The Science of Emotions - A Conversation with Barbara Fredrickson

Howard Burton

• Publisher: Ideas Roadshow
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781771700498
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Neuroscience & Neuropsychology
• Index: Psychology

Why do we smile, laugh and actively seek out personal connections with the people around us? Why does it feel good and what evolutionary purposes do our so-called "positive emotions" serve? This book is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Barbara Fredrickson, Director Positive Emotions & Psychology Laboratory at UNC Chapel Hill. Topics covered by this extensive conversation include Barbara's work on the science of positive emotions, including her broaden-and-build theory, the undoing effect and upward spirals, while highlighting relevant evolutionary-driven hypotheses together with measurement details of empirical studies. This carefully-edited book includes an introduction, Only Connect, and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter: I. Psychological Beginnings - Towards social psychologyEmotions, Scientifically - From endings to moments of intensityPositive vs. Negative Emotions - Evolutionary conundrumsPositive Psychology Emerges - Examining human flourishingBroaden and Build - A thesis emergesEmotional Measurement - Searching for objective criteriaThe Undoing Effect - A side benefit of positive emotionsTaking Charge - Cultivating positive emotional statesResponses - The perks and perils of relevancePersonal Flourishing - Bringing it homeLeveraging Positively - Generating upwards spiralsAbout Ideas Roadshow Conversations Series: This book is part of an expanding series of 100+ Ideas Roadshow conversations, each one presenting a wealth of candid insights from a leading expert in a focused yet informal setting to give non-specialists a uniquely accessible window into frontline research and scholarship that wouldn't otherwise be encountered through standard lectures and textbooks. For other books in this series visit our website: https://ideasroadshow.com/.

The Conversation

I. Psychological Beginnings

Towards social psychology

HB: How did your interest in psychology begin?

BF: My interest in psychology started in high school. Not exactly for the most highbrow reasons: my older sister was a psychology major and I wanted to be just like her. She was six years older and was doing graduate work in psychology at the time. I took a high school psychology course, which was pretty rare back then. I had a great teacher for that, which sparked my interest in the subject.

HB: What did this teacher do, exactly?

BF: Well, we did a lot of hands-on experimentation. We had our own Skinner box and trained our own rats. We conducted social-psychological experiments.

There were probably about 20 of us in the class—a very small class, with a great, hands-on instructor.

HB: So presumably you then went off to college with the goal in mind of studying psychology.

BF: Yes. But I had a good friend who was just a couple years ahead of me. He was a psychology major and it just wasn’t for him. He told me, “Do anything but be a psychology major.” So I really tested myself and took chemistry, economics and many other courses. I did well in those classes but I was just so drawn to psychology.

HB: So you came back.

BF: Yes. I had tried other things, but I realized that psychology was really for me. At the end of that experience, there was no question that those were the ideas that I wanted to be thinking about by that point.

HB: And when you came back to psychology, did you have a particular orientation in mind? Were you thinking about abnormal psychology or social psychology? How did that develop?

BF: Well, I went to Carleton College, a small, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. There were about four faculty members in psychology; and all of social psychology, personality psychology, and clinical psychology was represented by one faculty member, Neil Lutsky. He was my mentor (we still stay connected).

Those were the courses I really liked, and I knew that I wanted to do something in social psychology. I wasn’t so interested in the clinical side of clinical psychology. It’s not that I don’t care about people’s suffering and outcomes, but I realized that I was just much more drawn intellectually to How does this work? rather than, What can I do to make it better?

My natural orientation is centred on mechanisms: how to unpack why humans are the way they are. I realized my questions were really basic science questions.

HB: Do you think that you would have had a similar career trajectory today, when there is so much more emphasis placed on cognitive science and neuroscience?

BF: That’s a great question. I haven’t really thought about that. I probably would have started off with much more of a biological focus, which I’ve developed over the years, maybe starting as a postdoc in psychophysiology. I feel like psychology, as a field, is integrating so rapidly with a more biological approach, and having that knowledge and awareness as a strength early on would be really helpful, whether it’s neuroscience or immunology.

There are a lot of people who say, “If I could start over, I would do neuroscience.” I think the brain is fascinating, but I’m sometimes concerned that in all of our love of neuroscience, we’re sometimes forgetting about the body. The body is very significant, and is obviously deeply related to the brain. Part of our wisdom is in the body. It’s exciting for me to be able to be revealing some of that.

HB: Was that a view that you remember becoming aware of at a particular time? Was there some particular point in your academic career when you started thinking, “Hey, this is all kind of together—the brain and the body influencing one another”? Was there a particular “road to Damascus” moment for you about the link between the two?

BF: As a field, social psychology has gone through many different phases of self-concern about its overall relevance. Social psychologists naturally believe what they do is fascinating and interesting, but when I was in graduate school, there was a constant preoccupation with making it relevant, connecting more to health, illness and biology.

That’s why I sought out the postdoc that I did, which allowed me to get training in psychophysiology to begin to make that clear bridge to health.

HB: So let’s get back to your career—I had left you in Minnesota as an undergraduate a few moments ago. Before you did your postdoc, you presumably went to graduate school. How did that happen?

BF: I had a good opportunity as an undergraduate to do research with my mentor, Neil Lutsky. His area, at the time, was bridging between social psychology and personality psychology: how we perceive other people’s character and personality traits.

I worked a lot on that; and at that time I thought that was what I wanted to do. I applied to schools where there were faculty members who did that kind of work, and ended up at Stanford.

In the end, my interests changed somewhat, but that’s how I first decided that I wanted to be a social psychologist. At the time, I did have a glimmer of thinking “Maybe I’ll be an organizational psychologist” (at the time it was called “industrial organizational psychology”), but after doing an independent study on that work, it seemed to me that that area of psychology was lagging behind social psychology—it was taking what was known in social psychology and applying it. So I thought to myself, “I might as well get training in social psychology so I can be ahead of the curve.”

Questions for Discussion:

1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of taking a wide variety of courses outside of your core interests at the undergraduate level? Do you think that doing so should be common practice for most people?
2. How would you define “social psychology”, exactly?

II. Emotions, Scientifically

From endings to moments of intensity

HB: When I was an undergraduate, there was this prevailing attitude that those who study psychology do so because they are consumed by their own personal problems that they’re trying to solve—that was the stereotype, anyway.

BF: The “me search”.

HB: Exactly. But what you’re describing to me seems clearly motivated in a very different direction indeed: quite outward-looking and positive. You’re not looking so much at the abnormal aspect of the ...

Table of contents

• A Note on the Text
• Introduction
• The Conversation
• Continuing the Conversation