Open Hearts Build Lives: Positive Emotions, Induced Through Loving-Kindness Meditation, Build Consequential Personal Resources

By Barbara L. Fredrickson, Michael A. Cohn, Kimberly A. Coffey, J. Pek, Sandra Finkel. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2008

2,329 citations recorded by the source corpus.

B. L. Fredrickson’s (1998, 2001) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions asserts that people’s daily experiences of positive emotions compound over time to build a variety of consequential personal resources. The authors tested this build hypothesis in a field experiment with working adults (n = 139), half of whom were randomly-assigned to begin a practice of loving-kindness meditation. Results showed that this meditation practice produced increases over time in daily experiences of positive emotions, which, in turn, produced increases in a wide range of personal resources (e.g., increased mindfulness, purpose in life, social support, decreased illness symptoms). In turn, these increments in personal resources predicted increased life satisfaction and reduced depressive symptoms. Discussion centers on how positive emotions are the mechanism of change for the type of mind-training practice studied here and how loving-kindness meditation is an intervention strategy that produces positive emotions in a way that outpaces the hedonic treadmill effect.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/30e1f8fa1f668f9846a80f0ca19df7cba54e942a

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Citations in the corpus

How Positive Emotions Build Physical Health (2013, methodology): “The LKM workshop offered in this study followed the same training as the workshops in our past work (Fredrickson et al., 2008).”
The gain spiral of resources and work engagement: Sustaining a positive worklife (2010, background): “This is in line with the study of Fredrickson et al. (2008), who showed that positive emotions lead to gains in personal resources, which in turn predicted gains in various well-being aspects.”
Crossover Effects of Servant Leadership and Job Social Support on Employee Spouses: The Mediating Role of Employee Organization-Based Self-Esteem (2015, background): “Fredrickson et al. (2008) proposed that this broadened thought–action repertoire could help individuals improve their creativity and flexibility and draw on their personal resources in their actions.”
The how, why, what, when, and who of happiness: Mechanisms underlying the success of positive activity interventions. (2014, background): “The loving-kindness meditation study, however, showed that, although people with higher baseline positive emotions increased in positive emotions relatively earlier, meditation practice increased positive emotions over the course of the 8-week intervention in all participants, which led to the build”
Integrating Mindfulness into Positive Psychology: a Randomised Controlled Trial of an Online Positive Mindfulness Program (2016, result): “Finally, Loving-KindnessMeditation (LKM) studies have displayed similar results (Fredrickson et al. 2008).”
Appreciation: a spiritual path to finding value and meaning in the workplace (2012, neutral): “Consistent with the Broaden-and-Build Theory, research has demonstrated that positive emotion fosters creative problem solving (e.g. Isen et al. 1987) and that it builds intellectual and social resources that can be called upon in times of need (e.g. Fredrickson et al. 2008).”
Mindfulness Interventions. (2017, neutral): “It is important to note that mindfulness interventions can be distinguished from compassion (or loving-kindness) meditation programs, which have been receiving more scientiﬁc interest in recent years (e.g., Fredrickson et al. 2008).”
A Qualitative Analysis of Experiential Challenges Associated with Meditation Practice (2015, background): “The FWBO teaches two core practices: mindfulness and the metta bhavana (operationalised in the literature as loving-kindness meditation (LKM); Fredrickson et al. 2008).”
Self-Compassion When Coping With Venture Obstacles: Loving-Kindness Meditation and Entrepreneurial Fear of Failure (2019, methodology): “We specifically study the effects of Loving- Kindness Meditation (LKM; e.g., Fredrickson et al., 2008; Galante et al., 2014; Hutcherson et al., 2008), a form of meditation that engenders compassion to others and, more crucially in this study, self- compassion: being kind and understanding toward…”