CHAPTER 1

Positive Emotions: The Science of Happiness

All men seek happiness. This is without exception.

—Blaise Pascal

We do a lot of things for happiness, but what does happiness do for us?

There is a reason we hurl marshmallows at all 450 of our students before the class on positive emotions, and why last year we prepped everyone for the final exam by turning the volume all the way up on some hip-hop and surprising them with a whipping, Nae-Nae-ing, jerking, twerking, Harlem Shaking, popping, locking, and dropping performance by an NYU dance major who goes by the name of ZebraKid, who finished with a sick backflip that sent everyone into a frenzy of cheers. It’s the same reason that you should think about how you’re going to raise your mood before every opportunity and challenge that your campus is sure to offer. And it is for this exact reason that we are going to ask you right now to walk through the exercise below:

For the next thirty seconds, please think of the happiest memory you can.

Seriously—as soon as you finish reading this paragraph, set your timer, close your eyes, and think about a moment or an experience that brought you real joy, laughter or elation, or a deep sense of serenity. Put yourself back into that experience. Try to recapture the sounds and smells, picture whom you were with and how you expressed your feelings. Did you fist-pump? Grab your bestie for a bear hug? Laugh so hard you snorted? Perhaps you just sat down to take it all in, closed your eyes, or even cried.

Take your time. Thirty seconds. We won’t even write anything on the rest of this page.

(We’ll wait. It’s worth it. You’ll see.)

In so much of our culture, we have been led to believe that success (both in and out of the classroom) comes before happiness: “When I ace my midterm, I will be happy,” “When I make the team/band, I will be happy,” “When I get that guy/girl, I will be happy.” But the whole premise behind this logic is seriously flawed. Reaching our goals does not automatically flip on some circuit breaker labeled HAPPY LIFE. Getting accepted to college is considered one of life’s great achievements, right? Yet unhappiness (and even depression) for you and your peers is at an all-time high: in 2014, college freshmen in America self-rated their emotional health at just 50.7 percent, a 2.3 percent drop from the same group just one year earlier.

If you are deferring happiness until after you hit your career goals, consider the findings of Lawrence S. Krieger, a professor at Florida State University, whose research on students and professionals alike exposes issues that arise with the mindset of “success first / happiness later.” “Law students are famous for busting their buns to make high grades… thinking, ‘Later I’ll be happy, because the American dream will be mine,’” writes Krieger. “Nice, except it doesn’t work.” A study of more than eight hundred white-collar professionals shows that lawyers—among the highest paid of all professionals—have the lowest well-being, not to mention the highest rates of alcohol and nicotine abuse.

Still stuck on the idea of playing the long game for the big bucks? CNN Money recently published an article about unhappy millionaires, concluding that “the pressure that comes with success can be a driving factor in depression.” When the objective is to thrive, however, happiness comes along for the ride, calls shotgun, and relegates pressure to the backseat. British business tycoon Richard Branson underscored the power of putting self before success when he told a reporter: “I know I’m fortunate to live an extraordinary life and that most people would assume my business success, and the wealth that comes with it, have brought me happiness. But they haven’t—in fact it’s the reverse. I am successful, wealthy, and connected because I am happy.”

Science is not only debunking the myth that greater success leads to greater happiness, it is flipping that long-held formula right on its head.

You… The Younger Years

Four-year-olds are awesome research subjects for a number of reasons: they never show up hungover to a study (at least not in our experience), they have no idea that one-way mirrors exist, and they share a multitude of similarities with one another, making them—minus the occasional tantrum—a marvelously uncomplicated sample group. Proof: Every four-year-old in the world loves marshmallows and cupcakes. Every. Single. One. Thus it was with exactly this group of thumb-suckers that in 1979, John C. Masters, R. Christopher Barden, and Martin E. Ford studied how positive emotions affect our ability to function.

