I am skeptical of promises that positive thinking will transform every hardship into opportunity. Life does not become safe because we imagine it so. Yet skepticism about exaggerated promises should not blind us to the quieter value of positive experience. A moment of interest can draw us back into learning. Shared laughter can make connection easier. Contentment can give us room to absorb an experience we have hurried past.

Positive emotions matter for more than the pleasure they bring. Their contribution to wellness may emerge through what they invite us to do. We become interested and investigate. We enjoy someone’s company and stay in conversation. Something useful can outlast the feeling that first invited us forward.

What Broaden and Build Theory Explains

Fredrickson’s theory addresses a question that received relatively little attention in earlier emotion research: What do positive emotions accomplish? The immediate usefulness of fear is easier to recognize. Fear prepares us to escape danger. Anger may organize us to confront an obstacle. The adaptive purpose of an enjoyable afternoon with a friend is less obvious when we look only for an immediate response to a threat.

In her foundational account, Barbara Fredrickson proposed that emotions such as joy, interest, contentment, and love can expand our momentary thought-action repertoire. The phrase refers to the range of thoughts and actions that come to mind. Joy may invite play; interest may invite exploration; contentment may invite savoring and integration. These tendencies can help us engage with opportunities beyond the demands of immediate survival (Fredrickson, 2001).

This is a theory about emotional experience and its consequences. Positive thinking refers more broadly to the interpretations or expectations we cultivate. We can repeat an optimistic statement without feeling interested, connected, or content. Broaden-and-build theory concerns what these feelings may make possible, rather than the power of reassuring statements alone.

Positive emotion also belongs within a larger understanding of wellness. In Flourish, Martin Seligman includes positive emotion alongside engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. His PERMA model places feeling better within a broader account of a fulfilling life (Seligman, 2011).

How Positive Emotions Broaden Attention

Attention is selective. We cannot absorb every detail of our surroundings, and our emotional state can influence which details receive priority. Broaden-and-build theory proposes that positive emotions can sometimes widen this field, making a greater range of thoughts and responses available.

Wadlinger and Isaacowitz examined visual attention in two eye-tracking studies with college students. Participants placed in a positive mood showed some evidence of broader attention. The findings depended on the emotional content of the pictures: increased attention to images at the sides of the display occurred for highly positive stimuli. The result supports a specific broadening effect, rather than a general improvement in everything people notice or judge (Wadlinger & Isaacowitz, 2006).

Consider someone who joins a community class after a subject sparks a little curiosity. Interest opens a possibility that a routine evening might otherwise exclude. The person asks a question, tries an unfamiliar task, or speaks to someone new. This is an everyday illustration of the proposed movement from emotion toward a wider range of engagement.

Broadening can be useful when we need alternatives. Close attention can be useful when a detail demands accuracy. The value of either depends partly on what the situation requires.

Building Resources for Future Demands

The building component asks what these experiences leave behind. The person attending the class may eventually learn a skill, become more comfortable participating, or develop a friendship. The original interest can fade while something acquired through engagement remains available.

Fredrickson describes these resources as potentially intellectual, psychological, social, and physical. Knowledge can help us solve a later problem. A practiced skill can expand what we are able to do. A relationship can become a source of support. The theory proposes that repeated positive experiences encourage activities through which such resources develop (Fredrickson, 2001).

In Open Hearts Build Lives, researchers assigned 202 employees to loving-kindness meditation training or a group waiting to receive it. The main analysis included 139 participants who completed enough of the study. Training increased daily positive emotions. Those increases were linked with gains in resources such as supportive relationships and a sense of purpose; the resource gains, in turn, were linked with greater life satisfaction and fewer depressive symptoms (Fredrickson et al., 2008).

The study provides experimental support for the training approach and evidence consistent with the proposed building process. It does not establish every link in the theory. Participants reported their own experiences, the comparison group did not receive another activity, and the study did not directly measure momentary broadening. It also could not establish how long the resources would endure after training or through later adversity. Its physical-health findings concerned reported symptoms rather than objective evidence of disease prevention.

A later review brought together 23 randomized studies of loving-kindness interventions. Benefits appeared when the comparison groups received no comparable activity. The interventions did not show clear advantages over groups receiving attention, another activity, or another treatment. This does not prove the approaches work equally well, but it leaves uncertainty about which benefits come specifically from loving-kindness practice (Petrovic et al., 2024).

The useful question for ordinary life is what remains after the feeling passes. Enjoyment has value in itself. When it also draws us into learning, practicing, or maintaining a relationship, it may contribute to something we can use again.

Positive Emotions and Recovery After Stress

Positive emotions may also contribute to recovery from emotional strain. Fredrickson’s account of the undoing hypothesis reviews experiments in which positive-emotion films were followed by faster cardiovascular recovery after induced negative emotional arousal, compared with neutral or sad films (Fredrickson, 2001).

