Positive psychology

Presentation by Shamala R
What is positive psychology

 Positive psychology is the science of human strengths.

 ‘Scientific study of optimal human functioning [that] aims to discover
and promote the factors that allow individuals and communities to
thrive’.(martin Seligman).
 The discipline of positive psychology focuses on both individual and
societal well-being.
Genesis of positive psychology

 Martin Seligman
 APA President 1998
 He is widely seen as the father of contemporary positive psychology
 However, while most people see Seligman as the face of Positive Psychology,  he didn’t start the
field alone and was not the first ‘positive psychologist.’
 There have been many influencers which have contributed to this new era of psychology.
 1) William James- He argued that in order to thoroughly study a person’s optimal functioning,
one has to take in how they personally experience something, otherwise known as their subjective
experience.
 2) Abraham Maslow- the term positive psychology first appeared in the last chapter of Maslow’s
book Motivation and personality (1954) the title of which was “Toward a Positive Psychology”
The formal beginning: Nikki and the
weeds
 Seligman’s inspiration.
 Weeding garden.
 5-year old daughter throwing weeds.
 Seligman irritated, yelled at Nikki.
 “Daddy. From when I was 3 until I was 5, I was a whiner. I whined every
day. On my 5th birthday, I decided I wasn’t going to whine anymore.
That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. If I can stop whining, you can
stop being such a grouch.”
An epiphany

 Seligman resolved to change.

 His purpose in life was not to correct his daughter’s shortcomings.
 Instead, raising her to nurture the strength she displayed (social
intelligence).
 Can psychological science be about identifying and nurturing strengths?
 His mission as APA president.
 It was then that Positive Psychology became the theme of his term as
president.
 Seligman grew frustrated with psychology’s overly narrow focus on the
negative; so much attention was paid to mental illness, abnormal
psychology, trauma, suffering, and pain, and relatively little attention was
dedicated to happiness, well-being, exceptionalism, strengths,
and flourishing.
 When he was elected president of the American Psychological Association
in 1998, he jumped at the opportunity to alter the direction of the field
from such an influential position. He proposed a new subfield of psychology
with a focus on what is life-giving rather than life-depleting. The
foundational paper of this new field, positive psychology, was published in
2000 by Seligman and the “founding father” of flow, Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi.
 Since 2000, Seligman’s call for a greater focus on the positive in life has
been answered by thousands of researchers around the world, provoking
tens of thousands of studies on positive phenomena and establishing a
base for the application of positive principles to coaching, teaching,
relationships, the workplace, and every other life domain.
Assumptions and goals of positive
psychology
 The most basic assumption of positive psychology is that human goodness
and excellence are as authentic as disorders and distress and therefore
deserve equal attention from mental health practitioners.
 A primary goal of what could be termed as the positive psychology movement
is to be a catalyst for change in the focus of psychology from a preoccupation
with repairing the worst things in life to also building positive qualities (Joseph
& Linley, 2006).
 This is especially relevant to the therapeutic context.
 The role of the therapist is not to simply alleviate distress and leave the
person free from symptomatology, but also to facilitate wellbeing and
fulfilment which is not only a worthwhile goal in its own right, it also serves as
a preventive function that buffers against future psychopathology and even
recovery from illness (Joseph & Linley, 2006).
Three Levels of Positive Psychology

 The science of positive psychology operates on three different levels – the

subjective level, the individual level and the group level.
 The subjective level includes the study of positive experiences such as joy, well-
being, satisfaction, contentment, happiness, optimism and flow. This level is
about feeling good, rather than doing good or being a good person.
 At the next level, the aim is to identify the constituents of the ‘good life’ and the
personal qualities that are necessary for being a ‘good person’, through studying
human strengths and virtues, future-mindedness, capacity for love, courage,
perseverance, forgiveness, originality, wisdom, interpersonal skills and giftedness.
 Finally, at the group or community level, the emphasis is on civic virtues, social
responsibilities, nurturance, altruism, civility, tolerance, work ethics, positive
institutions and other factors that contribute to the development of citizenship and
communities.
Concepts in positive psychology

 Positive psychology aspires to bring solid empirical research into areas

such as
 Positive emotions, Positive traits, Hope, optimism, flow,
resilience, virtue and strengths of character
Positive emotions

 Positive emotions are the ones that lead one to feel good about one’s
self which will lead to an emotionally happy and satisfied result.
 Ex: cheerfulness, joy, contentment and happiness
 The broaden-and-build theory, or broaden-and-build theory of
positive emotions, proposed by Barbara Frederickson in the late
90's. suggests that building up positive emotions within a person will
tend to broaden that person's creative openness, understanding, and
behaviour.
 Joy makes you want to play, interest makes you want to explore, etc.
 positive emotions tend to build up intellectual, social, and psychological
resources.
Positive traits

 Traits refer to all the diverse individual characteristic found to influence

well being.
 Positive traits are those that enhance mental health, foster high quality
relations with others, and contribute to success in meeting life’s many
challenges.
 Examples of positive traits are:
1. honesty, 2. adaptability, 3. patience, 4. courage, 5. loyalty, etc.
Hope

