Emotional Regulation

The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” (Chuck Palahniuk). The first concept I learned is positive psychology, and unexpectedly I have applied this concept throughout my life for the last sixteen years without realizing it until this course. People who employ positive psychology are those who make people happy throughout the course of their life and are optimistic during difficult times to cope with the challenges (Franzoi, 2014, pg. 8). People who incorporate positive psychology into their life have less stress and are tend to be happier and healthier. Positive psychology brings similar effects to positive emotions like happiness and pleasure as clinical psychology that treats depression and anger (Max, 2007).

The procedure was that the participant was paired with another person and they drew straws to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher’. The draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was

Achor utilizes a meta-analysis, or the combination of different findings, of over 200 scientific studies to prove his overall theory that happiness leads to success in almost every aspect of life from family to friends to careers and businesses. He does not rely solely on the data or information from a few relevant case studies, but instead relies upon experimental research to support his claim. He utilizes his findings to create “The Seven Principles”, which are “patterns that predict success and achievement” (Achor, 17), which is headed by “The Happiness Advantage.” He utilizes the concept of positive psychology and neurological activity to showcase the point that we can “retrain our brains to

In the article “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness,” Jon Gertner conveys his argument that the resulting emotions that people predict they will feel when a certain event happens are often times quite less extreme than they originally believe them to be. The prediction that a person makes about the outcome of an experience, whether it be buying a new television or being fired from a job, is most likely wrong. Gertner, with the help of the research done by Gilbert, Wilson, Loewenstein, and Kahneman, focuses on how one can predict what will make him or her unhappy or happy, and if his or her predictions remain true throughout, and after, the occurrence.

Some people argue that happiness helps make good decisions because happy people strive for the best result. David states, “[Positive emotions] help build vital social, physical, and cognitive resources that lead to positive outcomes and affiliations” (124). David points out that with the right amount of positivity, people make good judgments. The author acknowledges that happiness can have benefits, but she states that too much happiness could hurt human development because the mind does not consider the consequences of an action. Julie Norem, a psychology professor, points out, “’If you’re a pessimist who really thinks through in detail what might go wrong, that’s a strategy that’s likely to work very well for you’” (qtd. in Wallis). She explains

There are many distinctive definitions when it comes to the word happiness. Two psychologists, in particular, are thoroughly investigating the science behind this feeling. Barbara Fredrickson, who wrote the essay, Selections from Love 2.0: Love, Our Supreme Emotion, focuses on formulating positive connections with people through micro-moments. She believes that these conscious interactions are beneficial to positive resonance and to our mental well-being. On the contrary, Daniel Gilbert, who wrote the essay Immune to Reality, discusses how our brain exploits the ambiguity of bad experiences and unconsciously “softens its sting.” By doing so, we become immune to reality. Even though Fredrickson believes that accumulating conscious

Once the participant finished counting, cards such as joker and informational cards were taken out. The cards were than shuffled, three times, for randomization. Before the experiment could start, one student would take on the role as a participant and the other as the time keeper. The time keeper used their cellular device to time all 4 trials. Before the experiment could begin, the students counted the cards, to make sure that there were 52 cards. After counting the cards, a student used the bridge method to shuffle the cards. Each trial began when the time keeper said “go!” For all four trials, the experimenter timed the participant once he/she began sorting the cards and stopped the time once the participants hand was no longer holding the last card.

“That thoughts can lead to emotions and behaviour; and that emotional disorders arise from negatively biased thinking (which lead to unhelpful emotions and behaviours); and that emotional disorders can be helped by changing such thinking” (Curwen.B, 2000).

In this video, Achor (2011)discusses how instead of simply trying to help or cure individuals with some problem in their life, positive psychology tries to take average people and find ways to reach their full potential. Many people believe that if they change the circumstances in their environment, they can generate greater amounts of happiness and well-being in their lives. Achor (2011) maintains that only about ten percent of long term happiness can be predicted by the external world, a whopping ninety percent is dependent upon what happens within our minds; and by changing the way people process the world around them, it can ultimately change how they perceive reality. Approximately twenty-five percent of job success can be predicted by

In addition, this study hypothesized that if one mediated the effect of optimism on health outcomes by removing the effect of a person’s affectivity inclination, negative or positive, that optimism would not be shown as the correlation variable. Rather the authors hypothesized,

The experiment conducted in the movie The Experiment did not end well as it turned out violent and horrific. Perhaps that was expected by the researchers since they allowed the experiment to carry on after some of the frightful events taking place early on. Because of the fact that the researchers created the rules that the prisoners and the guards were expected to follow, this experimental study can be classified as single blinded.

The experiment went like this: there were three positions with one being the teacher, one the learner, and the other an experimenter. These three roles were filled in by volunteers and one person would pick one while the actor would pick one and both had to pick slips to find out what role he was given but unknown to the volunteer, they both said teacher and the actor would claim to pull learner so they the volunteer always had to be the teacher. Then the teacher was given a sample shock to see what the learner would experience. Then the teacher would say word pairs to the learner and if he got them wrong then the learner was “given” a shock. There actually was no shocks. The instructor would prod the teacher to continue if the teacher stopped giving the shocks. This experiment raised many ethical concerns when dealing with scientific research because of the emotional stress on the teacher figure. Some people when doing this experiment started laughing oddly or were stressed out because of the physical pain given to the learner or the pain

In the next paragraphs I will consider some theories, factors and evidence on cognitive controlling of emotion in terms of

Within The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, he mentions that there are two ancient truths concerning how the mind works. The first truth is the foundational idea of the book: the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict with each other. The second truth is Shakespeare’s idea about how “thinking makes it so.” (or, as Buddha said, “Our life is the creation of our mind.”) Like a rider, on the back of an elephant, the conscious, reasoning part of the mind has only limited control of what the elephant does. Nowadays, we know the cause of these divisions, and a few ways to help the rider and the elephant work as a better team. We can improve this ancient idea today by explaining why most people’s minds have a bias toward seeing threats and engaging in useless worry. To change this bias, we can use three techniques to increase happiness, one ancient, and two very new.