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Positive psychology is a recent branch of scientific psychology that "studies the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive."Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania: Introduction People have been discussing the question of human happiness since at least Ancient Greece.Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania: FAQ
Martin Seligman, who is considered as "the father of positive psychology"Goldberg, Carey. "Harvard\'s crowded course to happiness." The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/03/10/harvards_crowded_course_to_happiness/ has pointed out how psychology has been primarily dedicated to addressing mental illness rather than mental "wellness" (Seligman, 2002). Several humanistic psychologists—such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Erich Fromm—developed successful theories and practices that involved human happiness, despite a lack of solid empirical evidence at the time behind their work, and especially that of their successors, who chose to emphasize phenomenology and individual case histories.Seligman, Martin E.P. (2002). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. New York: Free Press. p. 275. (ISBN 0-7432-2297-0). Recently the theories of human flourishing developed by these humanistic psychologists have found empirical support from studies by humanistic and positive psychologists, especially in the area of self-determination theory, i.e., Patterson, T.G., & Joseph, S. (2007). Person-centered personality theory: Support from self-determination theory and positive psychology. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 47(1), 117-139.
Current empirical researchers in this subfield include Donald Clifton, Albert Bandura, Martin Seligman, Ed Diener, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, C. R. Snyder, Christopher Peterson, Shelley Taylor, Barbara Fredrickson, Charles S. Carver, Michael F. Scheier, Daniel Gilbert and Jonathan Haidt.[citation needed]
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Some researchers (Seligman, 2002) in this field posit that positive psychology can be delineated into three overlapping areas of research:
When people experience stress, they show increased heart rate, higher blood sugar, immune suppression, and other adaptations optimized for immediate action. If individuals do not regulate these changes once the stress is past, they can lead to illness, Coronary Heart Disease, and heightened mortality. Both lab research and survey research indicate that positive emotions help people who were previously under stress relax back to their physiological baseline.Fredrickson, B. L., Mancuso, R. A., Branigan, C., & Tugade, M. M. (2000). The undoing effect of positive emotions. Motivation and Emotion. 24, 237-258.
After several years of researching disgust, University of Virginia professor Jonathan Haidt and others studied its opposite, and the term "elevation" was coined. Elevation is a moral emotion and is pleasant. It involves a desire to act morally and do "good"; as an emotion it has a basis in biology, and can sometimes be characterized by a feeling of expansion in the chest or a tingling feeling on the skin.
Studies from Barbara Fredrickson\'s lab have randomly assigned participants to watch films that induce positive emotions such as amusement and contentment, negative emotions such as fear and sadness, or no emotions. Compared to people in the other conditions, participants who experience positive emotions show heightened levels of creativity, inventiveness, and "big picture" perceptual focus. Longitudinal studies show that positive emotions play a role in the development of long-term resource such as psychological resilience and flourishing.Fredrickson, B. L. (2003). The value of positive emotions. American Scientist, 91, 330-335.
The development of the Character Strengths and Virtues (CSV) handbook represents the first attempt on the part of the research community to identify and classify the positive psychological traits of human beings. Much like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of general psychology, the CSV provides a theoretical framework to assist in developing practical applications for positive psychology. This manual identifies six classes of virtue (i.e. "core virtues"), made up of twenty-four measurable character strengths.There is a suggestion in the introductory portion of the CSV that these six virtues are so consistently identifiable across cultures and throughout history that they may, in theory, be universal in nature. Notwithstanding numerous cautions and caveats, this suggestion of universality hints that in addition to trying to broaden the scope of psychological research to include mental wellness, the leaders of the positive psychology movement are challenging moral relativism and suggesting that virtue has both a biological and a cultural basis.
The organization of these virtues and strengths is as follows:
Practical applications of positive psychology include helping individuals and organizations correctly identify their strengths and use them to increase and sustain their respective levels of well-being. Therapists, counselors, coaches, and various other psychological professionals can use the new methods and techniques to build and broaden the lives of individuals who are not necessarily suffering from mental illness or disorder.
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