Jeff Larsen

Theories of the structure of affect make competing predictions about whether people can feel happy and sad at the same time. Considerable evidence that happiness and sadness can co-occur has accumulated in the past 15 years, but holes in the case remain. I describe those holes and suggest strategies for testing them in future research. I also explore the possibility that the case may never be closed, in part because the competing hypotheses may not be entirely falsifiable. Fortunately, hypotheses need not be falsifiable to be useful. Research on mixed emotions has been generative and the body of research will continue to shed light on the structure of affect.

The error-related negativity (ERN) is an event-related brain potential elicited by error commission and by presentation of feedback stimuli indicating incorrect performance. In this study, the authors report two experiments in which participants tried to learn to select between response options by trial and error, using feedback stimuli indicating monetary gains and losses. The results demonstrate that the amplitude of the ERN is determined by the value of the eliciting outcome relative to the range of outcomes possible, rather than by the objective value of the outcome. This result is discussed in terms of a recent theory that holds that the ERN reflects a reward prediction error signal associated with a neural system for reinforcement learning.

Rabbi Hyman Schachtel (1954) proposed that "happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have" (p. 37). In two studies, we tested Schachtel's maxim by asking participants whether or not they had and the extent to which they wanted each of 52 material items. To quantify how much people wanted what they had, we identified what they had and the extent to which they wanted those things. To quantify how much people had what they wanted, we identified how much they wanted and whether or not they had each item. Both variables accounted for unique variance in happiness. Moreover, the extent to which people wanted what they had partially mediated effects of gratitude and maximization on happiness, and the extent to which they had what they wanted partially mediated the effect of maximization. Results indicate that happiness is both wanting what you have and having what you want.

Elevated neuroticism is associated with increased psychological reactivity to stressors. Research on individual differences and physiological reactivity (e.g., electrodermal activity), however, has focused on clinical samples and measures of basal activity (e.g., nonspecific skin conductance responses) or responses to nonaffective stimuli. Surprisingly, there is a dearth of work on physiological reactivity to emotional stimuli as a function of neuroticism. Thus, the authors sought to examine the relationship between neuroticism and skin conductance reactivity to emotionally evocative pictures in a nonclinical sample. Individuals higher in neuroticism exhibited both greater skin conductance reactivity to emotional (and particularly aversive) pictures as well as more extended reactivity than did emotionally stable individuals. Implications for health are discussed.

People tend to respond with more positive than negative affect to mildly emotional stimuli (i.e., positivity offset) and respond more strongly to very negative than to matched positive stimuli (i.e., negativity bias). In the current study, the authors examine individual differences in the positivity offset and negativity bias and demonstrate that both are stable over time and generalize across different kinds of stimuli (e.g., pictures, sounds, words, games of chance). Furthermore, the positivity offset and negativity bias are not redundant with traditional personality measures and exhibit differential predictive validity, such that both types of measures predict behavior in meaningful ways. Implications for a comprehensive understanding of affect and emotion and their relationship to physical and mental health are discussed.

Though some models of emotion contend that happiness and sadness are mutually exclusive in experience, recent findings suggest that adults can feel happy and sad at the same time in emotionally complex situations. Other research has shown that children develop a better conceptual understanding of mixed emotions as they grow older, but no research has examined children's actual experience of mixed emotions. To examine developmental differences in the experience of mixed emotions, we showed children ages 5 to 12 scenes from an animated film that culminated with a father and daughter's bittersweet farewell. In subsequent interviews, older children were more likely than younger children to report experiencing mixed emotions. These results suggest that in addition to having a better conceptual understanding of mixed emotions, older children are more likely than younger children to actually experience mixed emotions in emotionally complex situations.

How do people feel when they experience bittersweet events comprised of pleasant and unpleasant aspects (e.g., good news accompanied by bad)? Just as acids immediately neutralize bases, some have suggested that bittersweet events' pleasant aspects might neutralize their unpleasant aspects, thereby resulting in fairly neutral emotional reactions. Some contemporary theorists also contend that happiness and sadness are mutually exclusive. We review research on the alternative possibility that bittersweet events can elicit pairs of opposite-valence, mixed emotions, with particularly close attention to the growing body of evidence that people can feel happy and sad at the same time while watching films, listening to music, and experiencing meaningful endings. We also review evidence that people sometimes experience other types of mixed emotions, including disgust accompanied by amusement and fear by enjoyment. Taken together, these data indicate that positive and negative affect are ...