All of the kiddos in this study were given a set of blocks and a series of puzzles that challenged their building and spatial skills. We’re not talking about reconstructing the Eiffel Tower to scale here: just straightforward “see picture, build picture,” and other standard day-in-the-life-of-a-preschooler activities. Some of the tykes were allowed to simply begin the exercise, while others first had to spend thirty seconds thinking of something that made them sad. A third group was given the same blocks and the same instructions as the rest, with one seemingly minor additional task: before they were allowed to begin building the structure, they were prompted to think of their happiest memory for thirty seconds (ring a bell?). Now, these were four-year-olds, so what could their “happiest memory” possibly have been? Playing kickball at recess? Pudding for lunch that day? Watching Frozen in full princess costume for the forty-seventh time the night before?

Whatever their positive memories were, the impact was astounding: the preschoolers primed with happy memories were 50 percent faster and more accurate in their solutions than their negatively primed peers, and over 30 percent better than the children who tackled the task without any prompts. Let’s say that again: simply being primed with positive emotion dramatically improved these children’s performances.

Of course, none of you reading this are four years old (if you are, you are way ahead of the curve), so we don’t blame you for wondering how this could possibly apply to a mature, intelligent college student who would much rather dance around an eighty-foot wooden man in the Nevada desert than eat pudding. This very well may have been along the lines of what researchers at Cornell University were wondering, too, when in 1997 they decided to replicate the study, swapping out the juice-box crew for doctors. Three groups of internists were given a case to diagnose. The first group was simply instructed to commence, while a second group was asked to think about humanism in medicine before beginning the task at hand. The last group was given a bag of candy. Why? Simple—to raise their spirits before they went off to make their diagnoses. (They had to hold off actually eating their treats until later, lest the sugar compromise the study.) It turns out that regardless of whether you’re in the playroom or the emergency room (or, as you will soon find, the classroom), a little positive priming has significant implications: those physicians who were primed with positive emotion correctly diagnosed the symptoms almost 20 percent faster and more accurately than their nonprimed peers. Would you prefer a doctor who is more accurate and gets to the bottom of things more quickly? Bring a bag of candy.

The Positive Advantage

Positive emotions prime you to perform at your best. Whether you’re howling with laughter or just chilling, positive emotions make you better at almost everything you do. Good feelings are a fantastic learning aid: they help you retain more information and stay on the ball in group discussions; they improve your test scores and your grades; they boost resilience and help you deal with stress more effectively.

The two studies we’ve already discussed aren’t the only ones to back these findings up. In another study, students asked to think of their happiest memories for forty-five seconds retained more words while learning a foreign language, while a group of high school juniors and seniors primed in exactly the same way not only answered more questions on a standardized math test but got a higher percentage of them correct.

More focused on creativity than calculus? Four studies of more than two hundred undergrads at the University of Maryland found that students who were positively primed (i.e., with gifts of candy or a few minutes watching comedy bloopers) tested better at creative problem solving and word games.

Of course, opportunities in college extend far beyond the classroom, and the benefits of positive emotions come right along with them. It might be a no-brainer to suggest that happier people enjoy more new friendships, but it turns out that happier people spend more time socializing, enjoy their time more with acquaintances and best friends alike, and are perceived as more appealing and inviting. Even the rocky patches can be navigated more smoothly, as happier people are more likely to talk their issues out, while their more negative classmates tend to duck and hide, a reaction that rarely has a happy ending.

Positive emotions can even give you a competitive edge. Sports Illustrated recently explored the trend toward more positively oriented NCAA coaching styles and found that one of the reasons that the longstanding tradition of abusive leadership seems to be coming to an end is that many players perform better when engaged in a manner that encourages positive emotions (not to mention suffering fewer injuries).

