“The end result of positive feedback is often amplifying and “explosive”, i.e. a small perturbation results in big changes. This feedback, in turn, will drive the system further away from its original setpoint, thus amplifying the original perturbation signal, and eventually become explosive because the amplification often grows exponentially.” - Wikipedia
This is more of a science term than a psychology term, but it does apply to a lot of what we talk about in the self-help community.
Recall that the last post was on how positive emotions are not just an indicator that you are achieving something with your self-improvement but that they can be a means to self-improvement as well.
This is how positive feedback is important:
The literature on depression has already documented a downward spiral in which depressed mood and the narrowed, pessimistic thinking it engenders influence one another reciprocally, over time leading to ever-worsening moods and even clinical levels of depression. There is a comparable upward spiral in which positive emotions and the broadened thinking they engender also influence one another reciprocally, leading to appreciable increases in emotional well-being over time. - Barbara Fredrickson
So to take an example from yesterday’s post, experiencing joy gives you increased creativity. And if we apply positive feedback to this, we can see that creativity probably gives you more joy, and that increase in joy gives you an increase in creativity, and so on.
The fact that positive emotions reinforce themselves like this means that personal growth doesn’t have to be a daunting task. You can get a lot of benefits for very little effort by just arranging your life so that you are surrounded by people, things, and places that are more likely to lead to you having positive emotions.
To see a list of things you can do to increase the positive emotions in your life, check out yesterday’s post.
Further Reading:
- Positive Feedback entry at Wikipedia
- The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology by Barbara Fredrickson (pdf)
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