What good are positive emotions? Do they have any value within organizations? We all know from our own life experience that positive emotions feel good, and that those good feelings serve as rewards. Is that all there is to them? Scientific research on positive emotions – my own and others’ – suggests not. In fact, experiencing positive emotions – like joy, interest, contentment, or gratitude – may be far more important than many have suspected. Positive emotions do more than simply reward good behavior and signal well-being. They also change patterns of thought, improve coping, and produce well-being. Importantly, they do so not just in the present, pleasant moment, but over the long-term as well. Plus, positive emotions can have profound social and organizational repercussions. Here I provide a brief summary of my theoretical and empirical research on positive emotions, and draw extensions to organizational contexts.

Positive emotions undo negative emotions

Negative emotions have important functions. Anxiety promotes vigilance. Anger promotes seeking justice. Yet negative emotions often linger on beyond their usefulness, producing unnecessary irritability and increases in heart rate and blood pressure. Laboratory experiments have demonstrated that evoking positive emotions in these circumstances is the most efficient way to quell or “undo” the lingering aftereffects of negative emotions. Cultivating positive emotions speeds the return to cardiovascular normalcy. This undoing effect of positive emotions has been shown both for energized positive emotions like joy and amusement, and for tranquil positive emotions, like serenity and appreciation. The ability to cultivate positive emotions is thus an important skill for regulating negative emotions.

Positive emotions fuel resilience

In part because positive emotions speed recovery from negative emotions they also fuel resilient coping. Resilient people, our studies show, experience more positive emotions in the midst of adversity compared to those who are less resilient. These greater positive emotions, in turn, help resilient people bounce back to pre-crisis levels of functioning. Such findings suggest the timely cultivation of positive emotions is one way that people use emotions intelligently.

Positive emotions broaden thinking and build resources

Positive emotions have important functions beyond alleviating negative emotions and fueling resilient coping. I spotlight these additional functions in my broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. Unlike negative emotions, which narrow people’s ideas about action (e.g., fight or flight), the broaden-and-build theory holds that positive emotions broaden people’s mindsets, encouraging them to discover novel lines of thought or action. Joy, for instance, creates the urge to play, interest creates the urge to explore, and so on. A key, incidental outcome of these broadened mindsets is an increase in personal resources: As individuals discover new ideas and actions, they build their physical, intellectual, social, and psychological resources. Play, for instance, builds physical, socioemotional, and intellectual skills, and fuels brain development. Similarly, exploration increases knowledge and psychological complexity. So by broadening people’s mindsets, positive emotions build durable personal resources that function as reserves to be drawn on during later trying times.

Positive emotions trigger upward spirals toward optimal functioning

Because positive emotions broaden thinking and build enduring psychological resources like resilience, they also trigger upward spirals towards enhanced emotional well-being. Put differently, any positive emotion that you experience today not only feels good now, but also increases the likelihood that you will feel good in the future. Studies that track the same individuals over time have documented this phenomenon. Research on depression had already documented a downward spiral in which depressed mood and the narrowed, pessimistic thinking it brings, influence one another reciprocally, leading to ever worsening functioning and moods, and even clinical levels of depression. In contrast, the broaden-and-build theory predicts a comparable upward spiral in which positive emotions and the broadened thinking they bring also influence one another reciprocally, leading to appreciable increases in functioning and well-being.

Positive emotions may produce optimal functioning in organizations

The benefits of positive emotions do not end with changes within individuals. Because one individual’s experience of positive emotion can reverberate through other organizational members and across interpersonal transactions with customers, positive emotions may fuel optimal organizational functioning, helping organizations to thrive and prosper. Take the example of helpful or compassionate actions. Decades of experiments show that people are more likely to help others when feeling positive emotions. But good deeds not only spring from positive emotions, but they also produce them. Those receiving good deeds feel grateful, those witnessing good deeds feel elevated, and those doing good deeds feel pride. Strikingly, each of these very different positive emotions functions to increase the likelihood of further compassionate acts, creating a chain of increasing organizational impact.

Leaders’ positive emotions are especially contagious

Positive emotions produce organizational transformation because each person’s emotions reverberate through other organizational members. In part, this is because emotions are contagious. Experimental studies have shown that one person’s expression of positive emotion, through processes of facial mimicry, can produce experiences of positive emotion in those with whom they interact. Perhaps because they communicate to a broad range of individuals, organizational leaders’ positive emotions are especially contagious. Studies have shown, for instance, that a leader’s positive emotions predict the performance of their entire group.

Leaders can cultivate positive emotions by finding positive meaning

If positive emotions have so many beneficial repercussions, and leaders have amplified opportunities to spread positive emotions, what is the best way for leaders to do cultivate positive emotions? Using humor, laughter and other direct attempts to stimulate positive emotions is one way, although not appropriate in all circumstances. My recommendation would be to cultivate positive emotions indirectly by finding positive meaning in current circumstances. Positive meaning can be obtained by finding benefits within adversity, by infusing ordinary events with meaning, and by effective problem-solving. Leaders can find benefits within adversity by focusing on newfound strengths of their organizational members. They can infuse ordinary events with meaning by expressing appreciation for jobs well done. And they can create positive meaning through problem-solving by supporting compassionate acts within their organizations. So although the active ingredient within resilience and growth may be positive emotions, the leverage point appears to be positive meaning.

In our fast-paced society, the pursuit of meaningful positive emotions is often neglected. Yet my research on positive emotions underscores that positive emotions are not trivial luxuries, but instead may be critical necessities for optimal functioning. The bottom line is that finding ways to cultivate meaningful positive emotions within organizations is an investment in individual and organizational development.

POSITIVE EMOTION AND PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY LABORATORY
http://www.PositiveEmotions.org