11/03/2007

Positive Psychology

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). What good are positive emotions? Review of General Psychology, 2(3). 300-319.
Fredrickson, B.L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden and build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3). 218-226.
Fredrickson, B. L. & Joiner, T. (2002). Postive emotions trigger upward spirals toward emotional well being. American Psychological Society, 13(2). 172-175.
Fredrickson, B. L. & Branigan, C. (2005). Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought-action repertoires. Cognition and Emotion, 19 (3).313-332.
I stumbled onto Fredrickson's work in a human motivation class. This list of publications chronicles the development of her "Broaden-and-build" theory.Initially , she posits that the positive emotions of love, interest, joy and contentment broaden momentary thought-action repertoires, which then serve to increase one's physical, intellectual and social resources. This, then is in opposition to what occurs when we perceive threat from the environment. She goes on to show that positive emotions also counteract the effects of negative emotions (and their narrowing tendencies), and that the broadening effect of positive emotions can become self-perpetuating. While she limits her discussion to use of ehe theory to the clinical arena, it certainly would seem to have direct impact on educational practice as well.


BOOKS

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