Emotional Success : The Power of Gratitude, Compassion and Pride

Emotional Success : The Power of Gratitude, Compassion and Pride
ISBN: 9781509807178
Publication Date: 30 January 2018

David DeSteno's Emotional Success is an exploration of harnessing the practical power of using positive emotion to impact decision making. Current models promote suppressing emotion and using willpower as a means of self-control which, DeSteno argues, is not viable in the long term. With comparisons to well-known studies and a balance of hard research and popular culture examples, Emotional Success calls for a paradigm shift in the way in which we talk about the effect of responding emotionally.

Presented in four sections that pull together cutting-edge research from his own Northeastern University lab, DeSteno explores the benefit of promoting the prosocial emotions of gratitude, compassion, pride and guilt. Trying to balance and control emotions by using cognitive strategies is complicated and often ineffective in the long term, but building decisions based on an emotional response is in alignment with a 'gut-feeling'.

In a similar way to how the zeitgeist has looked to mindfulness as a means by which negotiate the information overload of modern life, learning to use emotion as a response toolkit is an essential way to achieve rational decision making with a real long term impact

About the Author

David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, where he is editor-in-chief of the journal Emotion. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Pacific Standard, and more. He is the author of The Truth About Trust and co-author of The Wall Street Journal spotlight psychology bestseller Out of Character. David received his Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University.