This is our 10th Annual Lecture on Compassion, made possible by a generous endowment from Mark Greenberg, former Center Director and holder of the Edna Peterson Bennett Endowed Chair in Prevention Research, and his wife, Christa Turksma, a child-clinical psychologist and teacher of mindfulness skills.
Professor Fredrickson will share the latest evolution within her research program on positive emotions, which conceptualizes love and compassion as positivity that resonates in everyday moments of social connection. Her past work illuminated multiple health benefits that stem from positivity resonance, ranging from individual health and longevity to communal goodwill and public health. Although that past work illuminates why the emotional quality of everyday connection matters, it says little about how these health- and goodwill-promoting moments are most effectively cultivated.
The most recent work to emerge from Fredrickson’s team pivots to investigate the multiple conducive conditions for positivity resonance, ranging from momentary and behavioral (e.g., perceived safety and high-quality listening) to structural (e.g., economic inequality and the built environment). This new evidence stands to provide a vital foundation for translating basic science discoveries in positive psychology into effective micro- and macro-level interventions to address the loneliness epidemic and restore compassion and humility to our communities and social discourse.
About the Speaker
Barbara Fredrickson is Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (https://peplab.web.unc.edu/). Dr. Fredrickson is most known for her Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotions, foundational in both affective science and positive psychology. Having published > 170 peer-reviewed articles, she was recently recognized as in the top 0.05% of scholars (across all fields) in terms of career-long productivity and impact. Her 2025 book, Positive Emotions (from Oxford University Press) sketches the arc of her career across five successive breakthroughs, which culminate in a novel scientific understanding of transcendent, co-experienced positive emotions.
Dr. Fredrickson’s scientific contributions have been recognized with numerous honors, including the inaugural Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology (American Psychological Association), the Career Trajectory Award (Society of Experimental Social Psychology), the inaugural Christopher Peterson Gold Medal (International Positive Psychology Association), and the Tang Prize for Achievements in Psychology, awarded to recognize exceptional career contributions to the well-being of humanity.
Dr. Fredrickson is also an award-winning teacher and her general audience books, Positivity (www.PositivityRatio.com) and Love 2.0 (www.PositivityResonance.com) have reached lifelong learners worldwide, as has her free, online course offered on the Coursera platform, which has attracted ~370,000 learners across nearly 200 countries.
