Exam 1 Flashcards
What is positive psychology according to Gable & Haidt (2006)
the study of the conditions and processes
that contribute to the flourishing or optimal
functioning of people, groups, and
institutions
Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi (2000) had 3 categories of Positive Psychology:
o SUBJECTIVE LEVEL (valued subjective experience): well-being, contentment, satisfaction (in the past); hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and happiness (in the present).
o INDIVIDUAL LEVEL (positive individual traits): the capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future-mindedness, spirituality, high talent, and wisdom
o GROUP LEVEL (civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship): moderation, tolerance, work ethic
What is positive psychology according to Zelenski (2015)
the parts of psychology that deal with
(positive) experiences, dispositions, contexts,
and processes, in individuals and groups, that
facilitate well-being, achievement, and
harmony.
What are the 3 criteria for positivity
- Choice (making a consistent choice in the same direction; revealed preference when there is more than one option)
- Pleasure/experience (subjective experience of what feels good)
- Values (based on religion, law, logic, culture)
What does ‘positive’ refer to? Four ways it is used in positive pyschology, and issues with each.
- Good intentions
o Lots of other people/practitioners have good intentions too, not just scientists in PP - Ideology: people are good
o Very strong assumption for science to make
o Might make results less credible. What if you found results that went against this? - Appreciation: people are kinda neat
o More like a perspective than a position
o slippery slope: Always see positive, miss the negative - Topics
o What about resilience, grit, delay of gratification, negative consequences of happiness, death etc?
o Do negative concepts apply to PP as well?
‘Family Resemblance’ in positive psychology
PP is composed of a broad variety of topics that seem to go together.
It is probably impossible to define necessary and sufficient conditions for positive psychology.
Which other disciplines is positive psychology related to?
Humanistic
Health
Personality
Examples of questionable research practices
- Dependent variables that were insignificant that weren’t reported
- Adding controls and testing/changing them to see if one makes results significant
- Adding participants to make p value more significant
- Dropping conditions, e.g. the control
What are large samples sizes important for
They make p-values more Consistent across repeated studies
Twp types of replications
Exact/direct replications: as close as possible, to see if the same procedures produce the same result
Conceptual replication: some strategic changes to method. Is the underlying idea supported with new procedures?
The Reproducibility Project: results
- 1/3-1/2 studies found the original results
- Effect sizes were half the original reports
Six possible explainations non-replication:
- Fraudulent results originally?
- Original results due to chance
- Inflated original results
- Mistake/bias in replication
- Different context, culture, psychological situation, etc
- Not in-depth enough methods section
An emotion is NOT…
- Sensations or bodily pleasure: stimuli
- Moods: less intense, slower to change, and ambiguously caused
- Dispositions: Even longer timeframe than mood (“happy people, reserved people”)
- Affect: more general, emotion-like. Feelings that differ in pleasantness, without implying all aspects of an emotion.
Basic Emotions Views VS Dimensional Views
Basic Emotions Views:
- Distinct facial expression, physiology (increased heartrate, slower breathing, etc), appraisal pattern
- Universality, cross-culture/species
- Clear lists (joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust)
Dimensional Views:
- Emotions organized based on similarity
- Emotional experience along a continuum, not discreet categories (High/low arousal and positive/negative affect)
- More general ‘causes’
What is an emotion?
A collection of multiple, loosely coupled components that create an emotional experience.
Involves appraisal/snap judgements, physiological change, expression (facial/body language), subjective experience, action tendency (motivation shifts, cause us to do things)
There is a functional, evolutionary perspective prominent
What is an Appraisal?
Cognitive part of emotions; individuals’ evaluations of immediate circumstances; relevance to our well-being and concerns
Emotions involve the intersection of these 5 components:
- appraisals: mental assessments of circumstances; interpreting things,
- physiological changes: in the body (e.g., sweaty palms and racing hearts) and brain,
- expressions: in the face (e.g., a smile), as well as in posture, tone of voice, and touch
- subjective experience: our personal, first person, phenomenological feeling
- action tendencies: motivation to do some things rather than others (e.g., flee or explore)
Physiological changes in happiness/positive affect that are observed by EEGs, fMRIs, and PET scans.
