Positive psychology: Its sources and contents
In 1998, when Martin Seligman was elected as the president of the American Psychology Association (APA) he extended a clarion call to psychology to focus on wellbeing and happiness as it does on pathology and psychological disorder (Seligman, 1999). The stream of psychological accent that followed is referred to as ‘positive psychology’. This is not a new school of psychology but only a new movement. It draws its sources from the history of psychology; and its interests are similar to that of humanistic psychology, but it differs sharply from it in that positive psychology embraces an empirical approach. It is the focus on existential questions with an empirical grounding that makes positive psychology unique (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 13; see also Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2001).
For a long time, psychology was focused on understanding, treating and preventing psychological disorder. The positive psychology movement challenges this […]
Positive Psychology
Lecture 2: Understanding Affective States
WHAT IS AN EMOTION?
‘…a kind of shorthand, an abbreviated way to refer to a package of events and processes…antecedent events, the physiological and motor responses, the memories, thoughts, images, and information processing, and the mobilisation of efforts to cope with the source of emotions. All of these may be implied when someone says, “He looks angry” (Ekaman, 1989).
EMOTIONS AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
The way we process emotion is influenced by gender, genetic makeup and some personality traits.
The environmental influence on emotional processing is also strong. That is, we learn to process. That is why, the way children deal with emotions is different from that of adults.
This learning process could be largely determined by early exposure to strong emotional stimuli without accompanying support. Certain way of expressing emotions in a particular context (family) learnt as a child may be difficult in dealing with in another context (school/community) as an adult.
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY & AFFECTIVE […]
Lecture 5 – Correlates of Happiness
READING 1: Psychology of Happiness by David Myer
DOWNLOAD MY CLASSNOTES IN PDF: PP 5 Correlates of Happiness
Veenhoven, R.. (2009). World Database of Happiness: Tool for dealing with the ‘data-deluge’. Psychological Topics 18(2), 221-246.
Veenhoven, R. (2012). Cross-national differences in happiness: Cultural measurement bias or effect of culture? International Journal of Wellbeing, 2(4), 333-353.
Lecture 6: Psycho-Social Substrates of Wellbeing
Positive psychology makes a distinction between subjective wellbeing, social wellbeing and psychological wellbeing. The literature of positive psychology makes use of different terminologies to name positive affective states and some of them are not yet clarified. For instance, there is a confusion of terms – what Seligman (2002, p.115) prefers to call ‘gratification’, Csikszentmihalyi (2002) calls ‘enjoyment’. These confusions suggest that psychological understanding of affective states is still a work in progress (Kristjánsson, 2010). On the other hand, the complexity of terminology goes to show that pleasure, happiness and wellbeing lies in a spectrum of psycho-social states with a varying degree of valence.
Pleasure
Positive psychology suggests that pleasure (largely understood as hedonia) is not negative in itself. It has a limitation insofar as exaggerations are concerned. The exaggeration in intensity could lead to euphoria, and the exaggeration in frequency and duration could lead to habituation. Subsequently, the state of euphoria could […]
Lecture 7: Values in Action – Catalogue of Character Strengths
Values in Action – Catalogue of Character Strengths
Click here for a PDF version: Character strengths summary
DOWNLOAD MY CLASSNOTES IN PDF: PP 7 Values in Action Intro
Peterson & Seligman, 2004
A Summary by Sahaya G. Selvam
CLICK HERE TO TAKE AN ONLINE SURVEY OF VALUES IN ACTION
CS1. Creativity
Creavity can be observed in behaviours that exhibit, and ideas that express, great degree of originality and adaptive character (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p.110). It may be seen as a mental process, expressed by certain individuals, and can be analysed in terms of tangible products (Simonton, 2005, p.191).
CS2. Curiosity
Curiosity represents “one’s intrinsic desire for experience and knowledge” (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p.125). Curiosity is particularly noticed when someone seeks knowledge that goes beyond the principle of “utility of the information to the agent.” It is as if information is sought for its own sake (Loewenstein, 1994, p.75).
CS3. Open-mindedness
This character strength consists in the ability to seek actively […]