Positive Psychology

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Positive Psychology

  • Scientific study of optimal human functioning 
  • To discover and promote the factors that allow individuals and communities to thrive (Sheldon et al, 2000)
  • To understand and encourage factors that allow individuals, communities and societies to flourish
  • To focus attention on the sources of psychological health, thereby going beyond prior emphases on disease and disorder
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Psychology should be

  • As concerned with strength as with weakness
  • As interested in building the best things in life as in repairing the worst
  • As concerned with making the lives of normal people fulfilling and with nurturing talent as with healing pathology
  • Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi
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Three types of happiness

  • Pleasant life (hedonic happiness)
  • Engaged (flow) life
  • Meaningful (eudaimonic) life - authentic happiness
  • Happiness= life satisfaction
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Three theories of flourishing

  • Mental health/Dual continua model - Keyes, 2002
  • Mental Health Spectrum - Huppert, 2009
  • Wellbeing Theory - PERMA - Seligman, 2011
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Dua Continua

  • Flourishing is mental health, where individuals thirve, prosper and fare well in endeavours - Keyes and Michalec
  • Absence of mental illness does not imply the presence of mental health
  • Assesses flourishing across 3 areas of mental health symptoms - Functional psychological wellbeing, functional social wellbeing, emotional wellbeing.
  • Individuals are flourishing if they score high on one of the 3 scales in emotional wellbeing, and have high levels on 6 of the 11 scales of positive functioning
  • Flourishing v languishing
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Mental Health Spectrum

  • Takes a population based approach to improving wellbeing
  • Defines flourishing as exhibition of 3 sets of core feature: Positive emotions, engagement and meaning
  • Plus 3 of 6 additional features: Self-esteem, optimism, resilience, vitality, self-determination and positive relationships
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Authentic Happiness theory v Wellbeing theory

Authentic Happiness

  • Topic: happiness
  • Measure: Life satisfaction (subjective)
  • Goal: to increase life satisfaction

Wellbeing Theory

  • Topic: Wellbeing
  • Measure: Positive emotion, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, PERMA, objective and subjective
  • Goal: Increase flourishing by increasing PERMA
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Character Strengths and Goals

  • Wisdom and knowledge - cognitive strengths that entail acquisition and use knowledge
  • Courage - helps us accomplish goals in the face of challenge
  • Humanity - Interpersonal strengths for tending and befriending
  • Justice - that underlie a healthy community
  • Temperance - protect us against excess
  • Transcendence - provide meaning 
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Character Strengths are

  • Positive characteristics of personality that are different from other types of strengths
  • An individuals core - provide a pathway for developing other strength areas
  • Crystalise and evolve, integrate with other positives to contribute to the greater good
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Character Strengths are not

  • Talents
  • Interests
  • Skil
  • Resources
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Key Points

  • You can develop character strengths
  • You can develop them in others
  • Knowing and using strengths is important
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