One way that positive emotions help us is by changing the way we perceive the world. Scientists at Brandeis University showed a series of slides—each with multiple pictures—to college students and, using eye-tracking technology, found that those undergrads primed with positivity could recall the images both in the center and on the periphery. Their negatively primed peers? They seemed to register only those pictures in the middle. Put simply, their brains functioned in a different way to change how and what they saw. The theory behind this has to do with our evolutionary hardwiring—being positively primed sends us the message that we’re not in danger, allowing us to relax rather than be focused on fight-or-flight. For athletes, achieving this broader perspective means seeing and taking in more of the field, more of the action, your teammates, and scoring opportunities. Breaking away from the tunnel vision of negativity can open creative playing fields, too, as one drama major who took our class discovered.

When we introduced the topic of positive coaching style, Blake raised his hand and said he had just realized that every comment his acting professor gave after scenes in class was critical (to everyone). No praise whatsoever. Blake and many of his fellow students were getting discouraged but didn’t realize that the relentless litany of what they were doing wrong wasn’t helping them do much right. Contrary to the pop charts, what doesn’t kill you doesn’t necessarily make you stronger. Blake’s drama prof sounded like he needed some priming himself, and we gave Blake a strategy: he approached his professor, thanked him for all his great constructive comments, and, explaining that he was eager to make the most out of the opportunity to work with this professor, asked if he wouldn’t mind also telling Blake what he was doing right if Blake sought him out after each class. The professor readily agreed, and Blake benefited from both honest criticism—which was easier to receive now—and the positive reinforcement. To make the most of their hard work, Blake and some classmates made a practice of sharing peer feedback after each class as well: three good things that they saw in one another’s work and three places to grow.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

News flash: it’s not all about smiling. There are a variety of ways to express positive emotions, and researchers have weighed in with love, contentment, joy, interest, hope, pride, determination, and inspiration, to name just a few. Nurture the ones that work best for you, and the benefits will blossom. Many of you may find that you can improve your mood by slowing down (through meditation, getting adequate sleep, and reducing your caffeine intake, to name a few options). Others can elevate both their mood and their game by focusing on what they’re passionate about (choose classes that fit your interests, not just your schedule, and seek out experiences that will blow your mind, like admiring spectacular fall colors, great art, or the performance of an awesome athlete). Each of us has a variety of ways to raise our level of positive emotions; the more people and experiences you explore, the longer that list is likely to become. Not to sound all weird about it, but get into a relationship with yourself: pay attention to what makes you happy, what delights you, and offer yourself those gifts.

Keep in mind that your emotional experience isn’t a simple binary equation of “Joy = YAY! Sadness = BOO!” Due to a major issue that affects us all (it’s called being human), the odds are pretty solid that you spend most waking hours juggling good stuff and bad stuff like Jo-Jo the plate-spinning circus monkey. Your new roommates might be your dream crew… but you just got the “I want to date other people” text from your boyfriend. Classes rock… but you are totally homesick. You just met the girl of your dreams… but she’s going abroad in two weeks. You are ecstatic about starting college… but insanely nervous. How do you even start to process all these conflicting feelings? Know this much for starters: “To be or not to be (happy),” that is not the question. It’s closer to when you add up the good stuff and the bad stuff, how are you doing?

From Knows to Nose

A young woman is lying on a table with her head tilted back and what looks like a turkey baster held just inches from her nose by a rubber-gloved hand. The young woman? A college student. The baster? Packed with rhinovirus. No, she was not being turned into a rhinoceros (that would be some straight-up Harry Potter action right there). This image comes from a Carnegie Mellon University study on how positive emotions can affect immune systems. The young woman was being infected with the common cold.

Before getting a kitchen utensil shoved up the nose, she and every participant in this study had been assessed for their levels of positive and negative emotions. After they were infected, they were kept in quarantine for five days, having their cold symptoms measured throughout (by some lucky research assistant tasked with weighing all their snotty Kleenexes). The outcome was astounding. Those participants with higher positive emotions were only half as likely to get sick, and if they did, they experienced milder symptoms and recovered twice as quickly as their more negatively affected classmates. Happiness not only supercharges our brains, it seems to do the same with our bodies.

(If you would like to get a sense of your current state of emotions, head over to www.uthrive.info and click on the link for the PANAS scale. Putting a pin in the map can help you know where you stand and track any changes you are striving to make.)

