Do You Know These Nine Varieties of Positive

Emotion?

Posted Dec 21, 2017

Psychologists used to think of “positive emotion” in a very simple way: Happiness sits at the
opposite end of a continuum from unhappiness. Being on the happy side is associated with a set
of (sometimes unhappy) consequences, such as thinking in oversimplified and stereotypic ways.

Source: Lani Shiota, author of "Beyond Happiness," used with permission

But Michelle "Lani" Shiota and her colleagues disagree. They recently reviewed an impressive
array of findings—including studies of human behavior, cognition, and bodily physiology as well
as brain chemistry, in animals ranging from lobsters to rhesus monkeys and their human cousins.
Their review, published in the American Psychologist, suggests that positive emotion is not one
thing at all, bug at least nine different experiences that may have very different consequences for
behavior and thought.

The problem with "positive emotion"

On the classic view, if you are experiencing “positive emotion,” you will not want to think too
hard. Whatever you’re doing must be working, so why overthink things? But along with Vlad
Griskevicius and Samantha Neufeld, Shiota did a study in which they presented college students
with weak or strong arguments advocating a controversial proposal (that the students should be
required to take a series of comprehensive examinations before graduating from college; not an
idea college students are likely to be enthusiastic about). If people in a “positive mood” don't
think very hard, they should disregard the quality of the arguments and instead just focus on how
many arguments they heard (so that nine bad arguments are just as persuasive as nine good
arguments). That is indeed what happened when people were feeling amused, enthusiastic, or
content. But the opposite happened when people were feeling awe or nurturant love—those
participants were much more persuaded by the high quality arguments (what you’d expect from
people in a bad mood).

Functionally, the results made sense. When you are experiencing awe, your mind is open to new
information and ready to process that information carefully. When you are experiencing
nurturant love, you are likely taking care of young helpless children and so want to be careful. If
you are feeling amused, on the other hand, things are going well and you're having fun, so why
ask why?

Source: Shiota and colleagues' proposed "family tree" of positive emotions. Used with author's
permission

A new tree of positive emotions

Shiota and her colleagues argue that all positive emotions stem from a common ancestor—a
general “reward system” that helped our ancestors (going back before the dinosaurs) pursue
desirable foods. When something generally pleasant is on the horizon, a burst of dopamine in the
brain’s mesolimbic circuit produces a general emotional state of enthusiastic anticipation, or
“wanting.” When you feel that general positivity, your attention is focused, and you are more
likely to remember anyone or anything in the center of your attentional field.

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The branches: The emotional subsystems

Shiota and her colleagues review evidence for several distinct positive emotions (linked to activity
in additional neurotransmitters beyond dopamine):

Pride. People feel pride when they accomplish something important and socially valued;
something that merits a boost in social status. Shiota and colleagues review evidence linking pride
to serotonin activity as well as dopamine. A study by Wai and Bond (2002) found that
experimentally boosting serotonin levels led to more assertive and confident behavior. Jessica
Tracy and her colleagues have suggested that there is a broad tendency across species for
serotonin to be linked to dominance and display of pride.

Sexual desire. This emotion, obviously necessary for reproductive success, is associated with a
very different pattern of physiological activity than pride. Research across species demonstrates
that testosterone is a key hormone involved in promoting sexual arousal, and that this is true for
females as well as males. (It doesn't require testes to produce testosterone; females also produce
testosterone in their adrenal glands.) (Dabbs & Dabbs, 2000)

Sensory pleasure, attachment love, and gratitude. Whereas pride and sexual desire are
appetitive emotions, prompting us to go get whatever we want, some positive emotions are more
linked to enjoying the moment. When we are consuming something purely pleasurable, like a
bowl of Ben and Jerry’s Double Chocolate Fudge ice cream, our opioid receptors become active;
the same receptors that are activated by addictive drugs such as heroin, codeine, and morphine.
Shiota and her colleagues review evidence that opioid neurotransmitters also help alleviate the
distress of being rejected by or separated from our loved ones. This system may be active when
we are feeling gratitude as well.

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Amusement and play. According to Shiota and her colleagues, we experience amusement
when we play. Although play is fun, it also serves the important purpose of practicing some new
skill, like throwing a spear or swinging a golf club, in a situation where the consequences are not
too serious (it’s not so fun if you're fending off an attacking leopard, or a making a clumsy
Mulligan shot with Phil Mickelson watching). Shiota suggests that amusement may involve broad
activity in the basal ganglia, a group of structures sitting under your cerebral cortex behind your
forehead and between your temples, which are full of cannabinoid receptors.

Contentment and nurturant love. When you’ve just eaten a big, delicious plate of tagliatelle
smothered in ragù Bolognese, and you’re feeling pleasantly full, oxytocin helps produce a sense of
pleasant fulfillment -- what Shiota and colleagues call contentment. Oxytocin has also been
much-lauded lately as the “love hormone.” While this is something of an exaggeration, oxytocin
activity can be triggered by cuddling a baby, or seeing your lover’s smile. Contentment is
associated with the sympathetic fight-or-flight system being turned down, and the more
Zen parasympathetic system taking over.

What don’t we know about the positive emotions?

Shiota and her colleagues are admirably careful in developing their case. They in fact include a
lovely table laying out where there is good evidence for their model and where their speculations
have yet to be tested.

Although all the evidence is not yet in, some parts of the case are pretty clear. Positive emotion
isn’t just one thing. What’s going on in our brains and bodies when we are feeling proud, amused,
content, nurturant, satisfied, sexually aroused or simply feeling fond of our love objects are
different experiences, with different implications for what we’ll do next.

Shiota and her colleagues end with another set of questions yet to be answered, regarding the
practical consequences of making these distinctions. Here’s one interesting question:
Psychotherapists have traditionally focused on reducing different types of negative emotions, but
might there be some useful treatments that focus instead on increasing different types of positive
emotions, specifically tailoring a particular positive emotion to a particular psychological
problem?

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