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Positive Psychology Notes

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Psychology

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Positive Psychology

● Since WWII psychology has become the science of healing, concentrated on repairing

damage within a disease model of human functioning

● Positive psychology: subjective experiences of well-being, contentment, and satisfaction

(in the past); hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and happiness (in the present)

● Raising children is about taking their strength amplifying it, nurturing it, helping them to

lead their life around it to buffer against weaknesses and the storms of life

● Humanistic psychology did not attract much of a cumulative empirical base, and it

spawned myriad therapeutic self-help movements

○ Some incarnations emphasized the self and encouraged a self-centeredness that

played down concerns for collective well-being

● Our message is to remind our field that psychology is not just the study of pathology,

weakness and damage, it is also the study of strength and virtue

○ Treatment is not just fixing what is broken, it is nurturing what is best

● What psychologists have learned over 50 years is that the disease model does not move

psychology closer to the prevention of these serious problems

○ The major strides in prevention have come largely from a perspective focused on

systematically building competency, not on correcting weakness

● Prevention researchers have discovered that there are human strengths that act as

buffers against mental illness: courage, future mindedness, optimism, interpersonal skill,

faith, work ethic, hope, honesty, perseverance, and the capacity for flow and insight

● Evolutionary Perspectives

○ The dead hand of the past weighs heavily on the present

○ David Buss

■ Because the environments people currently live in are so different from

the ancestral environments to which their bodies and minds have been

adapted, they are often misfit in modern surroundings

■ Evolved distress mechanisms are often functional - jealousy alerts people

to make sure of the fidelity of their spouses

■ One of the major differences between ancestral and current environments

is the paradoxical change in people’s relationships to others

● People live surrounded by many more people than their ancestors

did, yet they are intimate with fewer individuals and thus

experience greater loneliness and alienation

○ Fausto Massimini and Antonella Delle Fave

■ By looking analytically at the effects of changes in the ancestral

environment and by looking specifically at how the production of memes

(e.g. artifacts and values) affect and are affected by human

consciousness

■ Individuals are the authors of their own evolution. They are continuously

involved in the selection of memes that will define their own individuality,

and when added to the memes selected by others they shape the future

of the culture

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■ Whenever possible, people choose behaviors that make them feel fully

alive, competent, and creative

● Positive Personal Traits

○ Subjective well-being by Edward Diener

■ What people think and how they feel about their lives - to the cognitive

and affective conclusions they reach when they evaluate their existence

■ What people usually mean by happiness

■ A review of the temperament and personality correlates of subjective well-

being and the demographic characteristics of groups high in subjective

well-being

○ Christopher Peterson

■ Optimism involves cognitive, emotional and motivational components

■ People high in optimism tend to have better moods, to be more

persevering and successful and to experience better physical health

○ David Myers

■ Religious faith and happiness

■ Promoting happiness - economic growth and income and close personal

relationships

○ Richard Ryan and Edward Deci

■ Self-determination theory investigates three related human needs: the

need for competency, the need for belongingness, and the need for

autonomy

● When these needs are satisfied, claims that personal well-being

and social development are optimized

○ Persons in this condition are intrinsically motivated, able to

fulfill their potentialities, and able to seek out progressively

greater challenges

○ Barry Schwartz

■ Emphasis on autonomy in our culture results in a kind of psychological

tyranny - an excess of freedom that may lead to dissatisfaction and

depression

■ The burden of responsibility for autonomous choices often becomes too

heavy, leading to insecurity and regrets

● Most people in the world, he argues, individual choice is neither

expected nor desired

■ Highlights further the benefits of relying on cultural norms and values

● Implications for Mental and Physical Health

○ George Vaillant

■ It is impossible to describe positive psychological processes without

taking a life span, or at least a longitudinal, approach

■ The contributions of mature defenses - altruism, sublimation,

suppression, humor, anticipation - to a successful and joyful life

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Positive Psychology ● Since WWII psychology has become the science of healing, concentrated on repairing damage within a disease model of human functioning ● Positive psychology: subjective experiences of well-being, contentment, and satisfaction (in the past); hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and happiness (in the present) ● Raising children is about taking their strength amplifying it, nurturing it, helping them to lead their life around it to buffer against weaknesses and the storms of life ● Humanistic psychology did not attract much of a cumulative empirical base, and it spawned myriad therapeutic self-help movements ○ Some incarnations emphasized the self and encouraged a self-centeredness that played down concerns for collective well-being ● Our message is to remind our field that psychology is not just the study of pathology, weakness and damage, it is also the study of strength and virtue ○ Treatment is not just fixing what is broken, it is nurturing what is best ● What psychologists have learned over 50 years is that the disease model does not move psychology closer to the prevention of these serious problems ○ The major strides in prevention have come largely from a perspective focused on systematically building competency, not on correcting weakness ● Prevention researchers have discovered that there are human strengths that act as buffers against mental illness: courage, future mindedness, optimism, interpersonal skill, faith, work ...
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Tags: Disease Model human functioning empirical base building competency modern surroundings