Lecture 1 Flashcards
What words were commonly used to describe psychology?
Illness and treatment
What are famous expriments asscioacted with?
Negativity
What is positive psychology?
- The science of optimal human functioning
It wants to see people thriving
What is the goal of positive psycholgy?
- wants to make a balanced view of topics we research
What are some traits that positive psycholgy focuses on?
Hapiness, love, gratitide, forgiveness, mindfullness
What is Postive thinking and how is it harmful?
- “positive thinking” believes that you have to think positive to be successful
- This is harmful because it dismisses negative feelings
Postive thinking vs positive psychology?
**positive psychology **is based on empirical and replicable studies
**Positive thinking **urges us ot be positive all the time, but positive psychology does not
it’s okay to feel negative from time to time
positive psychology adresses the positive, but doesn’t deny the negative
When did positive psychology start? and by who?
- Martin E.P. Seligman
- in 1998 when he was elected ad president of the APA.
He beleived psych shoulnt focus on only the negative, he wanted a shift
Humansitic psychology vs. Positive psychology?
Both feilds are intrested in optimal human functioning, but the methodogies are diffrent
- Humanstic prefers qualative data; unstrcutred interviews,
- asking questions about how people lived their lives
**Positive psychology ** prefers quantitative and qualitative data; self report measured, and brain imaging, anything science based.
What are the three fundamental topics of positive psychology?
- positive psubjective experiences
- positive indivdual traits
- positive institutions
Positive subjective experiences include?
hapiness
pleasure
love
satisfaction
Positive indivual traits include?
Character strengths
- creativity
- bravery
- gratitude
- kindness
- talents
Positive institutions include?
government policies
economic systems
work environments
educational systems
religion
marriage/family
What does life above zero mean?
Clinical psycholggy focuses on cure
positive psycholgy focuses on being optimal
Clinical psy only takes you from suffering to neutral, not optimal
Lottery winner study by Brick,an et al. (1978)
- wanted to measure hapiness across 3 groups
- lottery winners aprox 1 year ago
- paralyzed accident victims 1 year ago
- control group
What Lottery winner study by Brick,an et al. (1978) find?
- lottery winners were not significantly happier than control group
- accident survivors had negative feelings persist
positive feelings don’t last but negative feelings persist.
Why should we study positive psych?
- counterbalances our human tendency to pay more attention to the negative
Kermer et al. 5$ Expirement
- coin was flipped and it landed on heads, they won 5$, if landed on tails they lost 5$
- people thought that winning 5$ was going to make them very happy but it didn’t
- ## people thought if they lost, it would make them feel very sad, but it didn’t
we weigh loses more heavily than gains
Impression formation
- hearing something bad about someone makes you think worse about that person even if they did something good.
In married couples —-interactions and more strongly related than —–interactions when it comes to satisfaction
Negative interactions are more strongly realted than positive interaction when it comes to satisfaction
The negative stands out more, we expect to be happy
What is hedonic well being?
high pleasure, low displeasure
created by arisippus
What is the problem with hedonic wellbeing?
- not the right balance of fun and displeasure
- you loose meaning, leads to displeasure
What is subjective wellbeing?
A version of hedonic well being
1. high levels of positive affect
2. low levels of negative affect
3. high levels of life satisfaction
if you get measures of these, and you will have a quantifiable amount of pleasure
What is positive and Negative Affect schedule? (PANAS; Watson et al. 1988)
- Asses the positive and negative affect scores
- assesses the affective side of hedonic wellbeing
you can do any time scale, by day, week, month, year, or lifetime
then you add up all the ratings or subtract for neg
