Psych 180

Pleasure and Positive Experience

Lecture 2

What is pleasure?

• Can be anything from intense sharp pleasure– Orgasms, “rush”

• Mellow diffuse pleasure– Relaxing while listening to the ocean

Who cares about pleasure?

• Higher emotions possibly signal safety and provide the opportunity to build and consolidate psychological skills

• Some of the most crucial and basic behaviors are pleasurable– Eating– Drinking– Sex

• Important for the survival of the species

What about the non-biological pleasures?

• Socializing, experiencing relationships– Also crucial for survival of the species– People that have stronger social networks

thrive more

Lack of pleasure

• Psychology mainly focused research here

• Referred to as “anhedonia”– Possibly biological – Improper brain structures and chemical levels

What do we know about pleasure?

• There are degrees of pleasure– Not necessarily easy to rate on a 7-pt scale– We can still compare things (which is more

pleasurable)• Pleasure is multidimensional

– Can include positive and negative aspects• Something “bittersweet”

• Pleasures can result from adding something or subtracting something– Removing discomfort can be very pleasurable

• Pleasure can be in the present or in the past (memories) or in the future (hopes)

Peak-end theory

• Recollection of pleasure is NOT a simple summary of the individual moments– What is important is the most extreme rating

throughout the experience and the rating before it ended

– What doesn’t seem to matter is how long the experience lasted

• Known as duration neglect

PRESENT THIS BEFORE THE THEORY ITSELF

Experiments

• Colonoscopy experiment from Authentic Happiness

• Two groups– Group 1: Hand in ice cold water for 60

seconds– Group 2: Hand in ice cold water for 60

seconds, plus an extra 30 seconds in the same water that had the temp raised 1 degree

– Which group found it more pleasurable?• Group 2

Peak-end theory continued

• Just be careful– A 20 minute vacation that has a strong high

and ends well may not be all that satisfying or enjoyable

– From the text: “And in the sexual domain, “duration neglect” has a different and decidedly dysfunctional definition”

Song activity

• In notebooks

Question

• How much would you pay for Dr Smith’s Rio Hondo coffee mug?

• Let’s say I give you each one of these mugs. Now I want it back. How much would I have to pay you to get it back?

How accurate are people at predicting future pleasures and

behaviors?• Not very• Mere exposure effect

– Having heard or seen something before makes you more likely to “like” it

– You don’t even have to be aware that you have heard or seen it before (Zajonc, 1998)

• Endowment effect– We will bestow a greater worth in an object if we have

it than if we don’t have it, even if the object is the same

Other inaccuracies about pleasure

• People are inaccurate when predicting how long their pleasure or pain may last– People consistently overestimate how long these feelings

will last– People are extremely inaccurate about predicting their

future happiness as well (Daniel Gilbert)

• People constantly adapt to where they are– The same pleasurable experience for a second, third, or

fourth time yields less pleasure than the first time– Proposed hedonic treadmill

• Constantly have a changing baseline that we compare our well-being and happiness to

BRING SOME OF SELIGMAN’s AH in here about adaptation

Positive Psychology and Emotions

• More complex than a feeling– An emotion implies that they may drive us to a

purpose (root is motion)

• Negative emotions– Probably selected for evolutionarily

• Fear accompanies the avoidance of danger• Fight or flight• Have an immediate reaction that accompanies them

– Anger leads to fighting

– Sadness leads to crying

Positive emotions

• Immediate reaction isn’t there• Barbara Fredrickson believes that these

emotions provide safety in the present so that we can better prepare ourselves for the future

• Positive emotions allow for a focus on broader concepts and not necessarily the here and now

• Broaden and build theory

Fredrickson and Branigan (2005)

• Showed college students films to produce either:– Amusement, contentment, anger, anxiety

• Students that saw amusement or contentment were more likely to see global patterns not the local ones

Positive emotions even undue negative ones

• College students given a task that raised anxiety– Told to write a speech and would be

videotaped and evaluated

• Before though, they were shown film clips to induce certain emotions– Those that saw the positive emotions had

more rapid recovery of their heart rates than those that saw a sad or neutral film

Three questions about broaden and build theory

• Do different positive emotions work better or worse for broaden and build?

• What about emotions that are pleasurable but work against broaden and build (like lust, pride)?

• What about individual differences of personality?– Some of us can easily become happy and others

aren’t quite as easily altered• How do the studies account for this?

Moods vs emotions

• Moods are more trait-like– Emotions are more state-like

Hedonic capacity

• The ability to experience positive feelings– Possibly rooted in genetics– Possibly linked to extraversion

• Now called positive affectivity

PANAS

• Positive and Negative Affect Schedule– Present people with positive moods and negative

moods• Inspired vs ashamed

– Ask them to rate how it describes themselves• Possibly right now, over the past few days, or in general

– Positive words are averaged together and the negative words are averaged together

• Get a score of positive affectivity and a score of negative affectivity

Affectivity

• Seems to be stable across weeks, months, years and decades– “grumpy old men may well have been testy young

men, petulant youth, whiny toddlers and difficult babies”

• Seems to also be stable across situations too• Levels of variability are also stable

– Some people fluctuate a lot– Others rarely fluctuate

Positive vs Negative: The differences

• More likely to be extraverted, socially active, have more friends, more acquaintances, more involved in organizations

• More likely to be married (happily married too), like their jobs

• More likely to be spiritual or religious• Heritability index of around .4

– Chart on pg 64

Flow

• Similar to the idea of being “in the zone”

• The experience of “working at full capacity”

• Began by looking at people that did things for intrinsic reasons– People that do things for enjoyment have an

engagement that is quite similar to each other, even though they are doing different things

Components of flow

• Take from AH

• Usually happens in voluntary activities but can happen at work as well

What do we know about flow?

• Some people have lots of flow– Others don’t– Families that provide challenging activities

and support for their kids experience more flow

– Early schooling experiences targeting identifying interests and skills may lead to more flow

If you have more flow as a youth

• You are more likely to achieve with creative domains later in life– Possibly linked to health

• Weak source here though- unpublished dissertation

• NEED TO ADD MORE FROM THE ACTUAL BOOK