Recovery is a related contribution, distinct from building a new resource. One concerns returning from a period of activation; the other concerns developing capacities that may remain available over time. A supportive conversation might offer immediate comfort and, through repeated exchanges, contribute to a stronger relationship. These are different possibilities within the same experience.

The experimental findings concern particular short-term physiological responses. They do not establish that pleasant feelings erase the consequences of chronic adversity. When danger or exhausting conditions continue, recovery may also require changes in our circumstances. Positive experience can contribute without carrying the entire burden.

Upward Spirals and Their Limits

Broaden-and-build theory proposes a potentially reinforcing process. Positive emotions can encourage broader engagement; the resources developed through those experiences may support future positive emotions. Fredrickson and Joiner describe this as an upward spiral and review research that developed beyond the early correlational studies (Fredrickson & Joiner, 2018).

Return to the community class. Growing competence might make participation more rewarding. A developing friendship might make returning more appealing. If that happens, the enjoyment and the resources can support further engagement. The example describes how a reinforcing process could unfold, while leaving room for the practical circumstances that influence whether it does.

The evidence does not make every link inevitable. Wu and Chang followed 329 Asian American participants over three months. People who initially reported more positive emotion later reported a more constructive attitude toward problems, more deliberate efforts to solve them, and less avoidance. However, the reverse pattern did not appear: better problem solving did not predict a later increase in positive emotion. The full feedback loop was not supported in that sample (Wu & Chang, 2019).

Because the study followed participants rather than assigning their emotional experiences, it cannot establish that positive emotion caused the later differences. An upward spiral remains a process to investigate and a possibility to cultivate. It is not a promise that a few pleasant experiences will set every life on an uninterrupted course toward flourishing.

Emotional Flexibility and Difficult Feelings

The familiar labels positive and negative describe how emotions feel more readily than whether they are useful. Fear can protect us. Sadness may accompany a meaningful loss. Anger can alert us to mistreatment. An unpleasant emotion can carry information that deserves our attention.

Nor do pleasant feelings require the disappearance of painful ones. Larsen and colleagues found that people could report happiness and sadness together in emotionally complex situations, including graduation and leaving college accommodation. We may appreciate a relationship while mourning a change in it. Such mixtures belong within a realistic understanding of emotional life (Larsen et al., 2001).

Kevin Rathunde, commenting on Fredrickson’s model, argued that creative development involves both broadening and narrowing. We need room to consider possibilities and sufficient focus to evaluate, revise, and complete them (Rathunde, 2000). In Finding Flow, Csikszentmihalyi describes deep engagement in activities that draw on our skills and present a manageable challenge. A flow state can involve concentrated effort without a continuous awareness of feeling happy (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997).

Bonanno and Burton’s framework of regulatory flexibility helps extend this discussion. They emphasize noticing what the situation requires, having more than one way to respond, and learning from the result. A response that helps in one circumstance may be poorly suited to another (Bonanno & Burton, 2013).

The class participant still needs to concentrate, tolerate mistakes, and decide which suggestions to follow. More options alone do not complete the work. Positive emotions may help open possibilities; flexibility helps us respond to changing demands. This connection is a way of considering the two frameworks together, rather than evidence for a single established model.

Making Room for Positive Experience

We can make room for pleasant experiences without demanding a particular emotional response. An activity may offer enjoyment, curiosity, or connection on one occasion and very little on another. Our task is to notice what supports engagement while allowing that response to vary.

Cultivating Positive Experience Without Forcing Happiness

The pressure to feel happy can become part of the difficulty. In two studies involving women, Mauss and colleagues examined whether placing a strong value on happiness could sometimes undermine it. Under relatively low-stress conditions, stronger valuing of happiness was associated with poorer well-being. In an experiment, encouraging participants to value happiness also reduced their positive response to a happy film. Disappointment about how they felt helped explain the experimental result (Mauss et al., 2011).

These findings concern particular conditions, rather than showing that every pursuit of happiness backfires. For daily life, a useful distinction is between attending to an experience and continually judging whether it has made us happy enough. We might enjoy a walk, a conversation, or a few pages of a book while letting the experience develop at its own pace. The experience need not become a test of our emotional success.

Fred Bryant’s review describes savoring as attending to, appreciating, and enhancing positive experience. Pausing over a friend’s kindness or recalling a meaningful event can give a pleasant experience more room in awareness. Researchers continue to investigate how savoring works and how best to measure it; a particular exercise cannot be assumed to create lasting resilience (Bryant, 2021).

We can also follow a manageable interest or make time for someone we trust. Trying a recipe, returning to a hobby, or asking a question that opens a conversation offers something concrete to engage with. These are practical possibilities informed by the theory. Their value can include the immediate experience and whatever learning or connection develops through participation.

