Professor Barbara L. Fredrickson is Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she directs the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory (a.k.a. the PEP Lab, www.PositiveEmotions.org). She served as President of both the International Positive Psychology Association (2015-2017) and the Society for Affective Science (2020-2021).

Dr. Fredrickson is most known for her Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotions, foundational in both affective science and positive psychology. She has published ~150 peer-reviewed articles and her general audience books, Positivity (2009, Crown, www.PositivityRatio.com) and Love 2.0 (2013, Penguin, www.PositivityResonance.com) have been translated into dozens of languages. Dr. Fredrickson is also an award-winning teacher. In 2022, she received the J. Carlyle Sitterson Award for Teaching First-Year Students and she also teaches a free, online course through Coursera, which has attracted ~337,000 learners across ~200 counties. Through this and other means, her scientific work influences scholars and practitioners worldwide, within education, business, healthcare, the military, and beyond.

Demonstrating her high impact, in 2019, Dr. Fredrickson was identified as in the top 0.01% of scientists (across 22 scientific fields) in terms of career-long scholarly impact. Dr. Fredrickson’s scholarly 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.

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