Money & Happiness Quizzes | Personality Tests

The scale you completed was the Positive Emotion Regulation Scale developed by Nelis, Quoidbach, Hansenne, & Mikolajczak (2011).

The Positive Emotion Regulation Scale assesses differences in people's tendency to savor their positive emotional experiences on a daily basis. When people experience positive emotions, they may try to control these emotions in some way, such as increasing or prolonging the feeling by sharing it with friends or by trying to be fully mentally present during positive events. In other words, people might try to savor the emotion. Some people might have trouble savoring positive emotions because other concerns interfere with their experience. Other people might actually try to minimize the positive emotion by not expressing positive feelings. Past research has shown that individuals with high savoring scores also tend to report more frequent positive emotions, life satisfaction, high self-esteem, and happiness. People with high scores are also less likely to place importance on money, luxurious material goods and experiences, and are often able to make the best of life's little pleasures.

The graph below shows your values on these scales with your score (in green) compared to those of the average man (in brown) and the average woman (in orange) visitor to this website.

Below the graphs, you will see tips on how to improve your savoring abilities.

For the graph below, the first bar shows your tendency to be mentally present in positive experiences compared to others. The second bar shows how you typically tend to increase your enjoyment by either looking forward to positive events or by thinking about them afterwards. The third bar shows your tendency to share good news with other people. Finally, the fourth bar shows your propensity to express your positive emotions non-verbally (e.g., smile, laugh, etc.)

The graph below shows your overall savoring of your experiences.

People with higher scores on this graph tend to savor their experiences more.

Do not worry if your savoring score is not as high as you would like. Researchers have found that our ability to savor can be improved at all ages. Here are research-based tips to do so:

1. Pay more attention to your senses. Most of our daily pleasures can be experienced through many different senses. If you pay attention to it, you'll notice that your favorite sandwich not only tastes or looks good, but also has a distinctive smell, texture, and even sound when it crunches under your teeth. While watching a beautiful landscape, we can also try to capture the scents in the air, the temperature of things around us. Sharpening one's senses, fully emerging oneself into positive experiences often increases how good we feel. We can train ourselves to experience life's small pleasures differently to increase our ability to savor them.

2. Make it a treat. From eating chocolate to driving fancy cars, the enjoyment we get from pleasurable experiences tends to decrease the more we are exposed to them. One way to prevent this decline in enjoyment of things we used to love is to treat them like special moments. Rather than having your favorite sandwich routinely for lunch everyday, take a two-week break, or limit yourself to only ordering it on Thursdays. This will help re-set your level to which you are accustomed with a pleasurable experience; next time you have your favorite BLT for lunch, you're likely to really savor it!

3. Avoid comparisons. If you go to your local supermarket, you'll find countless variations of the same products- from toothpastes to cookies. There are hundreds of different cell-phone plans and virtually hundreds of thousands of potential partners on dating websites. One of the consequences of this overload of choices is that it often prevents us from savoring what we have. Rather than mindfully enjoying your meal at the restaurant you might find yourself wondering about whether you selected the perfect dish, if another option might not have been better. Focusing on the positive features of what we have rather than considering missed opportunities or making comparisons with what could or should have been increases our ability to savor our positive experiences.

4. Count your blessings. Appreciate how lucky you are by noticing how things in life could be worse or by imagining life without the small pleasures that are often taken for granted. To help us counting blessings we can keep a little diary and write down once a week 5 things for which we are grateful.

5. Just show it. It's simple. If you're happy, show it! Research has shown that physically expressing positive emotions increases our enjoyment. Body and facial movements can enhance emotional experience by sending signals that our brains interpret as real signals of emotion. For example, an individual who is forced to smile during a movie will often come to find the movie more enjoyable. So when you feel great- and the context allows it- don't forget to smile!

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