Is it a distinct signature?
the left hemisphere lights up more with approach states
NO. they can’t pinpoint one specific location for one specific emotions.
Four ways of seeing/measuring expression
- Face
- Posture
- Sounds/vocalizations
- Touch
Wanting VS Liking in the rat experiment
- Wanting involves dopamine response.
- Rat experiment where they removed all the dopamine from their brain. Had no WANT/motivation for food (wouldn’t even go get some), but if it was placed in their mouth they liked it and would eat it.
- wanting things is distinct from liking them in the brain
What are action tendencies?
motivational part of emotions
Emotions exist because they help organisms respond quickly and adaptively to important circumstances
What is the Broaden and Build Model?
positive emotions widen the scope of thoughts and behaviours
- foster more variety in thoughts and behaviours, not specific action tendencies
- these activities are thought to build more lasting skills and resources
specific action tendencies for negative emotions narrow the scope of responses
What is the ‘upward spiral?’
‘upward spiral’: positive emotions promote novel thoughts and activities, which, build physical, intellectual, and social skills, which promote healthy functioning and fulfillment, which promote more positive emotions… etc
Limitations of the Broaden and Build Model
- There could also be some positive emotions that actually cause narrowed attention rather than broadened attention
- high approach motivation, pleasant emotion (desire) narrowed attention
What are the four Knowledge Emotions that promote learning and explain for each:
- pleasant/unpleasant
- appraisals
- impact on learning
SURPRISE
- not positive or negative
- Simple appraisal of unexpectedness, what’s going on
- Motivate learning to resolve what happened
INTEREST
- pleasant
- Follows appraisals of novelty and comprehensible
- Leads to superior learning, Promotes exploration (mental and physical)
CONFUSION
- unpleasant
- Follows appraisal of novelty, complexity, incomprehensible
- Promotes Impasse driven learning: want to learn and pay attention to resolve confusion/issue
AWE
- typically pleasant
- Follows appraisal of vast inconsistency and attempt at accommodation
- Often inspired desire to learn more
Knowledge Emotions: similar to humour? Explain the benign violation approach
Something that is a violation of norm but not harmful
- Notice conflict with expectation or ‘ought’
- See conflict as non-threatening (benign)
- Realize both things simultaneously
Explain ‘Flow’
- Discovered via subjective experience across many domains (art, music, work, games, athletics, etc)
- Similar to intrinsic motivation
- Occurs when challenge and ability are matched
- Mostly ‘unconscious’ at the time
- Lose track of time and awareness
Experiencing Self VS Remembering Self
- Experiencing Self: the one who feels things in the moment
- Remembering Self: the one who completes self-reports of past experiences
Explain the procedure of Wirtz et al.
- Assess predictions, experience, and recollection of experience and compare them
Predicted 2 weeks and 2-4 days prior to spring break trip
7 times a day during trip
Remembered 2-4 days and 4 weeks after trip - See which of these predict future intentions (5 weeks after trip)
Results of Writz et al.
Both NEGATIVE and POSITIVE emotions were more intensely predicted and recalled than they were during the experience
Actual experience was less intense than predicted and remembered
3 components of subjective well-being
positive affect
negative affect
life satisfaction
What is included in Ryff’s measure of psychological well being (6 items)
o Self-acceptance o Purpose in life o Environmental mastery o Positive relationships with others o Autonomy o Personal growth
Hedonia is…
To maximize pleasure, without any value judgement about what that might mean
Seeking relaxation
Seeking pleasure
Seeking enjoyment
Seeking fun
Eudaimonia is….
