Positive Psychology

The Basics

Rona Hart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351375245
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Educational Psychology

This book provides an accessible and balanced introduction to positive psychology scholarship and its applications, incorporating an overview of the development of positive psychology. Positive Psychology: The Basics delineates positive psychology's journey as a discipline, takes stock of its achievements and provides an updated overview of its core topics, exploring the theory, research and interventions in each.

Launched as a rebellious discipline just over two decades ago, positive psychology challenged the emphasis of applied psychology on disease and dysfunction and offered a new, more balanced perspective on human life. From its foundations in the late 20th century to recent "second-wave" theories around the importance of recognizing negative emotions, this compact overview covers the key ideas and principles, from research around emotional wellbeing, optimism and change, to posttraumatic growth and positive relationships. The first jargon-free introduction to the subject, Hart introduces the reader to a range of issues, including self-regulation and flow, character strengths and virtues and positive relationships, concluding with a chapter on how interventions can affect happiness and wellbeing.

Positive Psychology: The Basics is an essential resource for students, practitioners, academics and anyone who is interested in understanding the essence of a life well lived.

1

The development of positive psychology

These are exciting times for positive psychology! Launched in 1998 as a rebellious discipline, it has become, in a short space of time, an influential social movement, which has captured the interest and imagination of the scientific community as well as the general public. Since its inception it has grown exponentially in terms of publications and readership, research output, courses and studentship, media attention and public interest, and is predicted to continue to grow in popularity over the next decades. Conversely, however, it is also expected to disappear, and counter-intuitively, its impending dissolution would be considered by some as a sign of its success.

Alongside the exhilaration of its trailblazing activity and rapid growth, and the existential movement between the desire to carve its own space and the contradictory pull to assimilate into other applied psychology disciplines, some challenges emerged. These include a fierce critique of its existence and blurred boundaries, a dismissal of the merit of its concepts and scientific work, exclusionary practices by chartering organisations and internal fragmentation that threatens its intellectual integrity and progress.

We are therefore at the brink of a crucial period for positive psychology, one which will determine its fate. Will it sustain in its current form, change, integrate into other applied psychology disciplines or fade away?

This chapter delineates the background that has led to the establishment of positive psychology, defining its aims, contours and remit. It also offers an overview of its development in the past two decades and concludes by discussing its possible future trajectories, and addressing some of its common misconceptions and critique.

A brief history of positive psychology

We begin our journey into the history of positive psychology at the 1999 American Psychological Association (APA) annual conference. In a powerfully articulated presidential mission statement, Professor Seligman reminded his audience of the three missions that psychology had committed to achieve before World War II: “curing mental illness, making the lives of all people more fulfilling, and identifying and nurturing high talent” (Seligman, 1999, p. 2). He then asserted that, while its remedial mission has taken centre stage in terms of research and applications for more than five decades, the two other missions of psychology – improving the lives of all people and cultivating talent – “were all but forgotten”. As a result of this limited agenda, psychology has become mainly a curative discipline that is focused on misery, malady and malfunction, and based upon the medical disease model: diagnosing what is broken, and attempting to repair the damage.

While Seligman acknowledged the outstanding progress and success that psychology has seen over the years in healing mental illness and broken lives, he noted that the field has been sidetracked: “Psychology is not just the study of weakness and damage, it is also the study of strengths and virtues. Treatment is not just fixing what is broken, it is nurturing what is best within ourselves” (Seligman, 1999, p. 2). This unbalanced agenda has left the profession unable to draw on what is right with people – their strengths, courage, optimism, resilience and many other capacities – to offer preventive measures that can buffer against the emergence of mental illness.

With this recognition, Seligman resolved to use his APA presidency to redress the imbalance in psychology, by establishing a novel discipline that places the spotlight on the cultivation of wellbeing and preventive measures, thereby complementing the current pathological and remedial agenda in psychology. Seligman called this new discipline positive psychology. Importantly, the aim was not to accentuate positive aspects of life while denying or devaluing negative experiences, nor to observe them through rose-coloured glasses. Rather, the aim was to widen the scope of applied psychology so that it aptly captures the full range of human experiences.

Fortunately, many researchers and practitioners welcomed this opportunity to engage with the healthy side of human psychology, and since then research activity, teaching and practice have blossomed.

Maslow’s critique of psychology

Maslow’s (1987) famed critique of psychology’s preoccupation with the dysfunctional side of human psyche is often cited as evidence for the prolonged imbalance in psychology:

The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side. It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illness, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his full psychological height. It is as if psychology has voluntarily restricted itself to only half its rightful jurisdiction, and that, the darker, meaner half.

(p. 354)

Prior to Seligman’s presidential address, a series of scholarly meetings took place which shaped the early vision, conceptualisation and development of positive psychology. The early seeds of the new discipline were planted in a chance meeting between Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi during a beach holiday. In the days that followed the two eminent scholars exchanged ideas about the future of psychology. Their conversations highlighted the gap in mainstream psychology, and revolved around the good life, happiness and what makes life worth living. These early conversations inspired the revolution that followed. Within a year several key organisations were established, including the Positive Psychology Steering Committee and the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The first Positive Psychology Summit soon followed, which inspired the production of core publications, and funding was secured for research and teaching activities. All of these ventures gave the newly emerging discipline a sound organisational foundation, and the means to publicise its vision and accelerate its impact (Csikszentmihalyi & Nakamura, 2011).

