Abstract
Bridging psychological research exploring emotional complexity and research in the natural sciences on the measurement of biodiversity, we introduce-and demonstrate the benefits of-emodiversity: the variety and relative abundance of the emotions that humans experience. Two cross-sectional studies across more than 37,000 respondents demonstrate that emodiversity is an independent predictor of mental and physical health-such as decreased depression and doctor's visits- over and above mean levels of positive and negative emotion. These results remained robust after controlling for gender, age, and the 5 main dimensions of personality. Emodiversity is a practically important and previously unidentified metric for assessing the health of the human emotional ecosystem.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2057-2065 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Journal of Experimental Psychology: General |
| Volume | 143 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2014 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Diversity
- Emotion
- Emotional complexity
- Mental health
- Physical health