You Leave Me Breathless

After teaching over three hundred classes, Dan still gets nervous before standing in front of the room. His heart pounds, his breathing quickens, and if he is in a particularly rough place, he might even be grumpy with Alan. Seeing as speaking in public is the number one phobia in the United States (and we imagine it’s high on the list for our non-American readers as well), we aren’t surprised by the response when we ask our class how many of them dislike public speaking and almost every arm shoots skyward.

Performance under pressure probably isn’t anything new for you, but college ups the ante to a level that would make Channing Tatum’s chiseled chin quiver. From now on, every single grade you receive is forever on the record for future employers and grad school applications. An essay written for an internship application can be pivotal to your future. Big games, big dates, interviews, tryouts, performances, and tests can mean a megadose of tension, fear, and even anger, which in turn will trigger a rapid heart rate, quickened breathing, jitters, foggy thinking (less oxygen to the brain), and poor decisions.

Luckily, our positive emotions love a good challenge and continually find ways to help us navigate such challenges with greater ingenuity.

Research psychologists love to scare the hell out of their college student subjects (it’s hilarious… you people will do pretty much anything for extra credit or a few extra bucks). In 2004, once Barbara Fredrickson and her colleague Michele Tugade had the participants in their clutches, they sprang this on them: “You have sixty seconds to write a three-minute speech that we will then film and show to millions of people… BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!” We paraphrase (and exaggerate), but you get the point: yikes. While the students may not have verbalized their reactions, their bodies spoke loud and clear: researchers found that participants’ heart rates and blood pressure went through the roof. When they found out one minute later that they would not actually have to follow through on the panic-prompting task, though, the students with higher levels of positive emotion recovered from the shock twice as fast as the others: their cardiovascular systems snapped back to baseline while the negative folks were still clammy-palmed and breathing hard. Whether you’re facing a tough exam or locking eyes with a hot classmate, positive emotions respond to an array of challenges, automatically amping you up or cooling you down as the need arises.

You’ve Gotta Take the Bad with the Good

Don’t get us wrong, it’s not about wandering around campus radiating sunshine with a smile plastered to your mug 24/7. There are very important reasons to have negatively oriented emotions (plus, that nonstop grin can get pretty creepy). Heck, we wouldn’t even be here without them. After all, when our berry-gathering, cave-dwelling ancestors came face-to-face with something that found them delicious, it was that healthy dose of fear that kicked their loinclothed butts into gear. So while your Chem 101 final might not threaten you with physical harm, a touch of nerves can serve as a signal that you want to keep your nose in the books. When it comes to sharing your space with a roommate, the hundred-yard stare that prehistorically meant “I am going to club you in the head with a blunt object because you are from a different tribe” may now translate to “Dude, I am perturbed that you keep eating my cereal and if you do it again, I am going to exact passive-aggressive revenge on your Twizzler stash.” We could say the same about relationships or pretty much any other pursuit: you may not welcome negative emotions, but an upside of your dark side can be the useful reminder to deal with your issues before they get out of hand.

The evolutionary link between negative emotions and survival also means that those emotions tend to “weigh” more than our positive experiences. We’re willing to bet that the last fight you had with your boyfriend or girlfriend stuck in your head more intensely than the last time you kissed, just as the game you lost or poor grade you received bugged you far longer than the pleasure you enjoyed from the win or the A⁺. Florida State professor Roy Baumeister and his colleagues found that having a pleasant day doesn’t color tomorrow at all, but after we have a nasty one, the next morning our blueberry muffin doesn’t taste as good and we drive more aggressively on our way to work.

One of our favorite illustrative studies comes from the wonderfully named Dr. Hi Po Bobo Lau at the University of Hong Kong. After prompting subjects to think very intensely about a range of emotions, he asked how much they would be willing to pay to relive each one. The results:

$44.30 for calm tranquility

$62.80 for excitement

$79.06 for happiness

$83.27 to avoid fear

$92.80 to avoid sadness

$99.81 to avoid embarrassment

$106.26 to avoid regret

Bottom line: bad experiences can hurt more than good ones can help, so finding more opportunities to enjoy positive experiences may be necessary to counteract—and outweigh—the inevitable bad experiences that are coming down the pike.

