Broaden-and-Build: Upward & Downward Emotional Spirals

This simulator turns Barbara Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions into a live 3D dynamical system. A stream of positive and negative emotional events is drawn according to a tunable positivity ratio; positive events broaden a thought-action repertoire and build durable psychological resources, while negative events do damage that those same resources buffer. Push the ratio and a broadening practice high enough and the resource cloud swells into a self-sustaining upward spiral; drop it and pile on stressors and the same system collapses into a downward spiral — the exact dynamic behind resilience, burnout and wellbeing interventions like gratitude journaling.