10/01/2024
Feeling Good or Feeling Right?
FeelingGood - we mostly connect that to experiencing positive emotions or sensations that are pleasurable, enjoyable, or uplifting. It often relates to experiences that bring immediate happiness, contentment, or joy.
FeelingRight - is more about a sense of alignment or authenticity. It involves emotions or experiences that resonate with your inner values, desires, or beliefs, even if they might not always be conventionally positive.
So Good or Right?
In a cross-cultural study involving 2,324 participants from 8 countries, researchers explored the link between emotional experiences, desired emotions, and happiness.
Traditional subjective well-being research suggests that increased pleasant emotions lead to greater happiness, while Aristotle proposed that experiencing desired emotions contributes to happiness.
The study found that across cultures, individuals who frequently experienced the emotions they desired (pleasant or unpleasant) tended to be happier. This relationship held true even for those desiring fewer pleasant or more unpleasant emotions than they actually felt.
The findings imply that happiness involves experiencing emotions that feel congruent with one's desires, irrespective of whether these emotions are conventionally categorized as positive or negative.
What feels right often feels good. However, the two types of feelings are conceptually distinct.
[Tamir, Schwartz, Oishi, and Min Y. Kim (2017),
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 146, No. 10, pp. 1448–1459.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000303.supp]
