Why Happiness Includes More Negative Emotions

Have you ever thought about what happiness means? — As a rule, modern men and women define it as a set of positive emotions, which makes their life much better, filling it up with bright colors. However, what about the research that contradicts everything you have thought before? Are you ready to try something new and quite the opposite? Today we are going to represent some negative emotions that may be included in the happiness definition.

Following the professional point of view, modern people may feel happier when they get the emotions they wish, even if those feelings are negative, for example, anger or hatred. In general, human happiness is much more than ordinary pleasure and avoiding any soul pain. It is about having experiences that are meaningful and valuable. Everything depends on the context. Taking into account this parameter, some emotions may be considered as positive under one condition and harmful under the other.

In most cases, the participants of this experiment (both men and women) wanted to feel something more pleasant than they have once experienced in their lives. However, at the same time, 11 % of the participants were going to feel the so-called transcendent emotions, the most typical of which were love and empathy. The surprising thing is that 10% would be glad to feel anger or hatred. The scientists were surprised to get such a small difference between the different groups.

Initially, the people who participated in this experiment were asked about the emotions which they wanted and the feelings they got in their lives. After that, men and women rated the general satisfaction of their current position. They needed to mention the depressive symptoms as well. Despite the cultural features, people who experienced much more different emotions that they wished told about the more significant life satisfaction and a low rate of harmful or even depressive symptoms. It did not matter whether those initial feelings were positive or negative.

Up to the present moment, only such bad emotions as, for example, ordinary hatred and intense anger, typical hostility and severe contempt have been taken into account in the experiment. In modern psychology, they are called as negative self-enhancing ones. However, it is not a full list, of course. It has been already published in media that future research will include such unpleasant feelings as guilt and shame, fear, and sadness. The list of positive emotions, which were investigated carefully in the recent study, involved deep love and colossal empathy, real trust and inspiring excitement, immense passion, and steady contentment. Here we cannot but mention about one more amazing fact, which has been demonstrated by the experiment. The choice of the feelings people wished to feel depending on personal values and different cultural norms. However, those links have not been examined directly yet. Perhaps, new research will be devoted to this direction.

Related posts:

The education system in India will teach us how to study and clear the papers. If we fail to submit the work then the teachers use negative “Punishment” method which bad and create negative pressure…

Setelah pemotretan selesai, anak ini langsung menuju ruang interview dengan senyuman yang amat manis. Saat melangkah masuk ke ruangan, aura anak itu menyebar bagaikan parfum ke seluruh sudut ruangan…

How can I be happy if I have no money? How can I be happier? What is self-help? Do I need to have a lot of money to be happy? Can I be happy and broke?