ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Emotion Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1617975
This article is part of the Research TopicEmotional Intelligence in Educational Psychology: Enhancing Learning and DevelopmentView all 11 articles
The Effects of Happiness and Hope on Executive Functions
Provisionally accepted
- Sport Psychology, Institute of Sport Science, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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The notion that positive emotions always yield positive outcomes is compelling, yet prior metaanalytic findings (19 effect sizes) suggest no impact on executive functions. Limitations have been noted regarding the induction of specific positive emotions and assessment quality, especially for cognitive flexibility and working memory. To expand on this, the current studies induced happiness and hope in college students to examine effects on inhibition, cognitive flexibility (study 1, N = 27), and working memory (study 2, N = 30). Results confirmed successful emotion induction and revealed that cognitive flexibility was significantly higher in the happiness condition than in a neutral condition (p = .014, d = 0.427). Findings suggest challenges in experimentally differentiating discrete positive emotions and indicate that not all executive functions are equally affected. Overall, these results lend support to Isen's facilitator theory but should be interpreted with caution.
Keywords: positive emotion, Cognition, positive mood, positive affect, pride
Received: 25 Apr 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lautenbach. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Franziska Lautenbach, Sport Psychology, Institute of Sport Science, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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