When the Bottom Line Is a Dollar Sign

If you’re not already supporting yourself, you may be soon, and it turns out that while money might not buy happiness, happiness has great earning potential. Not only are happier people more likely to graduate from college, but researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University found that positive emotions can lead to higher pay just eighteen months after you receive your diploma, while a University of Illinois study concluded that happiness in college freshmen was a predictor of higher income nineteen years down the line. Don’t get us wrong—it’s not that employers are just throwing money at your smiling face while you kick back with a bag of Cheetos and watch YouTube videos all day. Instead, your good humor helps you score gigs that put you in a better position to succeed, no matter how you define success. Grads with high positive affect not only tend to land jobs that have more autonomy, meaning, and variety, but they find their work more satisfying, and the work they produce satisfies their managers! Bosses rate their happy employees higher in quality, productivity, dependability, and even creativity. You’re happy, they’re happy, and your bank account is happy. Win, win, cha-ching.

The role of happiness in success has become so notable that some of the most prestigious business schools in the country are prepping future managing directors to be advocates of well-being in the workplace: NYU’s Stern School of Business features a class on the application of positive psychology in the work environment, some of the Wharton School’s most popular courses explore topics such as altruism and happiness, and Stanford University recently hosted a conference titled “Compassion and Business.” Even the most sought-after dream-job meccas out there are actively trying to boost employee happiness. Google’s pool and Ping-Pong tables, massage chairs, and video games are there for the same reason that Yahoo allows workers to bring their dogs to work and that Patagonia lines its hallways with surfboards (and encourages employees to use them): happiness impacts success for employees and organizations alike.

Paul Zak, the director of the Center for Neuroeconomic Studies at Claremont Graduate University, tested the idea that happiness really impacts the bottom line, and found that at Zappos.com, joyful people were more productive, created environments that allowed them to be 22 percent more innovative, shed the stress of work more than 200 percent better than their less joyful colleagues, and were 17 percent more satisfied with their lives overall. Happy people don’t just earn more—they give more, too, volunteering in greater numbers and spending more time than their less happy pals on charity and community service groups.

No one builds a skyscraper from the roof down. Just as pouring a strong foundation allows us to construct ever larger and more magnificent buildings, human beings who build on positive emotions have opportunities to develop richer, more meaningful, and far more successful lives. All too often it’s tempting to wait for the A, the job, or the win before we allow ourselves to feel good. But believing that positive emotions are meant to come as a result of our efforts is akin to telling your study partners they’re going to do a great job on the test after the prof has already said “Pencils down.” We operate at a higher level when primed with positive emotions, not simply when they hang tantalizingly as future possibilities. When you make happiness your first priority, you’ll enjoy (and we mean really enjoy) the ride ahead, and be more likely to get where you want to go.

And yes, we’re absolutely positive.

Opportunities for Action

Exercise: The Attitude of Gratitude

Dan once had an athlete client who never thought he was good enough (even though the stats and victories showed otherwise) and was terribly unhappy because he was no longer having any fun playing the sport that he’d once loved. Brett was constantly complaining about everything, which annoyed his girlfriend to no end and was putting their relationship in jeopardy. Dan suggested setting a rule stipulating that the first three things out of Brett’s mouth when he saw his girlfriend after practice or games had to be aspects of work for which he was grateful (he could then complain all he wanted). It was tough at first, but as it became increasingly routine, not only was it easier to find three things, but Brett starting noticing more frequent positive experiences throughout each day. He began to enjoy his work far more, and his girlfriend began to like him far more as well… it bled over into his life seamlessly.

