Research in positive psychology continues to contribute to the understanding of the significance of human virtues as well as the value that experiencing positive emotions has on individual well-being, including building strengths, broadening resources, and increasing mental health. The benefits that the creative arts have on increasing psychological health and creating positive emotions are also an important but understudied area of research. The purpose of the current study was to examine, in a manner similar to the written disclosure paradigm, how the creation of mandalas while reflecting on the positive emotions of love and joy related to increased psychological well-being, and continued positive affect in a college sample. It was also hypothesized that the mere act of expressing personally felt emotions, regardless of positive or negative, while creating mandalas would reveal a significant increase in psychological and physical health relative to the control condition. Benefits to participants were measured in terms of changes in the variables of post-traumatic stress severity symptoms, depressive symptoms, anxiety, spiritual meaning, the frequency of physical symptoms and illness, as well as positive and negative affect. A series of one-way analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) comparing the experimental and control groups were conducted for all outcome measures at Time 2 and at 1-month follow-up. Results revealed no significant differences between the groups on any of the health measures. Next, a series of ANCOVA were also conducted comparing the experimental and control groups for general positive and negative affect and basic positive and negative emotion before and after each drawing session at Time 1, 2 and 3 as well as at the 1-month follow-up. Although sustained positive emotion was not supported between Time 3 and the 1-month follow-up, participants felt higher general positive affect and basic positive emotion after each drawing session focusing on love and joy. Implications of these results and further research will be discussed.

Social isolation and loneliness are problems that affect the quality of life of many older adults. As the proportion of older people increases in Canada and other nations, studying factors that could improve the quality of life of older people becomes even more crucial. Two studies were conducted drawing on longitudinal data (1996 and 2001) from the Aging in Manitoba Project (Study 1 N = 760) and the Successful Aging Study 2003 (Study 2 N = 228). The main objective of Study 1 was to identify the characteristics of older individuals who differed in their loneliness trajectories over time, allowing for a comparison of those who became lonely, overcame loneliness, were persistently lonely, and were persistently not lonely. A discriminant function analysis examined the social, demographic, physical, and psychological factors as potential discriminators of the loneliness trajectories. When compared to those who were neither lonely at time 1 or time 2, the most important discriminators of persistent loneliness were: living alone, being in poor health, and having low perceptions of control. These predictors were found to be more important than people’s friendships or social activities, highlighting the complexity of loneliness in later life. Study 2 examined the longitudinal relationships between loneliness, health, physical activity, and mortality, and tested Fredrickson’s Broaden and Build Theory that positive emotions (happiness) might serve to “undo” the detrimental effects of negative emotions like loneliness. Regression analyses showed that loneliness longitudinally predicted health, physical activity, and mortality, underscoring the importance of socioemotional variables to health. Moreover, happiness moderated the relationships between loneliness and physical activity and loneliness and mortality. Thus, in support of Fredrickson’s hypothesis, results suggested that happiness has the power to “undo” the detrimental effects of loneliness on physical activity and even on mortality. Being happy may indeed offset the negative consequences of being lonely. Based on these two studies, it was concluded that future interventions could target positive emotions, perceptions of control, and loneliness as ways of ultimately enhancing the lifespan, healthspan, and wellspan of older adults.

Social isolation and loneliness are problems that affect the quality of life of many older adults. As the proportion of older people increases in Canada and other nations, studying factors that could improve the quality of life of older people becomes even more crucial. Two studies were conducted drawing on longitudinal data (1996 and 2001) from the Aging in Manitoba Project (Study 1 N = 760) and the Successful Aging Study 2003 (Study 2 N = 228). The main objective of Study 1 was to identify the characteristics of older individuals who differed in their loneliness trajectories over time, allowing for a comparison of those who became lonely, overcame loneliness, were persistently lonely, and were persistently not lonely. A discriminant function analysis examined the social, demographic, physical, and psychological factors as potential discriminators of the loneliness trajectories. When compared to those who were neither lonely at time 1 or time 2, the most important discriminators of persistent loneliness were: living alone, being in poor health, and having low perceptions of control. These predictors were found to be more important than people’s friendships or social activities, highlighting the complexity of loneliness in later life. Study 2 examined the longitudinal relationships between loneliness, health, physical activity, and mortality, and tested Fredrickson’s Broaden and Build Theory that positive emotions (happiness) might serve to “undo” the detrimental effects of negative emotions like loneliness. Regression analyses showed that loneliness longitudinally predicted health, physical activity, and mortality, underscoring the importance of socioemotional variables to health. Moreover, happiness moderated the relationships between loneliness and physical activity and loneliness and mortality. Thus, in support of Fredrickson’s hypothesis, results suggested that happiness has the power to “undo” the detrimental effects of loneliness on physical activity and even on mortality. Being happy may indeed offset the negative consequences of being lonely. Based on these two studies, it was concluded that future interventions could target positive emotions, perceptions of control, and loneliness as ways of ultimately enhancing the lifespan, healthspan, and wellspan of older adults.

