How positive affect buffers stress responses
Abstract
Positive affect can help to dampen the impact of adverse life events, facilitating healthy cognitive and emotional functioning after stress. The present review highlights recent findings on the stress buffering effects of these pleasant feeling states, focusing on studies utilizing acute and chronic stress in daily life, stress manipulations in the lab, and examinations of affective and cognitive adaptations during tasks involving difficult or risky events. We review novel findings that neural reward systems dampen activity of brain areas involved in signalling stress and highlight the role of endogenous opioids and other neurochemicals in this buffering effect. We show that across different timescales and physiological systems, positive affect buffers against accumulating stress responses in the body and brain.
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