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Are You Getting Enough Positivity in Your Diet?

By Barbara Fredrickson
This essay originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of
the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
I study positive emotions.
I realize this can sound frivolous, especially at a time when were facing
widespread unemployment, when were sending soldiers into repeated
tours of duty, when were confronted with a global environmental crisis.

But after two decades of research on positive emotions, Ive come to


realize that understanding positive emotions can help us address these
problems and more.
Im not just talking about jump-for-joy positive emotions. There are a
whole range of positive emotions out there, including feelings of
gratitude, feelings of serenity and tranquility, and feelings of love and
closeness for the people we care for.
My colleagues and I have learned how positive emotions change the way
our minds and our bodies workchange the very nature of who we are,
down to our cellstransforming our outlook on life and our ability to
confront challenges. Indeed, the science of positive emotions is key to
helping people deal with adversity and live a meaningful life.
Far from being trivial, weve found that positive emotions broaden our
awareness in ways that reshape who we are, and they build up our

useful traits in ways that bring out the best in us, helping us become the
best versions of ourselves.
Positive emotions open our mind
In my research, Ive come to the conclusion that there are two core
truths about all of the different kinds of positive emotions.
The first is that they open us: They literally change the boundaries of
our minds and our hearts and change our outlook on our environment.
Now let me get poetic here for a moment. Imagine youre a water lily.
Its early dawn and your petals are closed in around your face. If you
can see anything at all, its just a little spot of sunlight.
But as the sun rises in the sky, things begin to change. Your blinders
around your face begin to open and your world quite literally expands.
You can see more. Your world is larger.
Just as the warmth of sunlight opens flowers, the warmth of positivity
opens our minds and hearts. It changes our visual perspective at a
really basic level, along with our ability to see our common humanity
with others.

We know this because weve done studies where we induce positive


emotions in some peopleby giving them a gift, making them have a
positive experience, or showing them images of cute puppies or a
beautiful sunsetbut not others. In one of these studies in my own lab,
we showed people a figure (see image on the left) and asked which of
two comparison figures most resemble it. As you can see, one of the
figures (the three triangles) resembles the top figure in its general
configuration, while the other (the four squares) resembles it in its local
details.
What we found was if we induced positive emotions in people, they were
more likely to step back and say the figure of the three triangles was
most similar to the top figure. They were seeing the big picture.

One of my favorite studies along these lines comes out of Adam


Andersons lab at the University of Toronto. The researchers observed
peoples brain activity while showing them photos of a face placed
against a house in the background (see image on the left). They asked
the people to judge whether the face was male or female but to ignore
everything else in the picture.
Theres a part of the brain that lights up when we see a human face, and
theres also a brain region that lights up when we think about physical
places, like a house. Which part would light up here?
The researchers found that when you induce a positive emotion, the
place area lit uppeople couldnt help but pick up on the context of
the photo, even when they were told to ignore it. When people were
feeling neutral or negative emotions, they didnt see the house at all.
This suggests that people are inescapably attuned to context when
theyre experiencing positive emotions. They have a wider awareness,
which may explain why people have a better memory for peripheral
details when theyre remembering episodes that were positive.
If positive emotions open our awareness and increase the expanse of
our peripheral vision, that means that they help us see more
possibilities. And there are lots of benefits that flow from this.

People are more creative when theyre experiencing positive


emotions; when solving a problem, they come up with more ideas of
what they might do next. This enhanced creativity has been directly
linked to having a wider awareness.

People are more likely to be resilient. I have conducted a whole


line of research showing that people are able to bounce back more
quickly from adversity when theyre experiencing positive emotions.

Kids academic performance improves. Research has shown that


kids do better on math tests or other tests if theyre just asked to sit
and think of a positive memory before they take the test.

There are medical benefits. Really neat research shows doctors


make better medical decisions when theyre given a bag of candya
really small way of inducing positive emotions. Keep that in mind the
next time you go to your doctors office!

Positive emotions make us more socially connected to others,


even across groups. My former student Kareem Johnson and I found
that positive emotions allow us to look past racial and cultural
differences and see the unique individual behind those traits. They
help us see the universal qualities we share with others, not our
differences. And other experiments show that if you induce positive
emotions, people are more trusting and come to better win-win
situations in negotiations.

So positive emotions dont just help us see the glass half fullthats
true, but its not the whole story. They also help us see larger forms of
interconnection. They help us see the big picture.
Positive emotions transform us
The second core truth about positive emotions is that they transform us
for the betterthey bring out the best in us.
Now one interesting fact about all living things is that scientists estimate
that, on average, we replace one percent of our cells each day. Thats
another one percent tomorrow, about 30 percent by next month, and by
next season, 100 percent of our cells from todaythats one way of
looking at it. So maybe its no coincidence that it takes three months or
so to learn a new habit or to make a lifestyle change; maybe we need to
be teaching our new cells because we cant teach an old cell new tricks.
But one of the things I think is even more exciting is that the latest
science suggests that the pace of cell renewal and the form of cell
renewal doesnt just follow some predetermined DNA script. Our
emotions affect that level of cellular change.
What this suggests is that if we increase our daily diet of positive
emotions, we broaden our awareness over time and change who we
become in the future.
With this in mind, I was inspired by some of the newest research on
meditation to look into how people might use meditation to elevate their
basic levels of positive emotionthe amount of positive emotions they
feel day-in, day-out.

