Positive Psychological Science

Improving Everyday Life, Well-Being, Work, Education, and Societies Across the Globe

Stewart I. Donaldson, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Jeanne Nakamura, Stewart I. Donaldson, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Jeanne Nakamura

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429679445
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Angewandte Psychologie

Positive psychological science has experienced extraordinary growth over the past two decades. Research in this area is revealing new strategies and interventions for improving everyday life, health and well-being, work, education, and societies across the globe. Contributions from luminaries in the field provide excellent reviews of the selected topics, summarizing empirical evidence, describing measurement tools, and offering recommendations for improving many aspects of our lives.

Comprehensively updated, this second edition not only incorporates the more recent empirical findings; three new chapters on relationships and love, the importance of purpose, and the stimulation of education practice have been added. Focused on peer-reviewed and theory-driven psychological science, this book uniquely establishes a bridge between the intellectual movement for positive psychology and how it works in the real world. This collection of chapters will inspire the reader to creatively find new opportunities to better the human condition, whether these are in our lives, schools, health care settings, or workplaces.

This book will be of interest to all psychologists and social scientists, applied researchers, program designers and evaluators, educators, leaders, students, and anyone interested in applying the science of positive psychology to improve everyday life and/or to promote social betterment and justice locally and globally.

1
Theory-Driven Positive Psychological Science

A Global Perspective

Stewart I. Donaldson

Many have claimed that the emerging area within psychology known as positive psychology holds great promise for advancing knowledge about optimal human functioning and improving the quality of life in modern societies across the globe. Curious about these claims, we invited some of the most prominent leaders in this new area of scholarship to the Claremont Colleges to discuss the implications of positive psychology research findings for improving human welfare and optimal positive functioning.

The first volume based on these proceedings, Applied Positive Psychology: Improving Everyday Life, Health, Schools, Work and Society, was published in 2011. Because this first volume was so well received, we were asked to update the chapters in an effort to publish a second edition. In this second edition, most of the chapters from the first edition have been updated and revised, and three new chapters have been added, including Chapter 4, “The Science of Positive Relationships and Love,” Chapter 5, “The Importance of Purpose: Theory, Research, and Application,” and Chapter 12, “How National Surveys of Well-Being Can Stimulate Educational Practice.” The revised and new chapters in this volume are largely focused on the peer-reviewed theory-driven positive psychology science that supports each topic area. It is our hope that the more recent empirical findings presented in this volume will provide readers with the most up-to-date science on important positive psychology topics.

It is with great sadness and feeling of loss I report that two of the pioneers of positive psychology who contributed chapters to the first volume, Christopher Peterson and Shane J. Lopez, passed away in recent years. Professor Peterson’s co-author Nansook Park and colleagues have recently published an update on the science of character strengths and virtues in Scientific Advances in Positive Psychology (Warren & Donaldson, 2017) and were not able to contribute an additional chapter to this new volume. Professor Lopez’s co-author Valerie J. Calderon did revise and update their chapter on “Gallup Student Poll: Measuring and Promoting What Is Right with Students” (Chapter 10). Finally, Professor Shelley E. Taylor has retired since the first edition was published and was not available to update her chapter for this new edition.

The chapters in this second edition explore the potential applications of positive psychological science for improving everyday life, health and well-being, work and education for societies across the globe. The International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) has continued to advance positive psychological science and its evidence-based applications globally since the first edition of this volume, and there are even more robust positive psychology associations and conferences now going on around the world (IPPA, 2019). A recent systematic review of the peer reviewed theory-driven psychological science literature found that there have now been more than 860 published scientific studies conducted across five continents and 63 countries (Kim, Doiron, Warren, & Donaldson, 2018). The rapid advancement of theory-driven psychological science is clearly a global phenomenon, with implications for improving societies across the globe. But before we take a deep dive into the scientific foundations and recent advances in positive psychology, let’s start with the basics.

What Is Positive Psychology?

