The Role of Emotion on Pathways to Positive Health

A second generic observation setting the stage for what follows is the relative paucity of knowledge about positive emotion-health linkages. Our goal is to bring greater attention to salubrious conn~ons between affective experience and health. mental and physical. An emphasis on positive health, we note, does not translate simplistically to a focus on exclusively positive affe:ctive experience. As we will argue. one of the intrigiling challenges of future work is to unearth basic processes whereby negative emotions, ubiquitous in human experience, can be transformed into benign. or even beneficial. inBuences on health. Finally. while we seek to U;nderscore the positive health theme, much in our chapter deals with the role of em()tion in illness as that is where most prior work has been conducted. Many of the core questions in affective science (e.g.. Are thete basic emotions? What are the antecedents and func. tions of emotion? How do inQividuals differ in emotional reactivity?) have developed without explicit connection to the realm of human health. Alternatively. when emotion has entered the health realm (e.g.. Does anger increase cardiovascular risk? Is optimism protective?), it hU frequently been with little connection to mainstream research in affective science. This separation is not a state of affairs to lament. but rather represents opportunities for the future in ~hich the fields of emotion and health can enrich and extend each other. Our objective in this chapter is to bring the nexus between these realms into focus via discussion of five guiding premises for relating emotion to health. These serve as conceptual guideposts for exami~ past, current, and future empirical studies. and do so with an emphasis on testable hypotheses. The five premises are: (1) emotions conseque~tial for health are about something; (2) health requires a focus on co-occurring cliscrete emotions; (3) health is biopsychosocial in nature and necessitates in~gration of phenomenology and neurophysiology; (4) cumulative, chronic emotions are consequential for health; and (5) emotion can be protective and promote positive health. Each premise is illustrated via separate substantive studies. although a unifying theme across them is the need for integrativ~ endeavors that put together psychosocial experience. underlying biological mechanisms. and health outcomes. Premise I. Emotions Consequential for Health Are About Something