In particular, I looked at a form of meditation called loving-kindness


meditation, sometimes called metta, which asks people to take that
warm, tender feeling they already have toward a loved one and learn to
generate it toward other people, ranging from themselves to people with
whom they have difficulties and eventually to all sentient beings on
Earth.
People in my studies were novice meditators, but as they learned lovingkindness meditation over the course of eight weeks, their daily levels of
positive emotions subtly shifted upwards. And this boost in positive
emotions helped them build some important resources.
One of those resources was mindfulness, their ability to stay in the
present moment and maintain awareness of their thoughts, feelings,
and surroundings.
Also, their close and trusting relationships with others improved from
the time they started learning meditation to a few weeks after the
training ended.
We also saw improvements in peoples resiliencetheir ability to bounce
back from difficulties and effectively manage the challenges they
encounteredand reductions in aches and pains and other signs of
physical illness.
These results suggest that if we increase our daily diet of positive
emotions, we emerge three months later as more resilient, more socially
connected versions of ourselves.
The positivity ratio* [see Instructors' Note at the bottom of this
page]
So positive emotions can clearly carry some profound benefits. But how
much positivity do we need in our lives to reap these benefitshow
much is enough?

My research with Marcel Losada has actually been closing in on an


answer to this question. Weve concluded that a ratio of at least threeto-onethree positive emotions for every negative emotionserves as a
tipping point, which will help determine whether you languish in life,
barely holding on, or flourish, living a life ripe with possibility,
remarkably resilient to hard times.

Without going into all the math behind this ratio, I want to stress that
this isnt an arbitrary number. It emerges from a wide ranging analysis
we conducted, including analysis of flourishing business teams that we
then tested in flourishing individuals and compared to family researcher
John Gottmans work on flourishing marriages. In each case, we found
that positivity ratios above three-to-one are associated with doing
extraordinary well.
Ratios of about two-to-one are what most of us experience on a daily
basis; people who suffer from depression and other emotional disorders
are down near one-to-one or lower.
Its important to note that the ratio is not three-to-zero. This is not
about eliminating all negative emotions. Part of this prescription is the
idea that negative emotions are actually necessary.
I actually think a sailboat metaphor is appropriate here. Rising from the
sailboat is the enormous mast, which allows the sail to catch the wind
and give the boat momentum. But below the waterline is the keel, which
can weigh tons.
You can see the mast as positivity and the keel down below as
negativity. If you sail, you know that even though its the mast that
holds the sail, you cant sail without the keel; the boat would just drift
around or tip over. The negativity, the keel, is what allows the boat to
stay on course and manageable.
When I once shared this metaphor with an audience, a gentleman said,
You know, when the keel matters most is when youre sailing upwind,
when youre facing difficulty. Experiencing and expressing negative
emotions is really part of the process for flourishing, evenor especially
during hard times, as they help us stay in touch with the reality of the
difficulties were facing.
So this idea of the ratio points out where we should be. But how do we
get there? What are the best ways to foster positive emotions and
achieve this ratio?
Heres my advice: If you make your motto, Be positive, that will
actually backfire. It leads to a toxic insincerity thats shown to be
corrosive to our own bodies, to our own cardiovascular system. Its toxic
for our relationships with other people. I think we all know that person
whos trying to pump too much sunshine into our lives.
I think thats the biggest danger of positive psychology: that people
come out of it with this zeal to be positive in a way thats not genuine
and heartfelt.
But theres a Sufi proverb: There wouldnt be such a thing as counterfeit
gold if there were no real gold somewhere. So how can we tap into
those genuine, heartfelt positive emotions without grasping for the
counterfeit gold?

One of the things that I think is very useful is to keep in mind that
theres reciprocal relationship between the mindset of positivity and
positive emotionsa mindset of positivity begets positive emotions, and
positive emotions beget positivity. So if we lightly create the mindset of
positivity, from that positive emotions will follow.
How to foster that mindset? It helps to be open, be appreciative, be
curious, be kind, and above all, be real and sincere. From these
strategies spring positive emotions.
Now some of these are pretty self-explanatory, but I do want to explain
what be open means as a way to increase your positive emotions. The
reason that this works is that so often we can be preoccupied worrying
about the future, ruminating about the past so were completely
oblivious to the goodness that surrounds us in the present moment.
But when were really open to our current circumstances, those sources
of goodness are so much easier to draw from, and they yield positive
emotions.
Another thing, I think, that can be really useful is to step on the
positivity scale frequently and track your positivity ratio. When I
published my book, I created a free website that allows people to figure
out their positivity ratio for a given day. It takes two minutes.
Its kind of surprising and humbling to realize that, if were honest with
ourselves, most of us arent above this three-to-one ratio on a daily
basis.
I think knowing one days positivity ratio may not be too informative.
But if you take this short measure at the end of every day for two
weeks, you could probably get a sense of what your life is like right now.
Then continue to use it as you continue to make changes in your life, as
you introduce more opportunities to be grateful, or start a meditation
practice, or start volunteering and giving more frequently, and then
track your positivity ratio and see if it changessee how those steps
make a difference in your life.
Just as a nutritionist will ask people to keep track of their physical
activity and their caloric intake as a way to meet their health and fitness
goals, this is a way to keep track of your daily emotional diet so you can
meet your well-being goals.
I want to close with a famous Native American story. It goes like this:
One evening, an old Cherokee tells his grandson that inside all people, a
battle goes on between two wolves. One wolf is negativity: anger,
sadness, stress, contempt, disgust, fear, embarrassment, guilt, shame,
and hate. The other is positivity: joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope,
pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and above all, love.
The grandson thinks about this for a minute, then asks his grandfather,
Well, which wolf wins?
The grandfather replies, The one you feed.

Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of


Psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is also
the author of Positivity and Love 2.0.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~
* Instructors Note: The exact amount of positive emotions that we
need in our life has been a matter of scientific debate. While Dr.
Fredrickson initially published research suggesting that people are
generally happier if they have a ratio of at least three positive emotions
to every negative emotion, that finding has recently been disputed,
though Dr. Fredrickson still stands by it.

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