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Positive Psychology

Positive psychology is a recent branch of psychology whose purpose was summed up in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise, which achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving individuals, families, and communities."[1] Positive psychologists seek "to find and nurture genius and talent" and "to make normal life more fulfilling",[2] rather than merely treating mental illness. Positive psychology is primarily concerned with using the psychological theory, research and intervention techniques to understand the positive, adaptive, creative and emotionally fulfilling aspects of human behavior. This branch complements, with no intention to replace or ignore, the traditional areas of psychology. By adding an important emphasis to use the scientific method to study and determine positive human development, this area of psychology fits well with the investigation of how human development can falter. This field brings attention to the possibility that focusing only on disorder could result in a partial, and limited, understanding of a person's condition.[3] The words, "the good life" are derived from speculation about what holds the greatest value in life - the factors that contribute the most to a well-lived and fulfilling life. Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, referred to the good life as "using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification." Topics of interest to researchers in the field are: states of pleasure or flow, values, strengths, virtues, talents, as well as the ways that these can be promoted by social systems and institutions.[4] Positive psychologists are concerned with four topics: (1) positive experiences, (2) enduring psychological traits, (3) positive relationships and (4) positive institutions.[5] Some thinkers and researchers, like Seligman, have collected data to support the development of guiding theories (e.g. "P.E.R.M.A.", or The Handbook on Character Strengths and Virtues). Research from this branch of psychology has seen various practical applications. The basic premise of positive psychology is that human beings are often, perhaps more often, drawn by the future than they are driven by the past. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi define positive psychology as "the scientific study of positive human functioning and flourishing on multiple levels that include the biological, personal, relational, institutional, cultural, and global dimensions of life." L.M. Keyes and Shane Lopez illustrate the four typologies of mental health functioning: flourishing, struggling, floundering and languishing. However, complete mental health is a combination of high emotional well-being, high psychological well-being, and high social well-being, along with low mental illness. Most psychologists focus on human's most basic emotions. There are thought to be between seven and nine basic emotions. The number of basic positive emotions is less than the total number of basic emotions. The emotions can be combined in many ways to create more subtle variations of emotional experience. This suggests that any attempt to wholly eliminate negative emotions from our life would have the unintended consequence of losing the variety and subtlety of our most profound emotional experiences. Efforts to increase positive emotions will not automatically result in decreased negative emotions, nor will decreased negative emotions necessarily result in increased positive emotions. Russell and Feldman Barrett (1999) described emotional reactions as core affects, which are primitive emotional reactions that are consistently experienced but often not acknowledged; they blend pleasant and unpleasant as well as activated and deactivated dimensions that we carry with us at an almost unconscious level.

The Goal of Positive Psychology

In cognitive therapy, the goal is to help people change negative styles of thinking as a way to change how they feel. This approach has been very successful, and changing how we think about other people, our future, and ourselves is partially responsible for this success. The thinking processes that impact our emotional states vary considerably from person to person. An ability to pull attention away from the chronic inner chatter of our thoughts can be quite advantageous to well-being. A change in our orientation to time can dramatically impact how we think about the nature of happiness. Dr. Martin Seligman, the Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, identified other possible goals: families and schools that allow children to grow, workplaces that aim for satisfaction and high productivity, and teaching others about positive psychology.

Background

Several humanistic psychologists—such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Erich Fromm—developed theories and practices pertaining to human happiness and flourishing. More recently, positive psychologists have found empirical support for the humanistic theories of flourishing. In addition, positive psychology has moved ahead in a variety of new directions. Positive psychology began as a new area of psychology in 1998 when Martin Seligman, considered the father of the modern positive psychology movement,[6] chose it as the theme for his term as president of the American Psychological Association,[7] though the term originates with Maslow, in his 1954 book Motivation and Personality,[8] and there have been indications that psychologists since the 1950s have been increasingly focused on the promotion of mental health rather than merely treating illness.[9][10] In the first sentence of his book Authentic Happiness, Seligman claimed: "for the last half century psychology has been consumed with a single topic only - mental illness",[11]:xi, expanding on Maslow’s comments.[12] He urged psychologists to continue the earlier missions of psychology of nurturing talent and improving normal life.[2] The first positive psychology summit took place in 1999. The First International Conference on Positive Psychology took place in 2002.[2] More attention was given by the general public in 2006 when, using the same framework, a course at Harvard University became particularly popular.[13] In June 2009, the First World Congress on Positive Psychology took place. Positive psychology is the latest effort by human beings to understand the nature of happiness and well-being, but it is by no means the first attempt to solve that particular puzzle. Different westerners have their own individual views of what positive psychology actually is. Hedonism focuses on the pleasure as the basic component of the good life. The Early Hebrews believed in the divine command theory which finds happiness by living according to the commands or rules set down by a Supreme Being. The Greeks thought that happiness could be discovered through logic and rational analysis. Finally, Christianity was based on finding happiness in the message and life of Jesus, which is one of love and compassion. The field of positive psychology today is most advanced in the United States and Western Europe. Even though positive psychology offers a new approach to the study of positive emotions and behavior, the ideas, theories, research, and motivation to study the positive side of human behavior is as old as humanity.

