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Mindfulness and Meditation Practices
Published in Gia Merlo, Kathy Berra, Lifestyle Nursing, 2023
Over time, taking in the good can rewire the brain and help override the brain’s innate response to attend more to negative or threatening experiences, the negativity bias. The key is to pay attention to sensations, not just think about resources. Paying attention to sensations is the doorway into regulation and balance. Practice #10 helps with savoring and embodying resources and facilitates a return to a more optimal ventral vagal state.
Life Enrichment through Emotion
Published in Lisa D. Hinz, Beyond Self-Care for Helping Professionals, 2018
All human beings have an evolutionarily adaptive and culturally influenced negativity bias which causes them to put more weight on negative factors than positive ones (Rozin & Royzman, 2001; Seligman, 2011). The negativity bias is adaptive, because paying attention to what might hurt them can keep people out of harm’s way. The downside of the negativity bias is that it can increase feelings of disappointment, despair, and depression. One aspect of life enrichment by emotion is to thoughtfully increase positive emotions such as joy, interest, pride, and love. Research has shown that these positive emotions can be enhanced through simple yet effective means (Seligman, 2011). Positive emotions enrich people’s lives by broadening their ability to think of proactive solutions to problems, along with their ability to act upon these solutions by building social, intellectual, and physical resources (Fredrickson, 2001).
Individual Variability in Clinical Decision Making and Diagnosis
Published in Pat Croskerry, Karen S. Cosby, Mark L. Graber, Hardeep Singh, Diagnosis, 2017
Mindfulness requires both awareness and attention in a particular situation. It reflects the capacity of some individuals for enhanced attention to and awareness of aspects of the environment, and generally of life’s experiences. The trait is generally associated with an open, nonjudgmental, and receptive overall attitude. It is the opposite of automatic, impulsive behavior. Studies of trait mindfulness suggest it reflects aspects of executive function and emotional regulation. These are important cognitive functions that depend on the functional integrity of the prefrontal cortex [101], which is where Type 2 processes such as cognitive bias mitigation (CBM) originate. Training in mindfulness has been shown to reduce sunk cost bias [102], implicit age and race bias [103], and the effects of negativity bias [104]. Interestingly, Sibinga and Wu have proposed a clinical connection between mindfulness and CBM [105]. Thus, mindfulness state may be an important predictor of successful diagnostic decision making; it can be measured using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale [106].
The Influence of Discrete Negative and Positive Stimuli on Recognition Memory of Younger vs. Older Adults
Published in Experimental Aging Research, 2021
Merve Boğa, Burcu Günay, Aycan Kapucu
Numerous studies previously reported that emotional stimuli enhanced memory performance compared to neutral stimuli (see Kensinger & Schacter, 2008; for a review). A common approach employed in the emotional memory literature is the dimensional model which broadly defines emotions along two dimensions: valence (positive to negative) and arousal (calm to exciting) (Russell, 1980). The majority of studies investigating the effect of valence on memory suggested that negative stimuli attracted more attention and were remembered better than positive stimuli in younger adults (Kensinger, 2007; for a review). Memory advantage for negatively-valenced items is known as the negativity bias (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001). The negativity bias indicates that negative emotional stimuli carry prioritized survival value compared to positive stimuli and remembering negative information increases the chances of survival. In addition, research reported robust effects of negatively-valenced items on response bias as well as on memory accuracy: younger adults show more liberal bias (willingness to say “old”) to negative stimuli rather than positive or neutral stimuli (e.g., Dougal & Rotello, 2007; White, Kapucu, Bruno, Rotello, & Ratcliff, 2014; Windmann & Kutas, 2001).
Interactive association between negative emotion regulation and savoring is linked to anxiety symptoms among college students
Published in Journal of American College Health, 2020
Hey Tou Chiu, Lydia Ting Sum Yee, Joyce Lok Yin Kwan, Rebecca Yuen Man Cheung, Wai Kai Hou
The examination of the interactive relationship between the regulation of negative and positive emotions on mental health is important for clarifying the mechanisms through which these regulatory processes are reinforced. Results indicated that the inverse association between regulating negative emotions and anxiety symptoms was the strongest when savoring was low, indicating that when one is weak in savoring, better regulation of negative emotions is more important in targeting anxiety symptoms. This finding accords with the emotion dysregulation model of mood and anxiety disorders.15 While the model proposes that the most effective ways to target mood and anxiety disorders is to decrease negative affect and increase positive affect, the model accounts for the negativity bias68 in which there is a heightened sensitivity to respond to negative information than to positive information. Thus, an inability to regulate negative affect is more critical to the experience of emotional problems.
The Development and Validation of the Appreciative Intelligence® Scale
Published in Human Performance, 2020
Brian Whitaker, Tojo Thatchenkery, Lindsey N. Godwin
Within the field of Organization Development, Appreciative Inquiry has become an effective framework for explicating the impact of positive psychology. Research and practice in Appreciative Inquiry suggest researchers cultivate an awareness of the negativity bias that pervades any investigations into organizational life and reframe that bias as positive possibilities that often go under-noticed in common human systems (Dey & Thatchenkery, 2017; Sardana & Thatchenkery, 2017; Stavros, Godwin, & Cooperrider, 2016). Appreciative Inquiry asserts that asking positive questions in organizational change processes leads to organizational stakeholders creating positive images of their future, and in turn, these positive images lead to positive, long-lasting actions (Cooperrider & Whitney, 1999). Recent empirical findings have shown that using an Appreciative Inquiry approach for organizational change processes can help effectively increase psychological capital (Daulon et al., 2017; Tuomas, Lehtimäki, & Thatchenkery, 2017; Verleysen, Lambrechts, & Van Acker, 2015). Fredrickson’s work effectively supports the argument that an appreciative affective stance in organizational change positively impacts the affective side of transformation because it creates upward spirals of positive emotions in organizations (Fredrickson, 2013, 2009). Specifically, the positive emotions of efficacy, hope, resilience, and optimism strengthen a person’s ability to bring their positive images of the future into fruition – the positive emotions and correlative outcomes appreciative work generates (Fredrickson, 2009; Wolf, 2017).