1 Military Hospital offers health service to employees of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), South African Army (SAA), South African Air Force (SAAF), South African Navy (SAN), and the South African Military Health Services (SAHMS). Most of the SANDF employees who suffer Thoracic Spinal Cord Injuries (TSCI) are injured during their term of service in the SANDF. Individuals with spinal cord injury experience challenges related to work, family, finances, loss of independence and societal attitudinal barriers (Crewe&Krause, 2002). Some individuals adjust well to these challenges and are able to move forward in a functional and productive manner (Livneh&Antonak, 1997; 1994). This research investigated how certain thoracic spinal cord injured (TSCI) individuals managed to adjust to their rehabilitation process. The research focused on the contribution of positive emotions to the rehabilitation process. Positive psychology focuses attention on the sources of psychological wellness, such as positive emotions and positive experience. It also focuses on individual differences in human strengths and virtues, positive institutions and what makes life worth living (Lyubomirsky&Abbe, 2005). The current study aimed to investigate how fortigenic qualities contribute to positive rehabilitation experiences for individuals with thoracic spinal cord injury. A qualitative design using in-depth, face-to-face, semi-structured interviews was selected to explore the rehabilitation experiences of TSCI individuals. One of the basic tenets of qualitative research is the existence of multiple realities. An individual’s reality is derived from factors such as age, sex, class, ethnicity, abilities and disabilities and the way in which these factors affect life experiences (Hammersley&Atkinson, 1998). A sample of 3 respondents was selected. The respondents were members of the South African National Defence Force. The respondents were males aged between 25 and 40 years old who had been living with disability for two to three years. The TSCI individuals were interviewed to gain a better understanding of their rehabilitation experiences. The ideas that emerged from this research interview conversations were analysed through the use of an interpretive thematic analysis The findings indicate that positive emotional states facilitated positive behavioral practices such as taking initiative and adapting and coping with the challenges that come with the disability. The study demonstrated that participants’ repertoire of positive emotions acts as a remedy for negative emotions. Thus, positive emotional states were shown to influence behavioral repertoires and impact on motivation to improve the self. These factors lead to a drive to rehabilitation. Positive qualities such as gratitude, humour, optimism and resilience impacted on the ways in which the respondents created meaning about life events. This resulted in broader behavioural repertoires that led to more explorative and adaptive behaviours. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Psychology / unrestricted

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between both self-efficacy for caregiving and personal gain and several variables related to well-being in caregivers (N = 70) of veterans who sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Specifically, the relationship between self-efficacy for caregiving and perceived physical health and the relationship between personal gain related to caregiving and depression and anxiety was examined. The relationship between caregiver personal gain and perceived care recipient behavior was also examined. Exploratory analyses considered kinship and racial/ethnic differences. This was a secondary analysis of pilot data collected at four Polytrauma Rehabilitation Centers (PRC) of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. It was a cross-sectional, pen and paper-based survey study mailed to caregivers of non-OEF/OIF veterans who were treated at a PRC for TBI between 2001 and 2008. Results suggest that self-efficacy for caregiving is not associated with subjective health or physical functioning in the caregiver. There was also no direct effect of personal gain associated with caregiving on depression or anxiety. However, perceived burden was found to mediate the relationship between personal gain associated with caregiving and both depression and anxiety. No significant differences were found between Caucasian and non-Caucasian caregivers in number of hours spent providing care, perceived burden, or subjective health. Non-Caucasian caregivers reported significantly higher levels of physical functioning. No differences were found between parental and non-parental caregivers on measures of depression, anxiety, or perceived burden. These findings suggest that interventions for caregivers should focus on helping them find meaning in caregiving and articulate ways in which they have benefitted from caregiving. By helping caregivers highlight the benefits of caregiving, perceived burden may be decreased, which in turn may result in lower depression and anxiety levels.

