Having more variety in our emotions—positive or negative—can make us happier and healthier. THis is one of the Top 10 Insights from the “Science of a Meaningful Life” in 2014 from the Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley. bit.ly/1rxJqbK Is the route to happiness simply to feel more positive emotion and less negative emotion? Our top insights from 2013 cast some doubt on that view, and an even stronger rebuttal emerged this year in a paper published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Researchers from four different countries and six different institutions—including Yale University and Harvard Business School—measured participants’ positive emotions (like amusement, awe, and gratitude) and negative ones (like anger, anxiety, and sadness). They not only looked at the level of these emotions but also their variety and abundance—what the researchers call “emodiversity.” Their first study surveyed over 35,000 French speakers and found that emodiversity is related to less depression. This was the case for all types of emodiversity: positive (experiencing many different positive emotions), negative (many different negative emotions), and general (a mix of both positive and negative emotions). In fact, people high in emodiversity were less likely to be depressed than people high in positive emotion alone. With almost 1,300 Belgian participants, the second study linked emodiversity to less medication use, lower government health care costs, and fewer doctor visits and days spent in the hospital. It was also related to better diet, exercise, and smoking habits. Surprisingly, the effect of emodiversity on physical health was about as strong as the effects of positive or negative emotion alone. The message? Emotional monotony is a drag, so we may be better off mentally and physically if we seek out and embrace a variety of emotional experiences—even the negative ones.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 19:15:56 +0000
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