Distinguishing elation, gladness, and joy.

Abstract

On the basis of a structural analysis of the emotions, descriptive items were created that were postulated to discriminate between elation, gladness, and joy. The items described the situation of each emotion, the different ways in which the body was transformed, the propensity to behave in particular ways, and the different manner in which the emotions functioned to improve the person's life. In the first study, the items were given to subjects who had been asked to recall an instance of elation, gladness, or joy. Ss noted the extent to which each of the items pertained to their particular experience. Analyses of the data establish clear distinctions between elation and gladness and suggest that there may also be a distinct structure for joy. In the second study, the situations for elation and gladness were experimentally created, and objective measures of bodily transformation and behavioral propensity were taken while subjects were in the different emotional states. The results confirmed the structural differences suggested by the retrospective accounts.

Why and When Leaders’ Affective States Influence Employee Upward Voice

“…A less activated positive emotion, for example, might signal the target's satisfaction with the status quo (Bindl, Parker, Totterdell, & Hagger-Johnson, 2012), and therefore its positive effect on the actor's change-oriented behaviors, including voice, might not be as prominent. Existing research, however, has suggested that compared with negative emotions, positive emotions are fewer in number and more diffuse (de Rivera et al, 1989;Ellsworth & Smith, 1988;Fredrickson, 1998). This may alleviate, to a certain degree, the concern that the findings obtained in our study cannot be generalized to other positive emotions.…”

“…Positive and negative affect is quite different in their characteristics, social meanings, and functions (e.g., Fredrickson, 1998;Forgas & George, 2001;. In addition, the states comprising negative affect are more differentiated than the states comprising positive affect (e.g., de Rivera et al, 1989;Ellsworth & Smith, 1988;Fredrickson, 1998). Therefore, in the following we first propose hypotheses on leaders' positive affect and then raise several research questions related to leaders' negative affect.…”

“…However, the effect of employees' negative affect on psychological safety or voice may be not as clear as that of positive affect. One important reason is that the meanings of negative affect are more diversified and differentiated than those of positive affect (de Rivera et al, 1989;Ellsworth & Smith, 1988;Fredrickson, 1998). An employee who is experiencing fear, for example, may not dare to speak up (Kish-Gephart et al, 2009;Milliken et al, 2003), while an employee who is experiencing anger, another type of negative affect, may take the risk to stick out and speak up (e.g., Edwards et al, 2009;Harvey et al, 2009).…”

Contrasting Some Japanese and English Positive Emotions: The Nature of Feeling

“…Although little is known about the subjective experience of the Japanese positive emotions, we already know quite a bit about the positive emotional experiences we have labeled in English. For example, studies by Lindsay-Hartz (1981) and by de Rivera, Possell, Verette, and Weiner (1989) have distinguished what occurs in joy, gladness, and elation. Of course, different people may use emotion labels somewhat differently.…”

Affect and pro-environmental behavior in everyday life

“…However, the broader emotion literature notes that positive affect can vary according to its level of activation (i.e., activated positive affect and unactivated positive affect) and that different levels of activation may lead to specific types of action . Unactivated positive affect (e.g., feeling relaxed), for example, may trigger reflection and a tendency to see connections, whereas activated positive affective (e.g., feeling excited) may lead to approach behavior requiring more effort or energy, such as exploration (De Rivera, Possel, Verette, & Weiner, 1989;. Thus, unactivated positive affect may inspire approach-oriented, prosocial action ), but only if such action does not require much energy or effort to achieve (De Rivera et al, 1989;.…”