Psychological resilience, conceptualized as the ability to bounce back from stress (Tugade, 2011), has garnered increased attention across various fields of psychology and related disciplines. Despite its popularity, researchers have yet to come to a consensus regarding the nomological network of this construct, as well as its distinctiveness from conceptually similar constructs (i.e., hardiness, grit). In this paper, I use meta-analytic techniques (Hunter & Schmidt, 2004) to quantitatively synthesize three decades of previous empirical work on resilience and related-constructs and their correlates, integrating findings from more than 400 studies. Results show that resilience overlaps substantially with big-five personality traits as a set and shows consistent, though more moderate, relationships with social support variables. Furthermore, results indicate that resilience and hardiness are not isomorphic constructs, as they demonstrate differential relationships with dispositional and situational correlates. Results also show that resilience and hardiness are both moderately to strongly related to health and well-being outcomes, in the anticipated directions, as well as proposed mediators in the literature (i.e., positive emotion, adaptive coping). However, incremental validity analyses consistently show that both resilience and hardiness only increment very marginally (i.e., on average 1-3% of the variance) over the big-five personality traits in predicting health and well-being outcomes. Taken together, this large-scale quantitative summary calls into question the distinctiveness of resilience from existing dispositional traits as well as its predictive utility in the health and well-being domain. Implications for future research, theory development, and measurement issues are discussed.

Research is lacking regarding the role of positive emotions expressed by parents during interparental conflict (IPC) on child functioning. This study examined the relationship between parents’ expressions of positive emotions (PE) during IPC and child functioning. Child functioning measures included children’s feelings of happiness during an IPC laboratory task between their parents, cognitions regarding IPC in the home, feelings of emotional security in the marital system, and psychological adjustment (i.e., internalizing and externalizing behaviors, and depression). In addition, this study tested whether PE predicted these measures of child functioning above and beyond conflict resolution, and whether child temperamental surgency moderated the relationship between PE and child functioning. It was hypothesized that more PE would be related to more adaptive child functioning scores (Research Question 1), and that this relationship would occur above and beyond conflict resolution (Research Question 2). Furthermore, it was hypothesized that for children with high levels of temperamental surgency, more PE would be related to more adaptive child functioning scores compared to less PE (Research Question 3), mainly due to the proclivity for surgent individuals to experience and express positive emotions more strongly compared to less-surgent individuals. Participants included 98 parent dyads and their children between the ages of 9-11 years. The family triad came in to the laboratory and completed questionnaires and a problem discussion task in which parents discussed a conflict topic with their child present in the room. Trained coders coded parents’ expressions of happiness during the problem discussion task, as well as signs of conflict resolution. Children reported on their feelings of happiness immediately following the problem discussion, and on their perceptions of their parent’s IPCs and their feelings of depression. Mother’s reported on their children’s security in the marital system, internalizing and externalizing behaviors, and surgency traits. These child functioning measures were regressed on mother PE and father PE separately to determine whether parents’ expressions of PE were related to child functioning. Child gender, family socioeconomic status, and an average of parents’ negative emotions (i.e., anger, sadness, and fear) during the problem discussion were included in the analyses as potential covariates. Results from Research Question 1 were such that mother PE was positively associated with children’s feelings of happiness during the problem discussion, and father PE was negatively associated with children's negative emotional reactivity (a component of children’s sense of emotional security in the marital system). Research Question 2 results showed that mother PE predicted child happiness above and beyond conflict resolution, and that father PE predicted children’s negative emotional reactivity above and beyond conflict resolution. Finally, Research Question 3 results showed that child temperamental surgency moderated the relationship between mother and father PE and children’s reports of conflict properties (i.e., children’s perceptions of their parents’ conflicts as more frequent, more intense, and less resolved). Decomposition of the interactions indicated that as father PE increased, children with surgency scores in the top 66th percentile reported increases in conflict properties. Alternatively, for children with surgency scores below the 25th percentile, increases in father PE was associated with decreases in reports of conflict properties. All other analyses were nonsignificant. This study provides an important first step in determining whether parents’ expressions of positive emotions during IPC are related to child functioning, and whether child temperament plays a role in this relationship.

