BROADENING AND UNDOING EFFECTS OF POSITIVE EMOTIONS

关于情绪与身心健康之间关系的实证研究正在蓬勃发展。但是这些文献倾向于消极情绪而忽略了积极情绪。这种不平衡是不幸的，因为很少有人会不同意积极情绪对生活质量的巨大贡献。然而，关于积极情绪可能对健康有益的程度和机制的科学证据缺乏，现有的情绪模型提供的指导很少。许多这样的模型认为，情绪限制了个人的行为倾向，这种观点更适合消极情绪而不是积极情绪。首席研究员提供了积极情绪的另一种模型，详细说明了积极情绪在促进个人成长以及身心健康方面的作用。这种新观点认为，积极的情绪拓宽了一个人瞬间的思维-行动能力：快乐创造了玩耍的冲动，兴趣创造了探索的冲动，满足创造了品味和整合的冲动。因此，积极的情绪促进发现新的行动、想法和社会联系，这反过来又建立了个人的身体、智力和社会资源。这种“扩大-构建”模型的一个关键含义是，积极情绪具有一种特殊的能力，可以消除某些消极情绪产生的生理激活和缩小思维范围。该研究项目的长期目标是检验源于积极情绪的扩展和构建模型的假设，并探索其与身心健康的联系。这四项拟议的研究标志着朝着这一目标迈出的第一步。两个实验（研究1和2）采用受试者之间的实验设计来诱导情绪（喜悦、满足、愤怒、悲伤和中立），并测试积极情绪扩大注意力和行动倾向的范围，而消极情绪缩小这些范围的假设。第三个实验（研究3）引起所有参与者的焦虑，测量对注意力范围和心血管反应的影响，然后，使用受试者之间的设计，测试积极情绪具有扩大注意力范围和加速心血管恢复的特殊能力的假设。最后一个实验（研究4）验证了这样一个假设：有时用来调节负面情绪的活动——比如运动、散步或冥想——不仅能引发积极情绪，还能扩大注意力和行动的范围，从而使人们在不利的环境中找到积极的意义。

Empirical research on the interconnections between emotions and physical and mental health is flourishing. But this literature favors negative emotions and neglects positive emotions. This imbalance is unfortunate, because few would disagree that positive emotions contribute richly to the quality of life. Yet scientific evidence regarding the extent and mechanisms of the possible health benefits of positive emotions is lacking, and existing models of emotion offer little guidance. Many such models hold that emotions narrow individuals' action tendencies, a view that fits negative emotions better than positive ones. The Principal Investigator offers an alternative model of positive emotions that details their role in promoting personal growth as well as physical and mental health. Positive emotions, this new view holds, broaden an individual's momentary thought- action repertoire: joy creates the urge to play, interest the urge to explore, contentment the urge to savor and integrate. By consequence, positive emotions promote discovery of new actions, ideas, and social bonds, which in turn build that individual's physical, intellectual, and social resources. One key implication of this broaden-and-build model is that positive emotions have a special capacity to undo the physiological activation and narrowed thought-repertoires generated by certain negative emotions. The long-term objective of this research program is to test hypotheses that stem from the broaden-and- build model of positive emotions, and explore connections to both physical and mental health. The four proposed studies mark the first steps toward this objective. Two experiments (Studies 1 and 2) use between-subjects experimental designs to induce emotions (joy, contentment, anger, sadness, and neutrality) and test the hypotheses that positive emotions broaden the scopes of attention and action tendencies, whereas negative emotions narrow these same scopes. A third experiment (Study 3) induces anxiety in all participants, measures the effects on scope of attention and cardiovascular reactivity, then, using a between-subjects design, tests the hypothesis that positive emotions have a special capacity to broaden the scope of attention and speed cardiovascular recovery in concert. A final experiment (Study 4) tests the hypothesis that activities that are at times used to regulate negative emotions -- such as playing sports, taking nature walks or meditating -- not only elicit positive emotions but also broaden the scopes of attention and action, which in turn enable people to find positive meaning in adverse circumstances.