Does positive affect influence health?

Abstract

This review highlights consistent patterns in the literature associating positive affect (PA) and physical health. However, it also raises serious conceptual and methodological reservations. Evidence suggests an association of trait PA and lower morbidity and of state and trait PA and decreased symptoms and pain. Trait PA is also associated with increased longevity among older community-dwelling individuals. The literature on PA and surviving serious illness is inconsistent. Experimentally inducing intense bouts of activated state PA triggers short-term rises in physiological arousal and associated (potentially harmful) effects on immune, cardiovascular, and pulmonary function. However, arousing effects of state PA are not generally found in naturalistic ambulatory studies in which bouts of PA are typically less intense and often associated with health protective responses. A theoretical framework to guide further study is proposed.Keywords: positive affect, mortality, morbidity, health, emotions A cheerful heart is good medicine.-Proverbs 17:22Self-help books, popular magazines, and Sunday newspaper supplements have suggested for years that positive affect (PA) can improve people's health. However, this hypothesis has been relatively ignored in research on psychological predictors of health. For example, a search of PsycINFO revealed that there are over 20 times more studies on depression and health than there are on happiness and health. Although the recent interest in "positive psychology" has focused attention on the potential benefits of positive feelings (e.g., Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), there has been little critical discussion of the evidence linking PA to physical health. In this article, we review the literature examining the association between measures of PA and markers of physical health status, examine the conceptual and methodological weaknesses in the existing literature, and discuss how PA could get "under the skin" to influence health. PAWe define PA as the feelings that reflect a level of pleasurable engagement with the environment (Clark, Watson, & Leeka, 1989) such as happiness, joy, excitement, enthusiasm, and contentment. These can be brief, longer lasting, or more stable traitlike feelings. Although some use the terms affect, mood, and emotion to distinguish duration, these uses are not applied consistently in the literature, and thus we use these terms interchangeably. We, however, distinguish between studies using measures that assess more stable disposition-like PA, which we refer to as trait PA, and those measuring or manipulating relatively short-term bouts of positive emotions, which we refer to as state PA.To date, reviews examining associations between positive psychological constructs and health outcomes have been broad in scope, including traits such as self-esteem, extraversion, purpose, mastery, and optimism along with PA (Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005;Ryff, 2003;Salovey, Rothman, Detweiler, & Steward, 2000;Zautra, 2003). Hence, it has been difficult to separate t...

Associations Between Positive and Negative Affect and 12-Month Physical Disorders in a National Sample

“…These results Clin Psychol Med Settings (2012) 19:197-210 203 support emerging evidence suggesting that positive affect may be a protective factor against illnesses (Fredrickson, 1998;Pressman & Cohen, 2005;Richman et al, 2005). For example, positive affect, independent of negative affect, has been demonstrated to be inversely related to the risk of incident stroke (Ostir, Markides, Peek, & Goodwin, 2001), 10-year incidence of coronary heart disease (Davidson, Mostofsky, & Whang, 2010), mortality in medical in-patients (Scherer & Hermann-Lingen, 2009), and mortality in diabetic patients (Moskowitz, Epel, & Acree, 2008).…”

“…Of these factors, individual differences in the experience and expression of various distressing emotional states-i.e., anger/hostility, depression, anxiety, and cynicism-are routinely discussed and have been found to be associated with numerous adverse health conditions, including coronary heart disease (Kubzansky & Kawachi, 2000;Suls & Bunde, 2005), high blood pressure (Jorgensen, Johnson, Kolodziej, & Schreer, 1996;Patten et al, 2009;Yan et al, 2003), asthma (Huovinen, Kaprio, & Koskenvuo, 2001;Lehrer, Isenberg, & Hochron, 1993;Loerbroks, Apfelbacher, Thayer, Debling, & Sturmer, 2009), stroke (Colantonio, Kasl, & Ostfeld, 1992;Everson, Roberts, Goldberg, & Kaplan, 1998), and diabetes (Anderson, Freedland, Clouse, & Lustman, 2001;Lustman, Frank, & McGill, 1991). However, the role and importance of positive emotions in health is less clear, although emerging evidence suggests that these emotions may serve as a protective factor against illnesses and mortality (Fredrickson, 1998;Pressman & Cohen, 2005;Richman et al, 2005). Thus, the primary objective of this study was to explore this more extensively individual differences in both negative and positive emotional states and their associations with a range of physical disorders.…”

Psychological symptom clusters, psychiatric comorbidity and poor self-reported health status following myocardial infarction

“…In contrast to the data linking negative emotional states to CAD, the potential protective effect of positive psychological factors has been less extensively investigated (36), and data linking positive affect and health is not definitive (37). In the largest study to date, participants were assessed for optimistic versus pessimistic explanatory style and followed for 10 years.…”

Promoting well-being through group drumming with mental health service users and their carers

“…An important implication is that an individual is only completely healthy when he or she experiences both low levels of psychopathological symptoms and a good state of well-being. Moreover, positive mental health may have effects on individual and social functioning that are independent from the effects of psychopathology (Howell, Kern, & Lyubomirsky, 2007; Pressman & Cohen, 2005; Veenhoven, 2008). Crucially, both reduction of symptoms and promotion of well-being are needed for complete mental health.…”