 According to Snyder et al. (1991) hope is a positive cognitive state based on a sense

of successful goal-directed determination and planning to meet these goals.
 In other words, hope is like a snap-shot of a person’s current goal-directed thinking,
highlighting the motivated pursuit of goals and the expectation that those goals can be
achieved. 
 Hope helps us remain committed to our goals and motivated to take action towards
achieving. Hope gives people a reason to continue fighting and believing that their
current circumstances will improve, despite the unpredictable nature of human
existence.
 As psychologist and renowned hope researcher Charles Snyder (2002, p. 269) stated
so eloquently:
 A rainbow is a prism that sends shards of multi-coloured light in various directions. It
lifts our spirits and makes us think of what is possible. Hope is the same – a personal
rainbow of the mind.
Optimism

 Optimism is an attitude that can positively affect a person’s mental and physical
health. Optimism can also help reduce a person’s stress and increase longevity.
 To many psychologists, optimism reflects the belief that outcomes of events or
experiences will generally be positive.
 Others contend that optimism is more an explanatory style; it resides in the way
people explain causes of events.
 Optimists are likely to see the causes of failure or negative experiences as
temporary rather than permanent, specific rather than global, and external
rather than internal. Such a perspective enables optimists to more easily see the
possibility for change.
 Research shows that, on average, human beings are hardwired to be more
optimistic than not.
Flow
 The concept of flow was first scientifically explored and defined by Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi (our second “founding father” of positive psychology).
 Csikszentmihalyi noticed that many artists fell into a particular state while they were
working; this state was characterized by a particularly intense focus and great
concentration on the task at hand, to the point of losing track of time for hours at a
time.
 Professional athletes, musicians, writers, and people from all sorts of artistic and
creative trades frequently reported losing themselves into their work in a similar way.
 As he gathered more descriptions of this phenomenon, he observed six factors that
characterize a flow experience:
• Intense and focused concentration on the present moment;
• The merging of action and awareness, or being fully present in your actions;
• A loss of reflective self-consciousness (lack of attention to the self);
• A sense of personal control or agency in the situation;
• A distorted sense of time passing;
• Experiencing the activity or situation as intrinsically rewarding (Csikszentmihalyi,
1975). 
Resilience
 Resilience in positive psychology refers to the ability to cope with whatever life throws at them.We call
these people resilient.
 A resilient person works through challenges by using personal resources, strengths and other positive
capacities of psychological capital like hope, optimism, and self-efficacy.
 Overcoming a crisis via resiliency is often described as “bouncing back” to a normal state of functioning.
Being resilient is also positively associated with happiness.
 According to Martin Seligman, Our ability to deal with hard things is determined by 3 P’s.
 These P’s are ways that we see the world:
 Personalization
 Permanence
 Pervasiveness
 Personalization is thinking that the problem is yourself, instead of considering other outside things
that have caused it. Realizing outside factors have caused a bad situation allows us to reduce the blame
and criticism we put on ourselves.
 Permanence is thinking a bad situation will last forever. Those who think setbacks are temporary have
improved ability to accept and adapt for the future.
 Pervasiveness is thinking a bad situation applies across all areas of your life, instead of only
happening in one area. People who think bad situations are pervasive feel that all areas of their life are
impacted. This can make it hard to carry on.
Gratitude

 Gratitude is a social emotion that signals our recognition of the things

others have done for us.
 Gratitude is widely regarded as a virtue.
 Mccullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, and Larson(2001) provided one of the
first conceptualizations of gratitude.
 These researchers define gratitude as moral affect because both the
origins and consequences of gratitude are oriented towards the well
being of another person.
 They also believe that gratitude serves three moral or social functions
 Gratitude can function as moral barometer, a moral motive and moral
reinforce.
Virtues and strengths of character

 Virtues are core characteristics valued by moral philosophy and religion, it

is universal and has survival value.
 Character strengths are psychological ingredients that define the virtues.
 Describing the features of a life well-lived is the central theme of positive
psychology.
 Because the meaning of a good person and a good life are intimately
connected to virtue, positive psychology has given virtue particular
prominence
 This is apparent in a recent collaborative research project (the Values in
Action Project, Peterson & Seligman, 2004) that had a lofty goal of
developing a classification of character strengths and virtues that would
parallel the Diagnostic and statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders(DSM)
Virtues and strengths of character

 The DSM provides a classification of mental disorders and an extensive “language”

for describing human psychological weakness and pathologies.
 Authors of the Values in Action Project (VIA) hoped to create a comprehensive
classification similar to DSM, but one that was focused on human strengths rather
than weaknesses.
 They also hoped to provide language describing positive human qualities that
defined by a healthy person living in good life.
 In another way, the DSM describes aspects of life “below zero” (with “Zero”
representing the threshold dividing mental health from emotional illness).
 One goal of VIA was to describe life above “zero”(i.e to identify the traits that define
emotional health and strength.
 This goal is consistent with positive psychology’s emphasis on restoring balance to
the field
Virtues and strengths of character