Methods

Positive Psychology is concerned with three issues: positive emotions, positive individual traits, and positive institutions. Positive emotions is concerned with being content with one's past, being happy in the present and having hope for the future. Positive individual traits focus on one's strengths and virtues. Finally, positive institutions are based on strengths to better a community of people. "Happiness" encompasses different emotional and mental phenomena (see below). One method of assessment is Ed Diener's Satisfaction with Life Scale. According to Diener, this 5-question survey corresponds well with impressions from friends and family, and low incidence of depression.[19]

The "Remembering self" may not be the best source of information for pleasing the "Experiencing self" Rather than long-term, big picture appraisals, some methods attempt to identify the amount of positive affect from one activity to the next. Scientists use beepers to remind volunteers to write down the details of their current situation. Alternatively, volunteers complete detailed diary entries each morning about the day before.[19] An interesting discrepancy arises when researchers compare the results of these short-term "experience sampling" methods, with long-term appraisals. Namely, the latter may not be very accurate; people may not know what makes their life pleasant from one moment to the next. For instance, parents' appraisals mention their children as sources of pleasure, while 'experience sampling' indicates parents were not enjoying caring for their children, compared to other activities.[19][20] Psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains this discrepancy by differentiating between happiness according to the 'Experiencing Self' compared to the 'Remembering Self': when asked to reflect on experiences, memory biases like the Peak-End effect (e.g. we mostly remember the dramatic parts of a vacation, and how it was at the end) play a large role. A striking finding was in a study of colonoscopy patients. Adding 60 seconds to this invasive procedure, Kahneman found participants reported the colonoscopy as more pleasant. This was attributed to making sure the colonoscopy instrument was not moved during the extra 60 seconds - movement is the source of the most discomfort. Thus, Kahneman was appealing to the Remembering Self's tendency to focus on the end of the experience. Such findings help explain human error in Affective forecasting - people's ability to predict their future emotional states.[20] Michael Argyle developed the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire[21] as a broad measure of psychological well-being. The approach was criticized for lacking a theoretical model of happiness and for overlapping too much with related concepts such as self-esteem, sense of purpose, social interest, kindness, sense of humor and aesthetic appreciation.[22]

Neuroscientific approach

Neuroscience and brain imaging have shown increasing potential for helping science understand happiness and sadness. Though it may be impossible to achieve any comprehensive objective measure of happiness, some physiological correlates to happiness can be measured. Stefan Klein, in his book The Science of Happiness, links the dynamics of neurobiological systems (i.e., dopaminergic, opiate) to the concepts and findings of positive psychology and social psychology.[23] Nobel prize winner Eric Kandel and researcher Cynthia Fu described very accurate diagnoses of depression just by looking at fMRI brain scans.[24] By identifying neural correlates for emotions, scientists may be able to use methods like brain scans to tell us more about the different ways of being "happy". John Davidson has conducted research to determine which parts of the brain are involved in positive emotions. He found that, the left prefrontal cortex is more activated when we are happy and is also associated with greater ability to recover from negative emotions as well as enhanced ability to suppress negative emotions. Interesting, Davidson found that people can train themselves to increase activation in this area of their brains. It is thought that our brains can change throughout our lives as a result of our experiences, this is known as neuroplasticity. Determining whether emotions have a genetic trait or not were studied by David Lykken and Auke Tellegen. They found that up to 80% of a long-term sense of well-being is due to heredity. Basically, our families are important to our eventual emotional lives as adults because they provide us with genetic material that largely determines our base emotional responsiveness to the world. Therefore, genetic makeup is far more important to the long-term quality of our emotional lives than is learned behavior or the quality of our early childhood environment.

General Findings by Topic

Age The Midlife crisis may mark the first reliable drop in happiness during an average human's life. Evidence suggests most people generally become happier with age, with the exception of the years 40 - 50, which is the typical age at which a crisis might occur. Researchers specify people in both their 20s and 70s are happier than during midlife, although the extent of happiness changes at different rates. For example, feelings of stress and anger tend to decline after age 20, worrying drops after age 50, and enjoyment very slowly declines in adulthood but finally starts to rise after age 50, etc.[19][26][27] These findings are based on decades of data, and control for cohort groups; the data avoids the risk that the drops in happiness during midlife are due to populations' unique midlife experiences, like a war. The studies have also controlled for income, job status and parenting (as opposed to childlessness) to try to isolate the effects of age. Researchers found support for the notion of age changes inside the individual that affect happiness. This could be for any number of reasons. Psychological factors could include: greater awareness of one's self and preferences; an ability to control desires and have more realistic expectations - unrealistic expectations tend to foster unhappiness; moving closer to death may motivate people to pursue personal goals; improved social skills, like forgiveness, may take years to develop - the practice of forgiveness seems linked to higher levels of happiness; or happier people may live longer and are slightly overrepresented in the elderly population. Age related chemical changes might also play a role.[26][27][28][29] Other studies have found older individuals reported more health problems, but fewer problems overall. Young adults reported more anger, anxiety, depression, financial problems, troubled relationships and career stress. Researchers also suggest depression in the elderly is often due largely to passivity and inaction - they recommend people continue to undertake activities that bring happiness, even in old age.[30]