You will learn more about this question throughout the pages of this volume. But let me start with a bit of folklore or perhaps informal history about the inception of positive psychology as we know it today. It all began on a beautiful beach in Hawaii. I’ve long discovered that many of the best things in life as we know it originate from the ocean and beautiful beaches across the planet. In this case, an adventurous Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was swimming off the volcanic coast of the Big Island of Hawaii, Kona. Underestimating the force of the swell, he found himself being smashed against the volcanic rock and struggling for his survival. Beaten and bloodied, he was barely able to struggle his way back to the beach. A man on the beach had been watching this frightening incident and had made his way down to the beach to help Dr. Csikszentmihalyi. The man guided Mihaly back to the lifeguard station near the resort where they both were staying. As fate would have it, the helpful bystander was President-elect of the American Psychological Association Professor Martin Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania. Mihaly and Marty began what would become a special relationship as they walked along that beach. The rest of their Hawaiian vacation was filled with breakfasts and dinners together and serious conversations about what was missing from the discipline and profession of psychology.

They became increasingly concerned about the kind of legacy that should be left for future generations of psychologists. After returning to the mainland, Marty telephoned Mihaly and began a new series of discussions focused on how best to create a field of positive psychology.

One of the creative ideas they developed addressed how to build the domain and people for this new endeavor. They identified 50 of the most widely cited psychologists and asked them to nominate their most promising students, students who they thought had what it takes to become chairs of psychology departments (or leaders) by age 50. Approximately 20 young psychologists were given an all-expenses-paid trip with Mihaly, Marty, and a few colleagues to spend a week on another beautiful beach near a remote fishing village in Akumal, Mexico. So the next set of foundational discussions about building a “field of dreams” called positive psychology was conducted in swimsuits and flip-flops on beautiful beaches while staying at a wonderful beach house owned by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.

One might raise eyebrows or question the creative process used to establish what we now know as positive psychology, but the evidence suggests it has paid off handsomely. The positive psychology theme of the 1998 American Psychological Association Convention was a huge success. The first positive psychology summit was held in 1999, followed by the first international conference on positive psychology in 2002. Positive psychology conferences have now been held all over the world, and in June 2009, the first World Congress on positive psychology took place in Philadelphia (see Ruark, 2009).

On the scholarly front, the January 2000 special issue of the American Psychologist on happiness, excellence, and optimal human functioning helped to ignite a wide range of research and scholarly pursuits that have supported the development of a science of positive psychology (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). This new activity was further fueled by generous prizes to honor stellar research and achievement and a wealth of research funding from major philanthropic foundations and from a range of government funders, including the National Institutes of Health. A plethora of books and research articles have also been written to disseminate the ideas and findings from this new science focused on topics that fall under the “positive psychology” umbrella term (see Ackerman, Warren, & Donaldson, 2018; Donaldson, Dollwet, & Rao, 2015; Kim et al., 2018; Warren & Donaldson, 2017, 2018). University courses and graduate programs in positive psychology are now thriving, including a highly visible professional master’s program at the University of Pennsylvania under the leadership of Professor Seligman and the first doctoral programs in positive psychology at Claremont Graduate University under the leadership of Professors Csikszentmihalyi, Donaldson, and Nakamura. The scholarly Journal of Positive Psychology was established in 2006, and the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) was formed in 1998 as a professional home for more than 3,000 professionals worldwide who are interested in positive psychology.

