In formulation of theoretical perspective for promoting the elders' physical and mental health, the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion provides a use-ful prototype. The conception of positive emotions posits the function to undo the cardiovascular effects of negative emotions (Fredrickson et al., 2000) and attempts to
“broaden” an individual's momentary thought-action to be more creative, open minded, and then turns into “build” the resources ranging from intellectual and phys-ical resources to social and psychologphys-ical resources (Fredrickson, 2001). Basphys-ically, this middle range theory established a empirical foundation to interpret the connec-tion of physical and mental health.
When it comes to the theory of broaden-and-build of positive emotions, it is necessary to describe the relation between the broaden-and-build theory and positive psychology first, the work of positive emotions were suggested by Barbara Fredrick-son, a social psychologist who developed the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, suggested that positive emotion lead to quickest recovery to the baseline of cardiovascular system (Fredrick-son, 2003). Positive emotions is effective to broaden the broad-minded thinking and coping, contributing to psychological resilience by building psychological resources to enhance psychological well-being and emotional well-being (Fredrickson, 2001).
The pursuit of happiness and psychological well-being are the purpose of positive psychology. Positive psychology is the science of human flourishing that proposed by Martin Seligman in 1998 (Froh, James, Maslow, Dewey, & Stanley, 2004),which has three central concerns: positive subjective experience (positive emotions), pos-itive individual traits and pospos-itive instructions (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi,
2000).
First of all, positive subjective experience (positive emotions) are developed to engage into the contentment and satisfaction in the past; flow and happiness in the present; hope and optimism for the future (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).
Moreover, positive individual traits are the capacity for love, vocation, perseverance, forgiveness, future mindedness, spirituality and wisdom, such as optimism, re-silience, creativity, compassion and moderation (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). In the final, positive institutions are the strengths to use the positive traits that foster better subjective experience in social organizations, such as civility, altruism, citizenship, leadership (Robbins, 2008; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).
Posi-tive psychology, a science of satisfaction, purpose to flourish individual strength and virtue seeking for happiness, and overlap with humanistic psychology in the-matic content and theoretical presupposition (Froh et al., 2004; Resnick, Warmoth, &
Serlin, 2001; Robbins, 2008).
Humanistic psychology is the third force of psychology, proposed by Abra-ham Maslow and Carl Roger in 1950s, humanistic psychology was rooted in existentialism and phenomenology, concerned with individual-centered and human being, and search for love, meaning, personal growth, psychological health, values, creativity, identity and happiness (Wertheimer, 1978). The core belief of humanistic psychology perspective have several concerns. Firstly, viewing the person as a whole and believed that the whole is greater than the part (Buhler, 1971;
Wertheimer, 1978). In the nature of human, the focus always is on the value, will, be-lief and conscious thinking without assessment of person wholly on the basis of physics, chemistry and behavior. Because of individual experience , intention, being and belief, it can not be predicted and described completely of a whole human by describing partial characteristics. Second, focusing on human existence and phe-nomenological philosophy (Buhler, 1971; Rogers, 1963). Individual experience or existence of itself is an consciousness occurrence to phenomenon, focusing on what individual perceived is reality and emphasizing which is significant to himself and driving himself toward the destination. Finally, emphasizing on human values and motivation, in opposition to Freud's theory of psychoanalysis and believed that humans drive their behavior with their own motivations consciously(Buhler, 1971; Wertheimer, 1978). An individual with healthy human being may motive to have a goal of their own life, the most wildly-spread theory of Maslow's addressed that the end goal of life is
self-actual-ization, individual who realize the self-achievement as a growth precess in whole life (Buh-ler, 1971). Humanistic psychology means to flourish as a human being and eager for the pursuit of positive end of life.