 Developing a classification of character strengths is a daunting task. Virtue and

character are complex topics.
 What exactly is a human virtue or character strength? Do people have common
understanding of traits that qualify as virtous? Getting answers to these
questions was one of the major purpose of VIA.
 Peterson and Seligman(2004), brought together a group of researchers who
sought to describe those strengths of character that were most prominent
across history and culture.
 A list of possible “candidates” was generated by examining virtues and
strengths described in a variety of philosophic, religious, and cultural traditions.
 From a long list of candidates, 24 character strengths were selected and
organized around 6 virtues.
Eastern and Western perspectives of
positive psychology
 More focus on Western values and experiences
- hope, optimism, personal self-efficacy

 Eastern perspectives now being consulted- the previously neglected

wisdom of eastern cultures are now being consulted
Eastern and Western perspectives of
positive psychology
Culture and Positive Psychology
 East and West combination produces multiple viewpoints of human
strengths

 Western = linear/physical plane

 Eastern = fluid/spiritual plane
Eastern and Western perspectives of
positive psychology
 To summarize thousands of years of western and eastern ideology and tradition is
beyond the scope.
 We shall discuss the and highlight the basic tenets of three influential , western
traditions:
1. Athenian,
2. Judeo- Christian,
3. Islam
And four influential eastern disciplines:
4. Confucianism,
5. Taoism,
6. Buddhism,
7. Hinduism
Western Traditions: Athenian
Views
 Plato and Aristotle both focussed heavily on Virtue and human strenths in their teachings in
ancient Greece.
 Aristotle after expanding on Plato's ideas regarding virtue, detailed 11 moral virtues
1. Courage
2. Moderation
3. Generosity
4. Munificence- money spending at an appropriate level
5. Magnificence- greatness of soul
6. Even Temper
7. Friendliness
8. Truthfulness
9. Wit- ability to laugh and have fun at appropriate level
10. Justice
11. Friendship
Western Traditions: Athenian
Views
 Intellectual Virtues- ideas regarding wisdom

 Correlation between Virtues and Political

Community

 Government responsible for virtue

development via early education and training
Western Traditions: Judeo-
Christianity
 The bible contains discussions of virtues in many chapters and verses
 In old testament- the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity are highlighted
and encouraged and were later discussed as part of:
 7 Heavenly Virtues ( by Thomas Aquinas):
1. Fortitude (Courage) 5. Faith
2. Justice 6. Hope
3. Temperance 7. Charity
4. Wisdom
Western Traditions: Judeo-
Christianity
 Ten Commandments

 New Testament:
- Book of Romans, Book of Proverbs, Book of Matthew

 The Talmud- the book of jewish law- most challenging religious

text
Western Traditions: Islam

 Scholars disagree as to whether Islam should be considered a western or

an eastern religion.
 Islam is practiced by both western and Eastern individuals and groups
and thus its virtues and practices may be influenced by more than one
context.
 Islam incorporates many virtues
1.Gratitude
2.Love
3. Kindness
4. Justice
5.courage
Eastern Influences: Confucianism

 Confucius: The Sage; from China

 Morality as a cure for evil

 “You would like others to do for you what you

would indeed like for yourself.”

- Collectivist ideal = leaders caring for the

group
Eastern Influences: Confucianism

 Attainment of Virtue (5 Virtues) to reach

Enlightenment

1. Jen (humanity)
2. Yi (duty to treat others well)
3. Li (etiquette and sensitivity for
others’ feelings)
4. Zhi (wisdom)
5. Xin (truthfulness)
Eastern Influences: Taoism

Lao-Tzu: creator of Taoism; from China

 Must live according to the Toa

 Toa = “The Way” =

- energy that surrounds everyone

“The Way” cannot be taught; must be experienced

Eastern Influences: Taoism

Goal = Achieve Naturalness & Spontaneity

Key virtues to be practiced without effort =

1. Humanity 3. Temperance
2. Justice 4. Propriety

Transcendence = behaving virtuously naturally

Eastern Influences: Buddhism

Buddha: “the Master”;“The Enlightened One”

 Key themes:
- Seeking the good of others

- Suffering as a part of being

- Nirvana – self is freed from the desire for

anything
Eastern Influences: Buddhism

 Brahma Viharas: series of Buddhist virtues

- Maitri (love)
- Karuna (compassion)
- Mudita (joy)
- Upeksa (equanimity)

 Achieve virtues via divorcing self from desire

Eastern Influences: Hinduism

 Avoid reincarnation by:

- attaining ultimate self-knowledge

- striving toward ultimate self-betterment

 Karma- karma literally means “action” and more broadly names the
universal principle of cause and effect, action and reaction, which
Hindus believe governs all consciousness.
Summary of Eastern and Western
philosophies

 Each of the philosophies discussed, incorporates ideas about the

importance of virtues along with human strengths, as people move
toward good life.
 Similarities also can be drawn among the different ideologies, especially
in the types of human qualities and experiences that are valued, though
there are also differences in terms of which traits are particularly valued.
 Thus, it is important to contrast these eastern beliefs with western
ideology to understand the differences in positive psychology viewed
from each perspective.