The Rapid Expansion of Positive Psychological Science

“Positive psychology” seems to have become an umbrella term for studies on strengths, virtues, excellence, thriving, flourishing, resilience, optimal functioning in general, and the like. Some have called it a fresh lens or a new way of focusing research on human and organizational behavior. This organized positive orientation to research, application, and scholarship has quickly escaped the disciplinary confinement of psychology and has spread rapidly across a wide range of disciplines and professions (Donaldson & Ko, 2010; Donaldson, Donaldson, & Ko, Chapter 7 in this volume; Warren, Donaldson, Lee, & Donaldson, 2019). For example, research and scholarship adopting a positive psychology perspective can be found in the areas of education (Clonan, Chafouleas, McDougal, & Riley-Tillman, 2004; Gilman, Furlong, & Huebner, 2009; Henrik-Knoop, Chapters 11, 12 in this volume; Liesveld & Miller, 2005; Waters, 2017), public health (Post, 2005; Quick & Quick, 2004; Taylor & Sherman, 2004), healthcare (Houston, 2006), social and human services (Radey & Figley, 2007; Ronel, 2006), economics (Frey & Stutzer, 2002; Marks, Shah, & Westall, 2004), political science (Linley & Joseph, 2004), neuroscience (Burgdorf, 2001), leadership (Avolio, Gardner, Walumbwa, Luthans, & May, 2004; Gardner & Schermerhorn, 2004; Luthans & Avolio, 2003), management (Ghoshal, 2005; Warren et al., 2019), and the organizational sciences (Cameron, Dutton, & Quinn, 2003; Dutton, 2003; Luthans, 2002a, 2002b; Warren et al., 2017, 2019), among others. This new focus on the science of thriving or optimal functioning seems to be fully energized across the social and human sciences and is suggesting new ways to address some of the most pressing issues facing modern societies. Research on topics such as diversity, equity, and inclusion in positive psychological science is also beginning to emerge and improve the discourse (Rao & Donaldson, 2015; Pedrotti & Edwards, 2017; Warren et al., 2019). Finally, the positive psychological science evidence base has evolved to the point that major large-scale national experiments are finding growth mindset improves student achievement (Yeager, 2019), and systematic reviews and meta-analyses are possible and are advancing our scientific understanding of a wide variety of important topics (e.g., Ackerman et al., 2018; Donaldson et al., 2015; Donaldson, Lee, & Donaldson, 2019a; Hendriks, Schotanus-Dijkstrab, Hassankhana, de Jongc, & Bohlmeijerb, 2019; Kim et al., 2018).

The participants in this volume were asked to provide chapters that extend our understanding of how this new focus, body of knowledge, methods of inquiry, and broad movement within the social sciences can contribute to social betterment. We were specifically interested in how positive psychological science can be applied to improve:

• everyday life
• health & well-being
• work life and organizations
• education
• mentoring
• positive interventions
• societies across the globe

Foundations of Positive Psychological Science

Chapters 2 through 6 address the practical implications of positive psychological science focused on some of the core topics in positive psychology. These core areas include well-being, positive emotions, positive relationships and love, meaning and purpose, positive adult development, and mentoring.

In Chapter 2, Jessica Kansky and Ed Diener illustrate the significant progress that has been made in understanding the causes and consequences of well-being for individuals and societies since the first edition of this volume. Earlier findings of the benefits and causes of well-being have been replicated and expanded using innovative techniques and methodology. Findings continue supporting the importance of well-being for success in critical domains including health, work, and relationships. It is now even more clear that well-being has been firmly established as a key ingredient in determining overall functioning on both the individual and societal levels.

Next, in Chapter 3, Taylor N. West and Barbara L. Fredrickson discuss how to cultivate positive emotions to enhance human flourishing. They review the positive psychological science stemming both from the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions and from the newer positivity resonance theory. This research confirms that positive emotions do far more than simply feel good. Indeed, they have wide-reaching implications for psychological, social, and physical well-being in ways that fuel human flourishing.

In Chapter 4, Saeideh Heshmati and Stewart I. Donaldson review the science on positive relationships and love and present a new framework for studying this vital area of positive psychological science in the years ahead. They underscore that mounting evidence from positive psychological science supports Chris Peterson’s mantra that “other people matter” in terms of our health, well-being, and optimal positive functioning. One of the most important ingredients for a positive relationship that has emerged across the positive psychological science literature is the positive emotion of love (including but way beyond romantic love) or positivity resonance. That is, positivity resonance and a wide variety of forms of love appear essential for developing and maintaining high-quality relationships or connections with other people. Therefore, a major focus of their chapter is on the positive psychological science of love, and they provide a new framework for understanding and extending the science of positive relationships and love.

Kendall Cotton Bronk, in Chapter 5, reviews this history and current positive psychological science on the importance of purpose in our lives. She illustrates how purpose clearly represents a critical component of well-being, and its development has important implications for positive psychological science research and practice. Her view is that alt...