The development of positive psychology was noticeably inspired and shaped by Seligman’s transformational leadership and revolutionary vision. The enormity of the task that Seligman and his leadership team embarked on, and the moral courage to challenge an establishment that one belongs to and rebel against its agenda, should not be underestimated.

What is positive psychology?

Since its inception positive psychology has undergone several phases of defining and redefining its core philosophy, mission and remit, which is a common practice in newly established disciplines.

Defining positive psychology

The term “positive psychology” was originally coined by Maslow (1987). He defined positive psychology as

the study of psychological health … the study of the good man, of the secure and of the confident, of the democratic character, of the happy man, of the serene, the calm, the peaceful, the compassionate, the generous, the kind, of the creator, of the saint, of the hero, of the strong man, of the genius, and of other good specimens of humanity.

(p. 318)

Following the launch of positive psychology, Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) offered the following definition:

The field of positive psychology at the subjective level is about valued subjective experiences: Wellbeing, contentment, and satisfaction (in the past); hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and happiness (in the present). At the individual level, it is about positive individual traits: the capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent, and wisdom. At the group level, it is about the civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship: Responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, moderation, tolerance, and work ethic.

(p. 5)

In line with this depiction, Gable and Haidt (2005) defined positive psychology more concisely as “the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions” (p. 104).

Finally, Lomas, Hefferon, and Ivtzan (2014a) concentrated on its applied side and defined positive psychology as “the science and practice of improving wellbeing” (p. ix).

As can be seen from these definitions, there are repeated core themes around which there is consensus among scholars, particularly regarding its focus on wellbeing, its scientific grounding, and targeting people who are considered psychologically healthy.

However there are also some variations in emphasis, mainly around the depiction of its remit, which is still an area of disagreement.

The mission of positive psychology

The grand vision of positive psychology was highly ambitious: “To catalyse a change in the focus of psychology from preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building positive qualities” (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 5).

In order to advance this change, several key objectives have been identified (Seligman, Parks, & Steen, 2004):

• To place a new set of topics and questions high on the scientific agenda, focusing on the healthy aspects of human psychology.
• To create a shared language that enables communication and understanding of the new topics under the umbrella of positive psychology.
• To create and empirically test interventions that are geared to enhance wellbeing.
• To integrate positive and negative lenses in therapeutic work.

Mental health is not the absence of illness

The philosophical stance underlying the quest for integration within psychology communicates a powerful message. It indicates that mental health is not merely the absence of illness or dysfunction, and therefore should be assessed by the presence of psychological wellness and flourishing (Seligman, 1999).

The remit of positive psychology

One of the challenges that positive psychology faced lies in the attempt to define its remit and draw the discipline’s contours. In other words, what does the term “positive” stand for? This is an essential endeavour for a new discipline which enables researchers and practitioners to characterise it, differentiate it from other disciplines and highlight its originality. Below are several aspects of positive psychology that key authors have placed under the “positive” banner.

• Positive assumptions about human nature: Applied work in psychology often draws on particular assumptions about human nature, which are value-laden, yet often implicit. Seligman (2005) noted that mainstream psychology was dominated by Freudian perception of human nature, which views people as corrupt and driven by aggressive or pleasure-seeking sexual instincts. In contrast, positive psychology rests on Aristotelian and humanistic approaches which view people as inherently good, moral, and driven by a desire to grow and fulfil their potential.
• Holistic ideology: Consistent with the assumptions about human nature, the work of clinical psychology is rooted in illness ideology – a set of principles that describe the mission, target population and “jurisdiction” of clinical psychology, that is, what is defined as normal and abnormal, clinical and non-clinical problems, and how psychopathology, dysfunction and disease are diagnosed and treated (Maddux, 2005). In challenging the dominance of the illness ideology and the medical model, positive psychology presented a more holistic model of psychology and a new ideological agenda: one which aims to go beyond remedial work to promote flourishing.
• Positive language: The language of the illness ideology consists of terms such as disorder, pathology, symptom, diagnosis, treatment, patient and clinician. In order to create a more balanced psychology, positive psychology scholars and practitioners needed to create a different linguistic depository, one which can facilitate thinking about, describing and discussing the positive side of human psychology. “In this new language, ineffective patterns of behaviors, cognitions, and emotions are construed as problems in living, not as disorders or diseases” (Maddux, 2005, p. 66).
• Positive aim and orientation: This category reflects a key aim of positive psychology as anti-thesis to the clinical, illness-focused orientation of mainstream psychology. It highlights positive psychology’s focus, and its priorities in research, teaching and applied work (Pawelski, 2016).
• Positive outcomes: Positive psychology aims “to provide an empirical vision for understanding and cultivating the good life” (Pawelski, 2016, p. 343). This suggests that its applied work is intentionally designed to achieve particular outcomes on an individual or group level: the cultivation of positive states (such as happiness and flow) and the development of positive traits (such as optimism and wisdom).
• Positive target population: This point represents the key target population that positive psychology aims to benefit, which is predominantly non-clinical (Pawelski, 2016).
• Positive processes: These refer to the mechanisms or processes that positive psychology aims to operate (that are often embedded within positive psychology interventions). These processes are designed to cultivate, use or develop capacities that can help people and groups achieve their desired outcomes (Pawelski, 2016); for example, the use of character strengths, mindfulness practice or gratitude.
• Positive topography: These are the key topics that can be seen as “belonging” to the discipline (for example, happiness, strengths, optimism, wisdom) (Pawelski, 2016).
• Positive value position: Positive psychology scient...