Positive Psychology: You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them

Saturday, March 23, 2019

You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them | Li...

You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them

Can you look at someone's face and know what they're feeling? Does everyone experience happiness, sadness and anxiety the same way?

What are emotions anyway? For the past 25 years, psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett has mapped facial expressions, scanned brains and analyzed hundreds of physiology studies to understand what emotions really are.

She shares the results of her exhaustive research -- and explains how we may have more control over our emotions than we think.

Link: https://youtu.be/0gks6ceq4eQ

Positive Psychology given credence by Academia:

Positive psychology is the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.

Commentators on the subject Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, note that:

"The field of positive psychology at the subjective level is about valued subjective experiences: well-being, contentment, and satisfaction (in the past); hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and happiness (in the present).

At the individual level, it is about positive individual traits: the capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent, and wisdom.

At the group level, it is about the civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship: responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, moderation,tolerance, and work ethic."