- through mere practice, each monkey had literally expanded the section of its brain necessary for accomplishing this task (1)
- Those who were put in a negative mood didn’t process all the images in the pictures—missing substantial parts of the background—while those in a good mood saw everything. Eye-tracking experiments have shown the same thing: Positive emotions actually expand our peripheral line of vision (2)
- The children who were primed to be happy significantly outperformed the others, completing the task both more quickly and with fewer errors (3)
- students who were told to think about the happiest day of their lives right before taking a standardized math test outperformed their peers (4)
- people who expressed more positive emotions while negotiating business deals did so more efficiently and successfully than those who were more neutral or negative (5)
- the happy doctors made the right diagnosis much faster and exhibited much more creativity. On average, they came to a correct diagnosis only 20 percent of the way through the manuscript—nearly twice as fast as the control group—and showed about two and half times less anchoring (6)
- Student volunteers were put in teams to do business tasks together, with the goal of earning money for an imaginary company. Then in came the “manager” who was actually an actor instructed to speak in one of four ways: with “cheerful enthusiasm,” “serene warmth,” “depressed sluggishness,” or “hostile irritability.” Of these four groups, which two do you think not only became more positive themselves, but proved far more effective than the other groups, winning their companies more profit in the end? (7)
- Studies show that simply believing we can bring about positive change in our lives increases motivation and job performance; that success, in essence, becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. One study of 112 entry-level accountants found that those who believed they could accomplish what they set out to do were the ones who ten months later scored the best job performance ratings from their supervisors. (8)
- they instructed people to write about a positive experience for 20 minutes three times a week and then compared them to a control group who wrote about neutral topics.17 Not only did the first group experience larger spikes in happiness, but three months later they even had fewer symptoms of illness (9)
- In one experiment where 90 people went through a software training program, half were taught to prevent errors from occurring, while the other half were guided into mistakes during training.12 And lo and behold, the group encouraged to make errors not only exhibited greater feelings of self-efficacy, but because they had learned to figure their own way out of mistakes, they were also far faster and more accurate in how they used the software later on (10)
- Researchers took two groups of people into a room, turned on a loud noise, and then told them to figure out how to turn it off by pressing buttons on a panel.14 The first group tried every combination of buttons, but nothing worked to stop the noise. (Another example of devious psychologists at work!) The second group, acting as a control, was given a panel of buttons that did successfully turn off the noise. Then both groups were given the same second task: They were put in a new room, the equivalent of a shuttlebox, and were once again treated to an obnoxious noise. This time, both groups could easily stop the noise by simply moving a hand from one side to the other, just like the dogs could easily move to the other side of the box. The control group quickly figured this out and stopped the blare. But the group that had first been exposed to a noise they couldn’t stop now just let their hands lay there, not even bothering to move them or try to make the noise stop (11)
- explanatory style predicts how well people recover after coronary bypass surgery (12)
- One sweeping study of 7,400 employees found that those who felt they had little control over deadlines imposed by other people had a 50 percent higher risk of coronary heart disease than their counterpart (13)
- researchers gave subjects a survey designed to measure levels of happiness—then injected them with a strain of the cold virus.13 A week later, the individuals who were happier before the start of the study had fought off the virus much better than the less happy individuals. They didn’t just feel better, either; they actually had fewer objective symptoms of illness as measured by doctors—less sneezing, coughing, inflammation, and congestion (14)
- participating in a breast cancer support group actually doubled women’s life expectancy post surgery (15)
- Studies show that each positive interaction employees have during the course of the work day actually helps return the cardiovascular system back to resting levels (a benefit often termed “work recovery”), and that over the long haul, employees with more of these interactions become protected from the negative effects of job strain. Each connection also lowers levels of cortisol, a hormone related to stress, which helps employees recover faster from workrelated stress and makes them better prepared to handle it in the future (16)
- people with strong relationships are less likely to perceive situations as stressful in the first place (17)
- Researchers have found that the “physiological resourcefulness” that employees gain from positive social interactions provides a foundation for workplace engagement—employees can work for longer hours, with increased focus, and under more difficult conditions (18)
- team of British researchers decided to follow a group of employees who worked for two different supervisors on alternate days—one they had good rapport with, and one they didn’t.32 In other words, a boss they loved and a Michael Scott. And indeed, on the days the dreaded boss worked, their average blood pressure shot up (19)
- The winning response is both active and constructive; it offers enthusiastic support, as well as specific comments and follow-up questions. (“That’s wonderful! I’m glad your boss noticed how hard you’ve been working. When does your promotion go into effect?”) Interestingly, her research shows passive responses to good news (“That’s nice.”) can be just as harmful to the relationship as blatantly negative ones (“You got the promotion? I’m surprised they didn’t give it to Sally, she seems more suited to the job.”) Ouch. Perhaps the most destructive, though, is ignoring the news entirely. (“Have you seen my keys?”) Gable’s studies have shown that activeconstructive responding enhances relationship commitment and satisfaction, and fuels the degree to which people feel understood, validated, and cared for during a discussion (20)
- emotions are so shared, organizational psychologists have found that each workplace develops its own group emotion, or “group affective tone,” which over time creates shared “emotion norms” that are proliferated and reinforced by the behavior, both verbal and nonverbal, of the employees (21)
- the more genuinely expressive someone is, the more their mindset and feelings spread (22)
- when leaders are in a positive mood, their employees are more likely to be in a positive mood themselves, to exhibit prosocial helping behaviors toward one another, and to coordinate tasks more efficiently and with less effort (23)
- studies of sports teams have found not only that one happy player was enough to infect the mood of the entire team, but also that the happier the team was, the better they played(24)
References
- Use-dependent alterations of movement representations in primary motor cortex of adult squirrel monkeys
- Opposing influences of affective state valence on visual cortical encoding
- Affective states, expressive behavior, and learning in children
- Positive mood and math performance
- The three faces of Eve: Strategic displays of positive, negative, and neutral emotions in negotiations
- Positive affect facilitates integration of information and decreases anchoring in reasoning among physicians
- The ripple effect: Emotional contagion and its influence on group behavior
- Longitudinal field investigation of the moderating and mediating effects of self-efficacy on the relationship between training and newcomer adjustmen
- The health benefits of writing about intensely positive experiences
- Benefiting from mistakes: The impact of guided errors on learning, performance, and self-efficacy
- Locus of control and learned helplessness
- Dispositional optimism and recovery from coronary artery bypass surgery: The beneficial effects on physical and psychological well-being
- Explaining inequalities in coronary heart disease
- Emotional style and susceptibility to the common cold
- Effect of psychosocial treatment on survival of patients with metastatic breast cancer
- Positive social interactions and the human body at work: Linking organizations and physiology, Slow-reacting immunoglobin in relation to social support and changes in job strain: A preliminary note
- The role of social support in the stressor-strain relationship: An examination of work-family conflict.
- Positive social interactions and the human body at work: Linking organizations and physiology
- The effect of ambulatory blood pressure of working under favourably and unfavourably perceived supervisors
- Will you be there for me when things go right? Supportive responses to positive event disclosures.
- Mood and emotions in small groups and work teams
- Effect of individual differences in nonverbal expressiveness on transmission of emotion
- Understanding prosocial behavior, sales performance, and turnover: A group level analysis in a service context, The contagious leader: Impact of the leader’s mood on the mood of group members, group affective tone, and group processes
- Catching moods and hitting runs: Mood linkage and subjective performance in professional sports teams