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Mapping Happiness

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The past decade has seen an explosion in work on positive emotions. Still, little has been done to explore which distinct feelings, thoughts and motivations characterise each one.

Aaron Weidman and Jessica Tracy at the University of British Columbia (Canada) investigated in detail these subjective experiences.

Their list began with 18 positive emotions: admiration, amusement, attachment love, awe, compassion, contentment, empathy, enthusiasm, gratitude, happiness, hope, interest, love, nurturant love, romantic love, schadenfreude, sympathy and tenderness.

Five thematic groups emerged: other-appreciation, caring, enjoyment and loving.

Participants were asked to reflect on how they had felt during a given emotion, and to identify elements that best matched those feelings from the relevant group list. Using their responses, Weidman and Tracy homed in on yet smaller lists of elements that best matched each individual emotion. and yet, it was not possible to create a distinct and definite set of elements for every emotion.

For example, no unique element stood out to separate “compassion” from “empathy” and “tenderness” — and so compassion was dropped from their list of positive emotions. Also, the research supports the argument that love is not a unitary construct.

“Happiness” and “contentment” are often conceptualised as distinct emotions, but this is not what they concluded. Neither did they find support for the idea that “joy” and “elation” are independent, discrete emotions.

It’s important to note that all the participants, no matter where they were born, were living in the US or Canada, which limits generalisability.

The paper was published in Emotion.

Photo: SN

Details:

Date: 18 December 2020
Credits Publisher: Spiritual News

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