Beneficial effects of positive emotions on people

Beneficial effects of positive emotions on people

Positive emotions impact behaviors and influence social interaction of the wellbeing of humans by affecting psychological functioning, primarily biological or chemical reactions. Before the positive psychology, people have focused on stress fixing models in health, preferably over the developing models. Impacts of positive emotions can be appreciated by considering feelings within a social and psychological context. The positive emotion approach is opposite to how people viewed the general psychology by focusing on the overshadowing of disorders and fixing what is wrong with the cognition and not focusing on what should be done to achieve it. Examples of positive emotions that are valuable to rational human beings are joy, happiness, gratitude, inspiration, hope, pride, interest, love, appreciation, enthusiasm, and patience, among others. Positive emotions may function as nutrients for overall human wellbeing. Daily experiences of positive emotions help us to be resilient and improve our cognitive reasoning and thinking. This essay is to look at how positive emotions impact flourishing in social, biological, and psychological contexts of human development and enrichments.

Positive emotions are crucial to human survival because they affect the increase in cognition and the number of different behaviors to an individual that they give to the response of any situation of the surrounding. Different emotional reactions result in certain action tendencies towards different stimuli. Positive psychological emotion increases the number of behavioral options because emotions contribute directly to momentary thought-action repertory. Exposures produce behaviors that become habitual and more permanent to the mind and become an option for the repertoire. When someone is tied to these positive emotions such as joy and love, they tend to improve their social bonds, which further enrich their lives with more profound meaning and happiness, leading to full consciousness. The positive emotions make the cognitive processes flexible by stabilizing human functioning, considering the approach to life in general.

Also, positive emotions make one have a fixed mindset. According to Dweck (2006), a fixed mindset is a situation where someone believes that their personal qualities and abilities are carved in stone. In contrast, if one has a growth mindset, they think that their conditions and abilities can change over time. A personal mindset with positive emotions is necessary when considering how much can be affected by the goals we choose to pursue, the responses we have towards failure, and tenacity to make a task to completion. The emotions affect efforts exerted to achieve ambition and how to deal with the challenges that we face and help to find a functional problem-solving ability. The mindsets may differ from person to person because of different objectives that motivate them. Positive emotions enable one to have a stabilized mindset that allows them to make decisions that are appropriate to the different lifestyles they endure. Effects of positive emotions expand brain plasticity to broaden and build responses to human beings.

Exposure to positive emotions triggers a state of the brain. Emotions act as a gatekeeper to brain states and therefore drives the thoughts that facilitate us nearer to what we want to achieve. It increases our awareness, attention, and memory. Positive emotions help us to have more attention to get more information that, in turn, makes us be more knowledgeable and hold new ideas in our minds at once. This will further make us understand how different ideas relate to each other. When these positive emotions open up new possibilities, we can learn and build more on our skills, which further leads to better performance in the tasks that we are asked to do. People who have positive emotions tend to be healthier and happier and learn better. Positive emotions build resilience that is the positive emotion resources that are needed for coping. This, in turn, broadens our awareness, making us see more options for solving a problem.

Positive emotions reduce stress and boost our well-being. They moderate the impacts of stressful events in our lives, such as the coping abilities for different situations and environment. This will result in psychological and physical wellbeing of an individual. Moreover, positive emotions moderate the reactivity to stress and help in the recovery of a person from stress. Maintaining a good vibe, laughing, and having good inspiration in health makes people often to focus on opportunities in life and be optimistic despite the conditions. Our connections with people, we may cultivate positive emotions that are good for our health. Pleasant momentary experiences of positive emotions always serve as nutrients of our bodies. Increase positive feelings of social belongings and togetherness boost parasympathetic health, which in turn opens the human being to more rewarding positive and social experiences. Also, positive emotions can enhance physical health because it improves the vagal tones of individuals.

Increased performance and engagement is also a benefit of positive engagement. Positive emotions may improve someone’s work life, both physical and mental health, income, and community involvement. Positivity at work may result in self-efficacy, which increases job and relationship satisfaction. A positive emotion also improves organizational citizenship and work engagement in both employees and employers. Besides, they decrease negative attitudes such as deviance and cynicism in the workplace and general relationships with people. Different positive emotions lead to various positive outcomes; for example, happiness enhances gain, and contentment leads to increased risk avoidance.

Harmful effects of positive emotions on people

On the other hand, positive emotions may have detrimental effects on someone’s life. Positive emotions are most often referred to as a singular term, but in reality, they have heterogeneous characteristics. Different types of positive emotions have varying dimensions, such as arousal of energy level and degree of social connectedness. For example, forms of happiness are associated with adaptive and pro-social outcomes such as generosity, which is not the case. Most importantly, not all positive emotions have a beneficial outcome for an individual.

