The positive psychology movement has created more interest in examining the potential value of experiencing positive emotions (e.g., humor, laughter, and happiness) during the course of bereavement. This study of 292 recently widowed (5-24 weeks) men (39%) and women (61%) age 50 and over examined both the perceived importance of and actual experience of having positive emotions in their daily lives and how they might impact bereavement adjustments. We found that most of the bereaved spouses rated humor and happiness as being very important in their daily lives and that they were also experiencing these emotions at higher levels than expected. Experiencing humor, laughter, and happiness was strongly associated with favorable bereavement adjustments (lower grief and depression) regardless of the extent to which the bereaved person valued having these positive emotions.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 12. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 17 September 2026.
All research outputs
#4,192,453
of 34,365,356 outputs
Outputs from OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying
#176
of 1,017 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#16,994
of 151,350 outputs
Outputs of similar age from OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying
#2
of 4 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,365,356 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 87th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,017 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 11.5. This one has done well, scoring higher than 82% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 151,350 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 4 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 2 of them.
