The Emotion of Elevation
Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and I am definitely feeling love in the air. My friends and I like to celebrate holidays together, and I think we would all agree that there is something so elevating about a day dedicated to recognizing the love shared either between two people, a group of friends, or a whole community. Credit: Twelve Women With Birds. Emily Balivet, 2006. http://www.emilybalivet.com/Twelve_Women.html In The Positive Emotion of Elevation, Jonathan Haidt describes how a woman felt the “emotion of elevation” after witnessing an “unexpected act of goodness”. The woman was a passenger in a car with several other people on a snowy day. When the car passed by an elderly woman shoveling her walkway, one of the men in the car asked the driver if he could be let out. The woman first assumed that the man was just interested in getting home, so when she saw the man approach the old woman, asking her if he could shovel her walkway, she was shocked....