Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build model of positive emotions, and the subsequent studies of the theory, has been among the most influential research programs associated with the success of positive psychology. Fredrickson’s (2013) later research has investigated the topic of love. Her ideas about it, though, take a somewhat unexpected direction.
When most people think about love they think of an idealized version: an overwhelming emotion that lifts the heart and spirit, makes every day look brighter, brings a “song into one’s heart,” and leads people to dance in the streets—or at least skip for joy. In other words, most people think of romantic love as the powerful emotion they see depicted in Hollywood movies or hear in the lyrics of most popular songs. Of course, love can be an extremely powerful emotion and a source of tremendous joy. For Fredrickson, however, the fundamentals of love are subtler, more frequent, and less dramatic.
In Fredrickson’s theory of love 2.0, she says that love is a momentary experience of three events: a sharing of positive emotions, a reflected motive to commit to each other’s mutual care, and a synchrony between the behaviors of two people (she also adds synchrony between the biochemistry of two people, but that aspect of her theory is beyond this exercise). Love requires a connection built through communication, especially eye contact. She asserts that it requires us to be physically and emotionally present, to slow down, and pay attention. For Fredrickson, love happens when we pay attention to our relationship and we feel a mutual responsiveness, a back-and-forth reverberation, and importantly, these moments do not need to be dramatic, life-changing experiences. In fact, she states that more often they are what she calls “micro-moments of love.” Note, she is saying these micro-moments can happen at any time and potentially with anyone, including casual acquaintances or even people who are initially strangers. All that is required is a shared moment of mutual understanding, a sense of connection, and a desire to be respectful of each other.
For the activity, we would like you to pay attention to your interactions with other people for the next week and notice micro-moments of love. Okay, our wording of that assignment may seem a bit pretentious. All we are asking is for you to slow down, pay attention, and notice when a mutual connection happens between you and someone else. Most of the time that connection will be mild and brief. That’s all right. Just notice it and allow yourself to feel the small change in your emotional state. Of course, you can do the same thing with people in your life whom you already love. The idea is to slow down and notice how the connection changes your emotional state.
Assignment 2:
Do you easily know what others are feeling? Do people say that you’re a “good listener”? Do you have the ability sometimes to experience their varying moods as your own? If so, then you are strongly empathic—and this quality has probably served you well throughout life. Why? Because positive psychology increasingly views empathy as a vital trait for well-being. Not only does research reveal that empathy is a unique “glue” for binding friendships, family ties, and romantic love, it even enhances our work achievement. Certainly, the latter finding makes sense, for without adequate empathy, we’re unlikely to know what engages our coworkers, clients, or customers.
The growing scientific interest in empathy represents a big change from the earlier idea popularized by Dr. Richard Dawkins (1990) of Oxford University, that everyone is born with a dominant “selfish gene.” Rather, many evolutionary scientists now argue that affiliative traits like altruism and empathy have enabled our species to survive and prosper—not competitiveness and greed. Such a view also repudiates Freud’s emphasis on the primacy of human selfishness, for no baby can possibly survive without caregiving adults on a daily basis.
More than 75 years ago, Alfred Adler (1930, 1938) asserted that children’s empathy must be nurtured or it remains weak. Recent research shows that he was correct: Parents who are empathic toward their children (“I see you’re feeling sad. What happened today at school?”) are more likely to strengthen empathy in their offspring. We also know today that empathy comprises two different but related components: cognitive and affective. Cognitive empathy is the intellectual ability to know what others are feeling, whereas affective empathy involves the capacity to experience their emotions, such as happiness or sadness. Though there is clear evidence that girls are more empathic than boys in both aspects by early childhood, both genders can strengthen this trait through diligent effort.
In this activity, write about an episode in your life when someone’s empathy helped you to cope better with a stressful situation. It might have involved a friendship, a romantic relationship, a school-related difficulty, or a work issue. In what specific way did this person’s empathic words or actions prove beneficial? Next, write about a time when you felt glad about something you achieved and a friend or family member responded empathically with congratulations and warmth. Did this type of empathy amplify your happiness? If so, why do you think it had this beneficial effect?
Sample Solution
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