When Feeling Positive Brings Out the Negative: The Impact of Nurturant Love on Perceptions of Ambiguous Situations

Positive emotions involve an array of complex cognitive, behavioral, and motivational processes. The present research examines the impact of 2 positive emotions, contentment and nurturant love, on the perception of an ambiguous situation. This study collected data from 2 distinct samples: 1 of undergraduate students (n = 106), and another using the CloudResearch Connect online platform (n = 292). In both samples, participants were primed via images into 1 of 3 emotion conditions (i.e., nurturant love, contentment, or a neutral control) and asked to write a story about an ambiguous photo. Results found that, across both samples, participants in the nurturant love condition wrote more negatively themed stories than those in contentment or neutral conditions (Sample 1: p = .003; Sample 2: p < .001). Contrastingly, participants in the contentment condition wrote more positively themed stories than those in the nurturant love or neutral condition. These findings highlight the importance of differentiating positive emotions from one another, as each serves distinct evolutionary purposes and produces unique perspectives.