Recognizing Quiet Forms of Wellbeing

Positive experience need not be exuberant. Lee and colleagues developed a measure of peace of mind through three studies attentive to Chinese cultural perspectives. Their work highlights peacefulness and internal harmony as aspects of affective well-being that measures emphasizing excitement may overlook (Lee et al., 2013).

This research does not directly test broaden-and-build theory. It does broaden the conversation about what feeling well can mean. Contentment, ease, and a sense of harmony deserve room alongside enthusiasm. We need not imitate someone else’s preferred emotional intensity to recognize something nourishing in our own experience.

The aim is to create conditions in which a wider range of experience becomes available. Sometimes that means adding an enjoyable activity. Sometimes it means reducing a recurring demand or allowing ourselves to rest. Opportunities also depend on time, money, health, and support. We can attend to the possibilities available to us while continuing to address the circumstances that make life difficult.

A Few Words by Psychology Fanatic

Positive emotions do not need to explain all of wellness to deserve a place in our lives. Their value may be as ordinary as the curiosity that keeps us learning or the affection that keeps us reaching toward another person. A feeling passes. Something we did while it was present may remain.

Broaden-and-build theory gives us a thoughtful way to understand that possibility. We can welcome moments of pleasure while respecting grief, fear, and the realities that call for action. Over time, engagement may leave us with a skill, a deeper connection, or another way to meet a familiar difficulty.

When a little room opens in the day, we can notice what draws us toward life. We may not feel transformed. We may simply return to an interest or respond with warmth. Those modest experiences matter, both for what they offer now and for what may grow through them.

Associated Concepts

• Positive Emotions: Pleasant emotional experiences, including joy, interest, and contentment. Broaden-and-build theory examines how these feelings may contribute to engagement and resource development.
• Savoring: Attending to, appreciating, and enhancing positive experience. Savoring concerns how we relate to an experience, while broaden-and-build concerns its possible wider consequences.
• Regulatory Flexibility: Adjusting coping and emotion regulation to the situation and its feedback. Having more possibilities can help, while choosing an appropriate response remains a separate task.
• Flow State: Deep absorption in an activity that engages our abilities. Flow illustrates how meaningful participation can require focused attention as well as openness to new possibilities.
• PERMA Model: Seligman’s framework linking positive emotion with engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. It places pleasant feelings within a broader account of well-being.
• Undoing Hypothesis: The proposal that positive emotions can help speed recovery from some immediate physiological effects of negative emotional arousal. Recovery and the development of lasting resources are related but distinct processes.

References

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Bryant, Fred B. (2021). Current Progress and Future Directions for Theory and Research on Savoring. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 771698. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.771698.
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Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1997). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. Basic Books. ISBN: 9780465045136.
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Fredrickson, Barbara L. (2001). The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology: The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218–226. DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.218.
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Fredrickson, Barbara L.; Cohn, Michael A.; Coffey, Kimberly A.; Pek, Jolynn; Finkel, Sandra M. (2008). Open Hearts Build Lives: Positive Emotions, Induced Through Loving-Kindness Meditation, Build Consequential Personal Resources. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1045–1062. DOI: 10.1037/a0013262.
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Fredrickson, Barbara L.; Joiner, Thomas (2018). Reflections on Positive Emotions and Upward Spirals. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 194–199. DOI: 10.1177/1745691617692106.
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Larsen, Jeff T.; McGraw, A. Peter; Cacioppo, John T. (2001). Can People Feel Happy and Sad at the Same Time? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(4), 684–696. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.81.4.684.
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Lee, Yi-Chen; Lin, Yi-Cheng; Huang, Chin-Lan; Fredrickson, Barbara L. (2013). The Construct and Measurement of Peace of Mind. Journal of Happiness Studies, 14(2), 571–590. DOI: 10.1007/s10902-012-9343-5.
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Mauss, Iris B.; Tamir, Maya; Anderson, Craig L.; Savino, Nicole S. (2011). Can Seeking Happiness Make People Unhappy? Paradoxical Effects of Valuing Happiness. Emotion, 11(4), 807–815. DOI: 10.1037/a0022010.
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Petrovic, Julia; Mettler, Jessica; Cho, Sohyun; Heath, Nancy L. (2024). The Effects of Loving-Kindness Interventions on Positive and Negative Mental Health Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 110, Article 102433. DOI: 10.1016/j.cpr.2024.102433.
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Rathunde, Kevin (2000). Broadening and Narrowing in the Creative Process: A Commentary on Fredrickson’s “Broaden-and-Build” Model. Prevention & Treatment, 3(1), Article 6. DOI: 10.1037/1522-3736.3.1.36c.
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Seligman, Martin E. P. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being. Free Press. ISBN: 9781439190753.
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Wu, Kaidi; Chang, Edward C. (2019). Feeling Good—And Feeling Bad—Affect Social Problem Solving: A Test of the Broaden-and-Build Model in Asian Americans. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 10(2), 113–121. DOI: 10.1037/aap0000129.
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