Motivation and emotion/Book/2026/Positive emotion dysregulation

Positive emotion dysregulation:
What is positive emotion dysregulation and how does it affect psychological functioning?

Overview

Scenario

Grace is a university student who feels that she has just won the lottery of her life. First, she receives a PhD offer from her dream university. Shortly afterwards, she learns that she has been awarded a scholarship to support her studies.

For next several days, Grace feels unusually happy and energised (see Figure 1). She sleeps very little because she believes there is too much to achieve. To celebrate her success, she purchases an expensive laptop, makes an impulsive travel booking and commits to several university projects despite having a full schedule.

People close to Grace begin to wonder if something is not right. Her close friends tried to slow her down, but she ignored them. From Grace's perspective, she is just happy, motivated and confident as pieces of her life are finally coming together in a positive way.

💡 What is happening to Grace?

💡 Why are her positive emotions become so intense?

Positive emotions are a normal and important part of human life. It includes a variety of feelings such as joy, interest, love, contentment, gratitude, awe, and amusement (Campos et al., 2013). These emotions play an important role in expanding people's thoughts and possible actions to help them build lasting psychological and social resources (Fredickson, 2001). However, positive emotions might not always be beneficial if they are inadequately regulated in terms of magnitude, context, and duration. A review by Gruber et al. (2020) on positive emotion disturbance suggests that extremely strong or prolonged positive emotional states can sometimes interfere with adaptive functioning. Positive emotion dysregulation helps to explain how positive emotional states can feel initially feel good but can sometimes contribute to harmful thoughts and behaviour. This chapter will explore how positive emotions can shift from being adaptive to maladaptive, and how it can affect psychological functioning.

🔎 Focus questions

1️⃣ What is positive emotion dysregulation, and how it can be distinguished from healthy positive emotions?

2️⃣ What factors contribute to difficulties in regulating positive emotions?

3️⃣ How are positive emotions regulated, and when can regulation become maladaptive?

4️⃣ How does positive emotion dysregulation affect psychological functioning and wellbeing?

Positive emotion: From benefit to dysregulation

Understanding positive emotion dysregulation requires more than just identifying whether an emotional experience is pleasant or intense. Positive emotions are usually considered pleasant in nature. But impact of positive emotions will be always relative to how it is integrated into cognitive, behavioural, goal-directed and other factors. This section will consider why positive emotions are important, how they are normally regulated and how difficulties in regulating them can lead to positive emotion dysregulation.

Positive emotions and its adaptive functions

Positive emotions play an important role in psychological functioning. They include numerous experiences such as joy, interest, love, contentment, gratitude, awe, and amusement which can influence cognition, behaviour, and social interaction (Campos et al., 2013). Instead of simply producing pleasant effects, positive emotions can encourage individuals to explore their environment, learn from experiences, engage with others and pursue meaningful goals.
Positive emotions can broaden people's thoughts, cognition and behaviour. Broaden-and-Build Theory by Fredrickson (2001) proposes that positive emotions broaden momentary thought-action repertoires that encourages exploration, flexibility and engagement.
Positive emotions can help to build psychological and social resources, including relationships and coping resources (Fredrickson, 2001).
Positive emotions are not always beneficial in every circumstances. Effects of positive emotions may depend on intensity, timing, and context. This provides a foundation for understanding when positive emotion may become less adaptive (Gruber et al., 2011).

Understanding emotion regulation

Emotional regulation is one’s ability to seek control over own emotional state (Gross, 2015). The process model of emotion regulation by Gross (1998) provides a framework for understanding how individual can modify emotional experiences.
Positive emotions also require regulation. According to Carl et al., (2013), individuals may need to regulate their positive emotions based on their goals and circumstances.
Adaptive emotion regulation is more flexible in nature compared to emotion reduction. Being able to regulate one’s positive emotions can be helpful in ensuring effective functioning.

From positive emotions to dysregulation

An intense positive emotion does not necessarily means dysregulated. Feelings such as happiness, excitement, or enthusiasm may be well-placed responses to certain life events.
Context, intensity, persistence and implications are crucial. Positive emotions can be considered maladaptive if are poorly fitted to the situation or if they start to interfere with functioning (Gruber et al., 2011).
The topic of positive emotion dysregulation is a relatively new area of interest. A review by Vogue et al. (2023), suggests that there is a need to examine the challenges of regulating positive emotions rather than focusing exclusively on negative emotions.

Mechanisms underlying positive emotion dysregulation

Positive emotion dysregulation is unlikely result from a single factor. Instead, it is a result of psychological, physiological, biological, individual, and environment factors. All these factors may interact to influence how strongly positive emotions are experienced and how they are regulated.

[An alternative approach here could be to focus on the main theory or theories used to understand PED. -- Jtneill - Talk - c]

(Not sure if section is needed to answer the topic question). Might keep it or remove it for book chapter for more clarity.

Consfused between these two format:

Format 1: (Focus question 1: What is it?

Focus question 2: How does it manifest?

Focus question 3: How does it affect functioning?)

Format 2: (Focus question 1: What is it?

Focus question 2: Why it is happening?

Focus question 3: How does it manifest?

Focus question 4: How does it affect functioning?)

Psychological factors

Emotion-regulation processes may influence how positive emotional states are managed.
Reward sensitivity may influence responses to positive experiences.
Motivational and cognitive processes may shape the results of positive emotion.