Nostalgia is a psychological phenomenon we all can relate to but have a hard time to define. What characterizes the mental state of feeling nostalgia? What psychological function does it serve? Different published materials in a wide range of fields, from consumption research and sport science to clinical psychology, psychoanalysis and sociology, all have slightly different definition of this mental experience. Some claim it is a psychiatric disease giving melancholic emotions to a memory you would consider a happy one, while others state it enforces positivity in our mood. First in this paper a thorough review of the history of nostalgia is presented, then a look at the body of contemporary nostalgia research to see what it could be constituted of. Finally, we want to dig even deeper to see what is suggested by the literature in terms of triggers and functions. Some say that digitally recorded material like music and videos has a potential nostalgic component, which could trigger a reflection of the past in ways that was difficult before such inventions. Hinting towards that nostalgia as a cultural phenomenon is on a rising scene. Some authors say that odors have the strongest impact on nostalgic reverie due to activating it without too much cognitive appraisal. Cognitive neuropsychology has shed new light on a lot of human psychological phenomena‘s and even though empirical testing have been scarce in this field, it should get a fair scrutiny within this perspective as well and hopefully helping to clarify the definition of the word to ease future investigations, both scientifically speaking and in laymen‘s retro hysteria.Keywords:

Research suggests that the deployment cycle is associated with decreased psychological well-being in military spouses, yet not all individuals married to military service members experience psychopathology. It may be that spouses who do not experience reduced well-being possess personal resources, such as positive emotions, that protect them against the stresses of military life. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to determine the effect of deployment on the well-being of military spouses and examine whether personal resources protected military spouses and enhanced their wellbeing throughout the deployment cycle. A synthesis of the existing literature was performed in order to determine the direction and magnitude of the effect of deployment on the psychological well-being of military spouses. For the primary analyses, participants were drawn from a convenience sample of military spouses stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. Meta-analysis, hierarchical linear regression, and structural equation modeling were used to test study hypotheses. In the first study, a meta-analytic review, deployment was found to have a moderate effect on psychological well-being, such that spouses experienced greater psychological problems during deployment. Two studies were conducted as part of the primary analyses. In the first, positivity was found to moderate the relationship between stress and depressive symptoms during deployment. Specifically, the relationship between stress and depressive symptoms was stronger for spouses with low levels of positivity. Finally, the third study found that adaptive coping, maladaptive coping, and resilience completely mediated the relationship between positive emotions and depressive symptoms. Of the three mediators, adaptive coping was found to be the most influential. Together, the results of these three studies illuminate the detrimental effect of deployment on the psychological well-being of military spouses, while providing support for the broaden-and-build theory's proposed roles of positive emotions -- broadening, building, and undoing -- in a unique population. Study limitations, implications for military spouses, and suggestions for future directions in research are discussed.

Doctor of Philosophy / Special Education, Counseling and Student Affairs / Fred O. Bradley / The broaden-and-build theory posits that frequently experiencing positive emotions leads to broadened awareness and functioning, and over time, built resources. These resources function as reserves during difficult times. Considering recommendations for increasing positive emotions and findings regarding human-animal interactions, it is reasonable to expect that companion animals might function in a manner to increase positive emotions. Many people have companion animals, and they are a preventative, natural intervention without associated stigmas. Therefore, knowing more about how companion animals impact their humans has practical implications for mental health professionals. The current study investigated various aspects of human-animal interactions that are conceivably related to positive emotions (human-animal bond and amount of time spent with animal) in different configurations (people with and without companion animals; people with dogs, cats, and horses), while considering potential confounds (time spent with humans in connected interactions and time spent outside). Time spent in connected interactions with other humans is the only variable that predicted positivity, and this was only in people without companion animals. This is consistent with previous findings that interacting with other people is related to positive emotions.