapist Nancy Golden, this lecture reinforces their longstanding commitment to mind-body medicine, which focuses on the interactions among the physical body, thoughts, beliefs and emotions as related to health,” Brashear said.

“This topic is really top of mind because here at the Jacobs School, we really focus on the patient’s whole body,” she added. “Most medical schools are beginning to teach this and there is significant scholarly research in this area.”