Physiological and biological factors

Positive emotions include measurable physiological and neural responses.
Biological reward system may contribute to positive emotional responding.
Little research available in the field of positive emotion dysregulation.

Individual and environmental factors

Temperament may influence positive emotional reactivity (Vogel et al., 2023).
Individual and contextual factors influences emotion regulation.
Situation can determine whether positive emotional activation is adaptive.

Consequences of positive emotion dysregulation

The regulation of positive emotions may manifest itself through altered thinking processes, decision-making, goals pursued and behaviour of an individual. While positive emotions helps to expand attention and motivate individuals to explore more, strong and poorly regulated emotional activation may influence judgement. This section will discuss the way in which positive experiences may impact cognition, motivation and decision-making processes.

Changes in cognition and decision-making

Positive emotions can broaden attention and action thought repertoires. Fredrickson and Branigan (2005) found that positive affective states broadened both attention and the range of thought-action responses that the participants gave. It provided empirical support for broaden-and-build theory.
Positive emotion dysregulation can influence decision-making.
The effects of cognitive broadening are context-dependent

Goal pursuit and behavioural activation

The positive emotions would enhance approach motivation and behavioural activation.
Excessive activation might help achieve goals but could be exaggerated. In case of exaggeration, the activation might make people over-commit.
Grace’s behaviour explains this as initially she was motivated to participate in university opportunities. But repeatedly taking additional projects despite limited time shows that goal directed activation is becoming difficult to regulate.

Risk-taking and Impulsivity

Presence of positive emotional activation may lead to increased level of impulsivity and risky behaviour.
Positive urgency provides a precise reason for rash behaviour during high levels of positive emotions. Cyders and Smith (2008) define positive urgency as the tendency of behaving rashly during high levels of positive affect. This behavioural trend can be risky as well.
Impulsivity and risk-taking should not be equated with positive emotion dysregulation

Positive emotion dysregulation and psychological functioning

[Provide more detail]

Positive emotions as good psychological resources

Positive emotions can support engagement and goal-directed functioning.
Valuable for academic achievement.
Encourage exploration and persistence.

When positive emotional experiences becomes difficult to regulate

Poorly regulated positive emotions can create interpersonal difficulties.
Positive emotion dysregulation may interfere with everyday responsibilities.
It can affect sleep and concentration

Quiz

Choose your answer and click "Submit"

Conclusion

Positive emotion dysregulation is not simply experiencing intense happiness, but difficulty in regulating positive emotions.
Dysregulation can influence thoughts, decision-making and behaviour.
Difficulty in regulating positive emotions may affect everyday responsibilities and functioning.

References

Cyders, M. A., & Smith, G. T. (2008). Emotion-based dispositions to rash action: Positive and negative urgency. Psychological Bulletin, 134(6), 807–828. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013341

Campos, B., Shiota, M. N., Keltner, D., Gonzaga, G. C., & Goetz, J. L. (2013). What is shared, what is different? Core relational themes and expressive displays of eight positive emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 27(1), 37–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2012.683852

Carl, J. R., Soskin, D. P., Kerns, C., & Barlow, D. H. (2013). Positive emotion regulation in emotional disorders: A theoretical review. Clinical Psychology Review, 33(3), 343–360. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2013.01.003

Fredrickson B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. The American psychologist, 56(3), 218–226. https://doi.org/10.1037//0003-066x.56.3.218

Fredrickson, B. L., & Branigan, C. (2005). Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought‐action repertoires. Cognition & Emotion, 19(3), 313–332. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930441000238

Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271–299. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271

Gruber, J., Mauss, I. B., & Tamir, M. (2011). A Dark Side of Happiness? How, When, and Why Happiness Is Not Always Good. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(3), 222–233. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691611406927

Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2014.940781

Gruber, J., Villanueva, C., Burr, E., Purcell, J. R., & Karoly, H. (2020). Understanding and Taking Stock of Positive Emotion Disturbance. Social and personality psychology compass, 14(1), e12515. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12515

Vogel, A. C., Brotman, M. A., Roy, A. K., & Perlman, S. B. (2023). Review: Defining positive emotion dysregulation: Integrating temperamental and clinical perspectives. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 62(3), 297–305. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2022.06.019

External links

Emotional Wellbeing (Psychology Today)
Positive Emotions with Barbara Fredrickson (Youtube.com)
Reward Sensitivity (sk.sagepub.com)

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Sacks, O. (1985). The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales. Harper & Row.

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	Poorly regulated positive emotion may interfere with wellbeing, relationships and responsibilities
	Positive emotions are always harmful
	Positive emotions have no effect on behaviour
	Intense positive emotions always indicate dysregulation

	True
	False

	True
	False

Overview

Positive emotion: From benefit to dysregulation

Positive emotions and its adaptive functions

Understanding emotion regulation

From positive emotions to dysregulation

Mechanisms underlying positive emotion dysregulation

Psychological factors

Physiological and biological factors

Individual and environmental factors

Consequences of positive emotion dysregulation

Changes in cognition and decision-making

Goal pursuit and behavioural activation

Risk-taking and Impulsivity

Positive emotion dysregulation and psychological functioning

Positive emotions as good psychological resources

When positive emotional experiences becomes difficult to regulate

Conclusion

See also

References

External links

Overview

Headings

Key points

Figures

Learning features

Conclusion

See also

References

External links