THERAPY AND POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Fredrickson has demonstrated aspects of the “broaden” part of her
theory in the laboratory. For example, after watching joy-inducing
video clips featuring playful penguins, students are more likely to
categorize arrays of shapes according to their overall arrangement
rather than according to the similarity of each individual shape, thus
suggesting that they are thinking about the big picture. Other research
has shown that watching comedy video-clips, as opposed to clips about
maths, improves people’s performance at a lab test of creativity (the
Dunker test, see p.199), and that being in a positive mood leads people
to be more sociable.
The “build” part of Fredrickson’s theory
refers to the idea that the experience of
positive emotions helps us deal with nega-
tive emotions during times of turmoil
- providing what Fredrickson calls “psycho-
logical resilience”. In one test of this idea,
Fredrickson re-interviewed a sample of
non-bereaved undergraduates after the 9/11
terrorist attacks, who she had originally
tested at the start of 2001. She found that
those who scored high on psychological
resilience at the start of 2001 (i.e. they tended to agree with statements
like “I quickly get over and recover from being startled”) were half as
likely to be feeling depressed after the attacks compared with those low
in resilience. Most importantly for the broaden-and-build theory, the
protection these students had from negative emotions was mediated by
their experience of post-9/11 positive emotions such as gratitude and
optimism. “Amidst the emotional turmoil generated by the September
11th terrorist attacks,” Fredrickson wrote in a journal report of the find-
ings, “subtle and fleeting experiences of gratitude, interest, love, and
other positive emotions appeared to hold depressive symptoms at bay
and fuel postcrisis growth.”
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND REAL LIFE
Recent years have seen positive psychologists publish findings relevant
to many aspects of life, including personal relationships, therapy, trauma
and business. In a 2007 paper, Gary Lewandowski and Nicole Bizzoco at
Monmouth University surveyed 155 young people who’d recently ended
a relationship (in 25 percent of cases, it was the other partner who’d
“You’ve got to
accentuate the
positive / Eliminate
the negative / Latch
on to the affirmative
/ Don’t mess with
Mister In-Between.”
Song by Harold Arlen
and Johnny Mercer