Gender Gender effects on well-being are paradoxical: men report feeling less happy than women,[citation needed], however, women are more susceptible to depression.[57] Earlier in life, women are more likely than men to fulfill their goals (material goals and family life aspirations), thereby increasing their life satisfaction and overall happiness. However, it is later in life that men fulfill their goals, are more satisfied with their family life and financial situation and, as a result, their overall happiness surpasses that of women.[58] Possible explanations include: women experience more variance (more extremes) in emotion, although women are generally happier.[29]

The role of gender on positive psychology constructs in a sample of iranian adolescents and adults The present study was conducted by Siamak Khodarahimi. The study was published in Germany through the Applied Research in Quality of Life on February 5, 2013. This study was conducted to determine the roles of gender and age on psychological hardiness, emotional intelligence, self-efficacy and happiness, primarily in Iranian individuals. The sample included 200 adolescents and 200 young adults who were questioned through various tests. After the study was completed, Khodarahimi found that the males of the sample showed significantly higher rates in psychological hardiness, emotional intelligence, self-efficacy and happiness than those in females, regardless of age.

Religion "Spirituality" refers to a personal or group search for the sacred in life. "Religion" refers to a search for the sacred within a traditional context such as a formal religious institution" It is commonly believed that people who are more religious in their behavior show better emotional well-being and lower rates of delinquency, alcoholism, drug abuse, and other social problems. Religion is thought to be realted to well-being because of six separate factors: (1) religion provides social support, (2) religion supports healthy lifestyles, (3) religion promotes personality integration, (4) religion promotes generativity and altruism, (5) religion provides unique coping strategies, and (6) religion provides a sense of meaning and purpose. Emmons realized that many religious individuals experience emotions that create positive connections among people and allow us to express our highest values and potential. These four emotions are known as "sacred emotions." The four sacred emotions are: (1) gratitude and appreciation, (2) forgiveness, (3) compassion and empathy, and (4) humility.

Happiness Set Point

The happiness set point indicates that most people return to an average level of happiness - or a set point - after temporary highs and lows in emotionality. People whose set points lean toward positive emotionality tend to be cheerful most of the time and those whose set points tend to be more negative emotionality tend to gravitate toward pessimism and anxiety. Lykken found that we can influence our level of well-being by creating environments more conductive to feelings of happiness and by working with our genetic makeup. Fujita and Diener found that 24% of people changed significantly between the first five years of the study and the last five years. Almost one in four people showed changes in their well-being over the years; indeed sometimes those changes were quite dramatic. Bruce Headey found that 5-6% of people dramatically increased their life satisfaction over a 15 to 20 year period and that the goals people pursued had a major impact on their life satisfaction. Two different goals on the continuum are known as nonzero-sum goals and zero-sum goals. Nonzero sum goals are associated with greater life satisfaction consisted of commitments to family and friends, social or political involvement, and altruism. This term implies that the person involved and others can both benefit. Zero-sum goals are associated with a person who gains advantage at the expense of others, did not promote life satisfaction.

How to Increase Happiness

The easiest and best possible way to increase one's happiness is by doing something that increases the ratio of positive to negative emotions. Contrary to some beliefs, people are actually very good at determining what will increase their positive emotions. There are many techniques that have been developed to help increase one's happiness. One of those was developed by Michael Fordyce who developed the Happiness Training Program to help teach others how to increase their own happiness. This program identifies the "fourteen fundamentals of happiness" (1981), which are arranged in these categories: (1) change your activities, (2) change your thinking, (3) nurture relationships, (4) value personal growth, and (5) decrease negative emotions. Fordyce has also conducted multiple studies to determine the there is a positive relationship between these fourteen fundamentals and subjective well-being. A second technique is known as the "Sustainable Happiness Model (SHM)." This model proposes that long-term happiness is determined upon: (1) one's genetically determined set-point, (2) circumstantial factors, and (3) intentional activities. Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and Schkade suggest to make these changes in the correct way in order to have long-term happiness. One final suggestion of how to increase one's happiness is through a procedure called "Hope Training." Hope Training is primarily focused on hope due to the belief that hope drives the positive emotions of well-being. This training is based on the hope theory, which states that well-being can increase once people have developed goals and believe themselves to achieve those goals. One of the main purposes of hope training is to eliminate individuals from false hope syndrome. False hope syndrome particularly occurs when one believes that changing their behavior is easy and the outcomes of the change will be evidenced in a short period of time.