Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Savoring is the capacity to attend to, appreciate, and enhance the positive experiences in one's life. Savoring involves cognitive and behavioral processes that regulate positive feelings; that is, thoughts, and behaviors that influence the frequency, intensity, and duration of positive experience, including joy, pride, gratitude, awe, and pleasure. The term “savoring” was first used in this context by Bryant in 1989. Savoring processes are largely independent of coping processes. Whereas coping moderates the quality of negative experience, savoring moderates the quality of positive experience. In addition, just as coping is distinct from the experience of pain or distress, so is savoring distinct from the experience of joy or pleasure. In contrast to flow, which is short-circuited by self-awareness, savoring requires a conscious meta-awareness of one's positive feelings while one is experiencing them. The process of savoring also requires that one be relatively free from threat or self-esteem concerns, in order to have the cognitive resources necessary to attend to ongoing positive feelings. Although savoring requires a focus of attention on positive feelings in the present, savoring may also involve a temporal focus on either the past (termed reminiscence) or the future (termed anticipation) . When people savor through reminiscence, they attend to positive feelings that ... log in or subscribe to read full text