When Jeanne and I ran a study to figure out why Americans value high-intensity positive emotions, we found that Americans believe they need high-intensity emotions to succeed - especially to lead or influence. East Asian cultures, on the other hand, value low-intensity positive emotions like serenity and peacefulness. In other words, Americans equate happiness with high intensity. Research by Jeanne Tsai of Stanford University, with whom I conducted several studies, shows that when you ask Americans how they would ideally like to feel, they are more likely to cite high-intensity positive emotions like elated and euphoric than low-intensity positive emotions like relaxed or content. And research shows that we - especially Westerners, and Americans in particular - thrive on high-intensity positive emotions. We fuel ourselves up with adrenaline and caffeine, over-scheduling ourselves and waiting until the very last minute to complete projects, waiting for that “fight or flight” mode to kick in and believing we need a certain amount of stress to be productive.īut high-intensity positive emotions can also be taxing. Many of us have come to rely on our stress response to get things done. It’s easy to see how high-intensity negative emotions might wear us out during the course of the day – and not just frustration and anger. In other words, is the emotion positive (like elated or serene) or negative (like angry or sad)? And is it high intensity (like elated or angry) or low intensity (like serene or sad)? One way psychologists distinguish emotions is along two dimensions: positive/negative and high intensity/low intensity. One of the main reasons for our mental exhaustion is high-intensity emotions. “Actually, it would take a long time to get to that point of complete physical exhaustion.” “Does your body get tired until you really can’t do anything at all?” asks Berkman. But otherwise, Berkman points out, your fatigue is mostly psychological. If you are a construction worker, a farmer toiling in a field, or a medical resident working both day and night shifts, then yes, physical exhaustion might be the reason for your fatigue. And yet, as Elliot Berkman, professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, pointed out to me in an interview, in our day and age, when few of us have physically demanding jobs, we are wiping ourselves out through psychological factors.Īfter all, the physical effort we exert in our day jobs does not warrant the fatigue we experience when we get home. Normally, when we think about being tired, we think of physical reasons: lack of sleep, intense exercise, or long days of physical labor. Why are we always exhausted at the end of a workday? Why do we come home wiped out, with barely enough energy to make dinner before collapsing for the night?
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