Taking pride as an example, it is a self-focused pleasant state associated with achievement and social rank. Even though it is adaptive in certain forms, such as winning competition, it can also result in negative implications if not well managed. It may result in aggressiveness towards others which is antisocial behavior. More often than not, most prominent people have fallen victims of pride. Pride makes people forget their backgrounds, their friends, and even forget those who elevated them to such a position of high rank. These examples of positive emotions that are too self-centered hinder people’s ability to connect with other people in society adaptively. They make people look down upon others, mounting to disrespect and, at last, brings enmity among people. One of the disadvantages of being proud is that it makes people not to progress. When someone is in a difficult situation and needs help from people, their egos will stop them from seeking them from their juniors in terms of social status or age, even if their contribution would help.

A psychologist may argue that even if these feelings are beneficial to individuals, there are also adverse effects that come with them. Optimisms have a very advantageous trait for human beings, but if they are unchecked, they can lead to frustrations. It can lead to unrealistic expectations and dangerous risks that can lead to low cognitive reasoning and loss or any dangerous risk that is associated with an unchecked optimist. Optimism may result in mental and physical health disorders. The positive emotion may lead to psychological, mood, and depressive disorders, and also suicidal ideation. The positive emotions always play a role in the association between feelings of loss of hope and thoughts of committing suicides. The disorders may result in somatic pathologies that depress an individual exposing them to hearty cardiovascular attacks. Dispositional optimism results in a low probability of mortality rate in both women and men. In optimistic women, at their menopause, they tend to develop carotid atherosclerosis.

Some positive emotions can deter individuals from thinking and behaving rationally and see situations in different ways. This affects an individual’s memory and sight from different perspectives. At some point, it makes someone feel like hearing only what he wants to hear and see only things that they want to see. This brings prolonged anger that may result in depression. Dealing with some positive emotions inappropriately is harmful; for example, expressing love if not controlled may harm the recipient. Feelings and perceptions are intertwined. Too much use of positive emotions may result in addiction to some behaviors that may become boring. People may refuse to associate themselves with individuals with such actions resulting in loneliness.

Loneliness makes someone feel secluded from society and becomes depressed, resulting in death. Besides, too much of positive emotions can make someone less creative and less safe. Emotions are not suited for every situation, and each one is costly when experienced too intensely. When we experience a moderate level of emotions, we become creative. Overwhelming positive emotion can, therefore, result in mania hence losing the ability to tap into a newer channel of thoughts and creative resources.

Areas that positive emotions are beneficial in daily life

In a classroom setup, positive emotions such as love have been so beneficial to me. Love has promoted a common sense of oneness, togetherness, and belonging. It binds together all those that I associate with and thus easy cohesion and assistance. Positive emotions can help others to risk their time and resources to help those in need. Also, positive emotions can mold people to treasure, hold dear and cherish others. Positive emotion is essential for our behaviors and adaptions.

In learning institutions, positive emotions, envision goals, and challenges. This is because they open the minds of individuals to better reasoning, creates attachment and resilience. It also lays groundwork for individual self-regulation, thus control and guide the behaviors of learners at large in learning institutions. However, positive emotions in extreme practice, such as overexcitement, may distract learner’s attention in schools, thus resulting in poor performance. It may also lead to irrelevant thinking and immature reasoning that can bring enmity in learners.

Positive emotions can have beneficial effects in places of work. It brings joy, communal responsibility, and love for colleagues. People who embrace positive emotions at workplace tend to work better than those that have negative emotions. They have positive effects on decision making and enhance problem-solving skills in the workplace. For example, if a person is happy, jovial, and opportunistic, they can likely make the right decisions for the company. Besides, positive emotions are beneficial to leadership skills in a company. Effective leaders depend on positive emotions to appeal or convey messages to their subjects. However, too much forgiveness and humility may result in sluggish leadership skills in the workplace. Workers will, therefore, do things that are out of control because no one is looking after them, and after all, their mistakes will be forgiven.

Positive emotions are beneficial in a family setup. A family is where our first and strongest emotions are made. Positive emotions put me in control of my relationships with my parents and siblings. When I know how I feel, I cannot be manipulated by other people’s emotions. Humility as a positive emotion will not allow me to put blames on everyone because of family conflicts. Without positive emotions, a family can be seen as a burden because we may see each other as strangers and enemies. On the other hand, positive emotions can also harm my relationship with my family members. This is a result of self-centered family members who see other people as trash because of their financial status.

How do these three areas impact your overall psychological health?

Positive emotions are correlated with health and stress management. Positive emotions that occur in daily life have undone the damage of negative emotions and stress. Positive emotion is associated with faster recovery from stress, reduces stress, and makes my body fit. It is a defense against the cumulative effect of anxiety and related to the immune system of my body. Positive emotion has also enhanced my interpersonal relationship and creativity in the family, school, and workplace. When I am a happy person, I am more approachable, and this has enhanced my relationships with different people. Also, positive emotions have improved my cognitive processes of thinking and reasoning.

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