Positive and negative emotions are not opposites.
They are two separate systems, processed in different hemispheres of your brain.
You can have a lot of both. A little of both. A lot of one and a little of the other.
Your PANAS results help you understand how intensely you experience positive and negative emotions, and play to your strengths.
Your two scores are the first piece of a much larger picture.
Two scores grounded in four decades of peer-reviewed research
A vivid, plain-English read on what your emotional wiring feels like
An honest look at the
gifts and costs for your particular wiring
A clearer sense of why you experience the world the way you do
For five minutes of your afternoon
What the quiz is, and what it isn't
A real instrument from the science of well-being, not another personality test that tells you what you already think about yourself.
Two numbers, and what they mean
How often and how intensely you feel positive emotions
How often and how intensely you feel negative emotions
A plain-English read on what high, moderate, and low actually feel like in daily life
An honest look at the gifts and the costs of your specific wiring
A starting point for the longer conversation about what builds a flourishing life
Why your emotions
deserve a real instrument
Hi, I’m Arthur—a Harvard professor, writer, and social scientist who’s spent most of my career studying the science of human happiness, and one thing has become clear to me: most people are working on their emotional lives without a map.
They know they feel things. They do not always know what those feelings are, where they come from, or what to do with them.
This quiz is the smallest, simplest map I can hand you. It will not solve anything. It will, I hope, give you two real numbers and a clearer sense of the wiring you have been carrying around your whole life. That is a useful place to begin.
— Arthur
