Positive Emotions: Key Scientific Contributions and the Stories Behind Them outlines Fredrickson’s groundbreaking research, tracing the arc of her career across five successive scientific breakthroughs.
Each of the book’s five sections opens with Fredrickson’s stories, both personal and scientific, that paved the way to each successive breakthrough. Her stories feature her mentors, her community of scientific peers, her students, her serendipitous discoveries, as well as her motivations for sharing her discoveries outside of academia for lifelong learners seeking evidence-based paths to happiness. Reflecting on a career that has thus far spanned four decades, Fredrickson also shares lessons learned along the way regarding scientific methods and career development and candidly conveys for early-career scholars what she’d do differently if she were starting out today.
Each section culminates by reprinting excerpts from three key articles that Fredrickson curated to best illustrate the scope of her and her teams’ contributions. Taken together, these fifteen key scientific contributions solidify positive emotions as the tiny engines that drive human flourishing.