Review of The Handbook of Positive Emotions

Abstract

POSITIVE EMOTIONS ARE HIGHLY VALUED experiences in people’s everyday lives. Indeed, many people often express the life goal of “I just want to be happy.” The Handbook of Positive Emotion establishes positive emotions’ important place in psychological theory and research. The handbook contextualizes positive emotions within various psychological perspectives including evolutionary, social, developmental, and clinical psychology. Overall, the tone of the handbook is persuasive, arguing that understanding positive emotion is just as important as understanding negative emotion. The chapters are concise, well-written, and easily approachable for graduate students and academic researchers. The editors selected an impressive collection of respected researchers with different psychological perspectives to provide a comprehensive overview of the literature on positive emotions. The handbook is logically organized, beginning with an overview of the theoretical foundations underlying positive emotion research. Subsequent sections focus more specifically on biological and social perspectives on positive emotions. This is followed by chapters with a more narrowed focus on specific positive emotions, such as happiness and love. The handbook concludes with a more applied psychological perspective, highlighting the importance of positive emotions for various outcomes, such as physical and mental health. The first section on theoretical foundations of positive emotions gives the reader a basis for understanding the subsequent sections on biological and social perspectives of positive emotions. It begins with a chapter by Smith, Tong, and Ellsworth describing the appraisal theory of positive emotions, which states that emotional experiences are cognitively constructed through an