Gratitude not only qualifies as a positive emotion, but is also one of the most powerful and wide-ranging we have tested. Consider the benefits with which it has been associated: higher GPA, better social integration in college, lower levels of stress and depression for first-year college students, and even better quality and quantity of sleep.

All it takes is five to ten minutes each night before you close your eyes to write down three things that happened during the day that you’re grateful for, and why. It could be as simple as “I am grateful for my friend Sarah, because she put that C-minus on my lit paper into perspective when I was freaking out,” or “I am grateful for the sweet email my godmother randomly sent me because it reminded me that I am loved.” Period, the end.

The first few nights may be a challenge (you’ll be thinking, “What am I grateful for anyway?”), but as keeping a gratitude list becomes a habit, you—like Brett—begin to scan for good things automatically every day, so you not only see more of the great(ful) things in life but rewire your brain in the process. And for those particularly challenging days, you will have built up a go-to resource for reminding yourself of what’s good in life. One of our students, an aspiring lawyer named Lily, had to force herself to do this at first, then decided to keep going for months after the weeklong exercise ended. “I truly feel a tangible increase in my well-being and resilience to stress,” she reported. “It’s been really interesting doing the exercise for so long, because I try not to write the same thing every night, so I end up coming up with creative things I wouldn’t expect from myself, like the existence of TED Talks, snail mail, my guitar, etc.”

Exercise: The Good Day Experiment

Chris Peterson of the University of Michigan found that by better understanding what makes their days “good,” people can replicate the activities that move the needle on their overall happiness. Spend a week recording the good stuff in your life as you go through the day, and when you notice patterns starting to appear, consider which ones you can reliably schedule. If someone compliments your outfit or raves that your hair looks good that day, righteous. But this might not happen every day (if it does, bravo!). Instead, stage-manage what you know will deliver some happiness. If exercise coincides with your best days, be sure to get that on the schedule more often; if it’s music, make a habit of listening on your way to the day’s first lecture; set an alert on your phone to reach out to your BFF on the regular. Don’t wait for happiness to come to you; it’s not a ginormous care package that falls from the sky and lasts for life. It’s something you learn to recognize, seek out, and gather, whether it’s by the teaspoonful or the truckload.

Exercise: Consciously Kind

Whether you’re involved in community service on the weekends with your sorority or fraternity or doing a special deed to surprise and delight your roommates on a daily basis, the feel-good effects of kindness flow both ways. UC Riverside professor Sonja Lyubomirsky found that people who perform one large or five small conscious acts of kindness throughout just one day experience a boost in happiness that lasts for months afterward. “Conscious” is the key word here; it’s not just about congratulating yourself after the fact for holding a door or picking up a classmate’s dropped book. It’s about thinking in advance of a nice thing to do for a friend (“It’s the Frappuccino fairy!”) or family member (call your grandpa—he’ll love hearing your voice!) and then savoring it as it happens. Novelty can intensify the benefits, so switch up your acts of kindness (give a friend an amazing hand massage, let somebody go head of you in the cafeteria line). Try performing five conscious acts of kindness on just one day each week, planning what you will do in the morning and then asking yourself “What did I do today that was kind and how did it feel?” when your head is hitting the pillow. Let the best response you got be the scene you replay in your mind as you drift off to sleep. Give a little, and you can get a lot in return.

The Takeaway

The Big Idea

Positive emotions are performance enhancers for your brain, proven to give you an advantage academically, personally, and professionally.

Be Sure to Remember

Positive emotions can range from joy to calm and from hope to interest. Finding the ones that fit you best is key to making the most of them.

Positive emotions “weigh less” than their negative counterparts, so you will need to nurture multiple good experiences for every one that is bad.

Positive emotions can help you through the challenges as well as make the most of the opportunities.

Making It Happen

Every night before you go to sleep, take a few minutes to jot down three things you are grateful for and why they matter to you.

Track which activities consistently generate happiness in your life, and schedule this activity on a regular basis. Putting it in your calendar allows you to look forward to it immediately.

During the course of your day, perform five conscious acts of kindness.