It can not be deny that the assumption of the positive psychology and human-istic psychology, both emphasize on happiness, optimal experience and stress on self-centerlines, self-help movement, are consistent with the theory of broaden-and-build of positive emotions (Cohn & Fredrickson, 2006; Robbins, 2008). The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions was followed by the rule of positive psychology and humanistic psychology that intellectual core of the human potential movement can have a dramatically impact on the field of psychology (Fredrickson, 2001; Resnick et al., 2001; Schiffrin & Nelson, 2008). Additionally, the undoing ef-fect of broaden-and-build theory both are on reducing the physiological efef-fect of stress and reducing the recovery time of cardiovascular activation (Cohn & Fredrick-son, 2006; Fredrickson et al., 2000; Fredrickson & LevenFredrick-son, 1998). When people with stress will suffer from physiological changes, including heart rate, blood sugar and blood pressure increased and immune-suppression, the changes will induced ill-ness in the long run. However, positive emotion can reduce the effect of physiological changes and then decrease mortality and morbidity ( Fredrickson et al., 2000; Fredrickson & Levenson, 1998). Several study results are consistent with this hypothesis and showed that positive emotions can prevent the onset of suicide, de-pression, hypertension, diabetes, and respiratory tract infections and promote longevity (Frey, 2011; Hirsch, Duberstein, & Unützer, 2009; Richman et al., 2005).
The function of broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions is to guide ap-plications and imap-plications to improve individual and collective function,
psychological well-being and physical health (Fredrickson, 1998). The theory ap-plied in the filed of detecting the salivary progesterone in college students to discuss the relationships between stress, health and social contact (Brown et al., 2009), rela-tionships of social support, positive affect, broad-ed mind coping, interpersonal trust and social support of undergraduates (Burns et al., 2008), exam the effect of positive emotions on mental health among community adults (Catalino & Fredrickson, 2011), applied the theory to build personal resources to predict long term behavior change (Cohn &
Fredrickson, 2010), build the relationships of positive emotions, resilience and life satisfac-tion (Cohn et al., 2009), exam the hypothesis of building personal resources among working adults (Fredrickson, Cohn, Coffey, Pek, & Finkel, 2008), relationships between positive emotions and resilience after terrorist attacking (Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh, & Larkin, 2003), developing intervention on schizophrenia patients (Johnson et al., 2011; Johnson, Waugh, & Fredrickson, 2010), relationships between resilience and positive emotions ( Tu-gade, Fredrickson, & Barrett, 2004; Tugade & Fredrickson, 2007; Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004) and relationships between cardiovascular response and emotions (Wager et al., 2009).
The theory suggest that positive emotions have several functions as followings: (1) broaden one's attention and thinking; (2) undoing lingering negative emotional arousal; (3) fuel psychological resilience; (4) build consequential personal resources; (5) trigger upward spirals towards greater well-being in the future and (6) approaching human flourishing (Fredrickson, 2000). The broaden effect of positive emotions also shown that people experi-encing positive affect show increased preference for variety and accept a broader attention to their tasks. Consequently, positive emotions function as an effective antidote for the negative influences of negative emotions along with the broaden effect. The undo effect of positive emotions suggest that people might improve their psychological well-being and also their physical health by cultivating experiences of positive emotions to cope with negative emo-tions. In other words, psychological resiliency will be promoted by increasing the coping
ability of negative situations. Psychological resilience is an enduring personal resource that augment people's enduring coping resources with the flexible and creative thinking. The con-cept support the idea of build effect posited by the broaden and build theory that positive emotions build personal resources to recovery psychological stress and predict more psycho-logical well-being and growth. The relations between positive emotion and well-being are reciprocal, people with broadened thinking and positive meaning, which trigger the broad-ened attention and cognition and then build the personal resources and facilitate the coping with adversity. As this cycle continues, people build their psychological resilience and en-hance their emotional well-being.
Undoubtedly, the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions were applied to verify the relationships of each concept and hypothesis both with evidence-based data and social science validation, otherwise, the model also can guide the applica-tion of intervenapplica-tion. In our study, we applied the theory of positive emoapplica-tions to develop the interventions of physical activity, psychological intervention using the intellectual resources, physical resources, psychological resources and social re-sources. Moreover, the theory purposed the positive emotions can promote the resilience of stress in mental health, decrease the physiological effect of stress. To in-terpret the relationships between happiness, physiological status and physical activity.