Iris Mauss

Other people have a tendency to do what I did, which is tell themselves, I shouldn't be feeling the way I'm feeling.

This is wrong.

And what we found is that the less people accept their negative emotions, the more depressive symptoms, the more anxiety symptoms they experience, and the less well-being they have.

And this, by the way, tends to be true for men and for women across different ethnic groups.

And in that same study, we also wanted to find out why that is.

And we tackled that question in two ways.

In one study, we brought people into the lab and we had them, ironically, give an impromptu speech that people tend to find stressful.

It's a really common anxiety.

And so we measured how much negative and how much positive emotions they felt.

And people who tend to have an accepting mindset

responded to the stressful speech with less negative emotion.

They, on the whole, felt a little bit less anxious, a little bit less distraught.

And there was another part of the study where we gave people daily diaries.

So every day for two weeks, we asked them, what was the most stressful thing that happened to you today?

And what were your emotional responses to that?

How much sadness, how much distress did you feel?

But also positive emotions.

How much strength, how much hope, how much joy did you feel during your day's most stressful event?

And what we found was that people who have an accepting mindset often

in their daily diaries reported feeling less negative emotions in response to the day's most stressful events.