Living well – happiness is more than just feeling good
flourishing
Seeking to develop a skill, learn, or gain insight into something
Seeking to do what you believe in
Seeking to pursue excellence or a personal ideal
Seeking to use the best in yourself
Relationship between heritability and environment
The heritability factor depends on how much the environment varies, because all variability between people is accounted by a combination of genes and environment. So if the environment varies more, then genes will account for less, and vise versa
What % is happiness heritable
40%-50%
HERITABLE but not genetically determined!
OCEAN correlated to SWB
- Concscientiousness, Agreeableness: Moderate positive correlation to SWB
- Openness: Weak correlation to SWB
- Neuroticism: Strong negative correlation to SWB
- Extraversion: Strong positive correlation to SWB
Biggest predictors of SWB: extraversion and neuroticism
Correlation between marriage and SWB
people who are married are happier than divorced/widowed, and happy people are more likely to get married
Very Happy People Study showed…
Very happy people all had strong social relationships, but not all people with strong social relationships were very happy
Correlation between intelligence and SWB
no correlation
Correlation between age and SWB
Weakly associated with SWB – emotionality decreases with age, both pos and neg
Correlation between gender and SWB
Men and women more or less the same with women reporting more negative emotions but also higher positive emotion
What is the hedonic treadmill
Also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes
5 aspects of the modern view of adaptation
- ‘Set points’ are not neutral (even under poor circumstances)
- Substantial individual differences in set points
- Probably multiple set points
- Happiness can change
- Individual differences in adaptation
Exercises/activities from Gander et al. (2013) that improve happiness
- Three good things that happen daily and why
- Three funny things that happen daily and why
- Signature strengths in a new way
- Counting the kindnesses you did
- Gift of time (with close others)
- One door closes, another door opens (write essays, about silver lining of a bad situation)
4 Categories in the Person-Activity Fit for happiness activities
activity features across
activity features between
person features
mediators
Person-Activity Fit: Activity Features Across (4)
Dosage, social support, variety, trigger
Person-Activity Fit: Activity Features Between (3)
o Present vs future vs past
o Other vs self-oriented
o Social vs reflective
Person-Activity Fit: Person Features (6)
o Motivation and effort; o Efficacy beliefs o Baseline affective state o Personality o Social support o Demographics
Person-Activity Fit: Mediators (4)
o Positive emotions
o Positive thoughts
o Positive behaviours
o Need satisfaction
3 components of Self-Determination Theory
Competence
Autonomy
Relatedness
Money has ___ returns
diminishing
After a certain amount/income, money doesn’t do much to increase happiness
Money and SWB
money predicts SWB, mostly for life satisfaction
correlation between money and happiness is larger BETWEEN nations than WITHIN
What is pro-social spending
Spending money on others seems to facilitate
happiness
Especially when it is in-line with the Self-Determination Theory
has similar effects in young children
What is the religion paradox?
It seems like religion is related to SWB, so why are there significantly less religious people today?
Diener et al. Religion Paradox: Study 1 Results
- Difficult circumstances associated with religion
- Difficult circumstances also associated with lower SWB, BUT religion seems to help
Diener et al. Religion Paradox: Study 2 using Gallop World Poll
__% of the world finds religion important daily
__% of Canada
National circumstances produce…
68%
45%
National circumstances seem to produce religiosity more than individual circumstances (i.e. the income level etc of the NATION not the PERSON)
Religion helps with…
Religion helps with bad circumstances, but less important in good circumstances
Religious people in religious societies are….
Religious people are happier in religious societies
- among a community of like-minded people
- Those who are religious in nonreligious societies don’t get that happiness boost
3 mediating factors that help the effects of religiosity on SWB
These factors are generally…. but are boosted by religion…
o Social support
o Respect
o Meaning in Life
generally high in good circumstances (regardless), but boosted by religion in poor circumstances
Anomaly in religion and SWB
- Meaning and purpose are higher in religion even in good circumstances, but without any SWB gain
WHY? Maybe there are other ways to satisfy yourself and feel purposeful without needing a meaning in life (more hedonic in western society?)
Meaning in life is negatively correlated with wealth of the country
