Positivity: Top-Notch Research Reveals the 3 to 1 Ratio That Will Change Your Life

by Barbara L. Fredrickson

I’ve introduced you to ten forms of positivity: joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love. Now I want you to get to know each one personally. Discover what you and this feeling share in common. Of course, each is already familiar to you to some degree, and terms for describing them are already deeply embedded in our language. I suspect, though, you may be less aware of their full scope and beauty. You may not have previously considered the aspects of each state as scientists have investigated them. And you might not have appreciated all the moments in your life when each has entered your heart. I focus on these ten positive emotions for two reasons. First, they are targets of a growing amount of scientific research, including my own. Second, over the years I’ve examined the daily emotional experiences of hundreds of people— ranging from college students to working men and women in midlife and beyond. From this I’ve learned that these ten forms of positivity color people’s day-to-day lives the most. Other forms certainly exist.2 Yet my research shows that these ten are the most common. With one important exception, I describe them in the order of their relative frequency, starting with the ones people feel most often, and moving on toward those felt more rarely. The exception is love, which appears to be the most frequently experienced form of positivity. I describe it last (and you’ll soon see why).