The Losada Line, also known as the "Losada ratio," was described by psychologist Marcial Losada while researching the differences in ratios of positivity and negativity between high and low performance teams.
The Losada Line represents a positivity/negativity ratio of roughly 2.9, and it marks the lower boundary of the Losada Zone (the upper bound is around 11.6). It was corroborated by Barbara Fredrickson, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in individuals, and by Waugh and Fredrickson in relationships. They found that the Losada Line separates people who are able to reach a complex understanding of others from those who do not. People who "flourish" are above the Losada Line, and those who "languish" are below it. The Losada Line bifurcates the type of dynamics that are possible for an interactive human system. Below it, we find limiting dynamics represented by fixed-point attractors; at or above it, we find innovative dynamics represented by complex order attractors (complexor).
Famous quotes containing the word line:
“What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model.... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)