The error-related negativity (ERN) is an event-related brain potential elicited by error commission and by presentation of feedback stimuli indicating incorrect performance. In this study, the authors report two experiments in which participants tried to learn to select between response options by trial and error, using feedback stimuli indicating monetary gains and losses. The results demonstrate that the amplitude of the ERN is determined by the value of the eliciting outcome relative to the range of outcomes possible, rather than by the objective value of the outcome. This result is discussed in terms of a recent theory that holds that the ERN reflects a reward prediction error signal associated with a neural system for reinforcement learning.

Rabbi Hyman Schachtel (1954) proposed that "happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have" (p. 37). In two studies, we tested Schachtel's maxim by asking participants whether or not they had and the extent to which they wanted each of 52 material items. To quantify how much people wanted what they had, we identified what they had and the extent to which they wanted those things. To quantify how much people had what they wanted, we identified how much they wanted and whether or not they had each item. Both variables accounted for unique variance in happiness. Moreover, the extent to which people wanted what they had partially mediated effects of gratitude and maximization on happiness, and the extent to which they had what they wanted partially mediated the effect of maximization. Results indicate that happiness is both wanting what you have and having what you want.

Anhedonia, defined as dysfunction in the experience of pleasant emotions, is a hallmark symptom of the schizophrenia spectrum. Of interest, it is well documented that patients with schizophrenia, at least as a group, do not show reductions in their state experience of pleasant stimuli. However, there is emerging evidence to suggest that individuals with schizotypy-defined as the personality organization reflecting the latent vulnerability for schizophrenia-do show these state deficits. This is paradoxical in that schizophrenia reflects a more pathological state in virtually every conceivable domain as compared with schizotypy. The present study examined self-reported affective reactions to neutral-, bad-, and good-valenced stimuli in individuals with psychometrically defined schizotypy and schizophrenia. Two separate control groups were also included, comprising psychometrically defined controls and stable outpatients with affective disorders. With no exceptions, the schizotypy grou...

Some evidence indicates that emotional reactions to music can be organized along a bipolar valence dimension ranging from pleasant states (e.g., happiness) to unpleasant states (e.g., sadness), but songs can contain some cues that elicit happiness (e.g., fast tempos) and others that elicit sadness (e.g., minor modes). Some models of emotion contend that valence is a basic building block of emotional experience, which implies that songs with conflicting cues cannot make people feel happy and sad at the same time. Other models contend that positivity and negativity are separable in experience, which implies that music with conflicting cues might elicit simultaneously mixed emotions of happiness and sadness. Hunter, Schellenberg, and Schimmack (2008) tested these possibilities by having subjects report their happiness and sadness after listening to music with conflicting cues (e.g., fast songs in minor modes) and consistent cues (e.g., fast songs in major modes). Results indicated that music with conflicting cues elicited mixed emotions, but it remains unclear whether subjects simultaneously felt happy and sad or merely vacillated between happiness and sadness. To examine these possibilities, we had subjects press one button whenever they felt happy and another button whenever they felt sad as they listened to songs with conflicting and consistent cues. Results revealed that subjects spent more time simultaneously pressing both buttons during songs with conflicting, as opposed to consistent, cues. These findings indicate that songs with conflicting cues can simultaneously elicit happiness and sadness and that positivity and negativity are separable in experience.

Theorists disagree about whether valence is a basic building block of affective experience or whether the positive and negative substrates underlying valence are separable in experience. If positivity and negativity are separable in experience, people should be able to feel happy and sad at the same time. We addressed limitations of earlier evidence for mixed feelings by collecting moment-to-moment measures of happiness and sadness that required participants to monitor their feelings only occasionally. In Study 1, participants were occasionally cued to press one button if they felt happy and another if they felt sad. Participants spent more time reporting mixed feelings (i.e., simultaneously pressing both buttons) during bittersweet scenes than non-bittersweet scenes. In Study 2, participants reported their feelings only once. Participants spent more time reporting mixed feelings when cued during a bittersweet, as opposed to non-bittersweet, scene. These results extend earlier evidence that happiness and sadness can co-occur.

... Understanding whether smoking behavior is influenced to a greater extent by positivity or ... For instance, college students' positive perceptions of their roommates predict how much time they ... In that smoking is also an approach-related behavior, positivity toward smoking may ...