What research is still needed with regard to positive emotions?
We know a lot about the physiological processes related to stress, anxiety and anger and how these emotions shorten our lives and harm our immune system and our organs. But we don’t yet know what effects emotions such as compassion and a sense of beauty and awe have in the long run in terms of resilience and health. These kinds of questions represent enormous opportunities for the field, to understand how positive emotions are embodied in our nervous systems, and how they enable more meaningful lives. We’re also starting to generate data showing that when positive emotions like compassion and pride are activated, they stimulate different regions of the brain than emotions like anger and disgust. That work starts to, in a very early sense, tell a story about the genetically encoded physiological underpinnings of positive emotions. What about your work might psychologists find most surprising? Psychologists tend to think of our core human design as being about fight-or-flight tendencies
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