Positive debate

Education

• Seligman's positive psychology curriculum (PPC) can (1) promote skills and strengths (2) improve students well being (3) faciliate students engagement
• One strand of positive curriculum- students showed reduced symptoms of depression compared to the control.
• 24 months after, only 22% showed symptoms compared to 44% of the control group
• Seligman randomly assigned 247 students to PPC or not, PPC students were more cooperative and had better social skills than the control

Work

• Flow theory- Csikzentmihalyi and LeFevre found that people experience flow in work 3 times more than leisure
• Suggests that working experiences offer more positive experiences
• Further went on to say that if workers admitted that work can be enjoyable if not more than leisure time, they may work more effectively and improve quality of their lives

Leisure and lifestyle advice

• Csikzentmihalyi and LeFevre advocate that people increase their experience of flow and quality of life by being concious and active in their leisure time
• Action for Happiness is an online project involving positive psychology and helps with depression.

Health

• Kubzansky and Thurston's followed less than 6'000 men and women aged 25-74 for 20 years
• Participants with high levels of emotional vitality had a reduced rick of coronary heart disease
• This information can be used in the medical field to help clients with health issues and give advice

Education

• Spence and Shortt said research is small scale or short term
• Widespread of positive psychology in schools should not be done without long term research done beforehand
• Seligman admitted this as well
• Addiing postive psychology to the curriculum would mean that other courses would have to be dropped
• There are limited budgets for schools and demands of curriculum to be met
• Essential subjects would have to be dropped
• Financial Times said society would end up paying more for students to leave education with less qualifications

Work

• Idea of choosing a job you love is not new, there is a question whether this psychology in the workplace has offered any more support than there already was
• It was decided that aspects of work such as money does not make you happy
• But in societies where people are poor, work is more important for money than happiness. 
• Western developed countries have the luxury of finding happiness through work

Leisure and lifestyle advice

• Activities may increase flow but this is limited due to lack of time or money that they cost
• It is difficult to assess impact of Action for Happiness as it is not objective and variables are not controlled; for example wealthier people may be more attracted to it, therefore it may be the wealth that provides happiness rather than the actual programme

Health

• Difficult to prove cause and effect for happiness and health; healthy because happy or visa versa?
• It can seriously influence the health sector, this is important for society and therefore needs to be checked if it is valid

• High cost to businesses and economy for staff sickness due to unhappiness and stress- £26 billion per year
• Oswald conducted an experiment and found that happy workers were 12% more productive
• Boorman Review estimated that the NHS could save £555 million with a healthier work sector
• The company Google have longer and flexible maternity leave and has led to number of female staff leaving dropped by 50%
• The impact has been seen on a small scale we need a larger scale to put this in place universally

• Focus on positives has led to interesting lines of research and new programmes in schools, work and leisure
• However, may only be small part of someone's life or only available to small amount of people, perhaps only relevant to the Western developed world. Therefore it has little impact
• It is relatively new and may take time before its impact can be felt