Positive Approach- Evaluation

Question 1

Strengths

Answer 1

A Shift in focus for psychology:
– Positive Psychology moves away from explaining individuals in terms of mental illnesses and treatment to celebrating the human character. The main focus is to move away from negative traits to positive traits.
– Sheldon and King (2001) note that psychology has traditionally failed to encourage human growth.
– Positive psychology moves away from the determinist view which many approaches follow and ignores a person past to focus on the future and how to become proactive to changing the future (Freewill).

Applications:
– Positive psychology has real life applications and can be used in many fields of life I.e., the community, workplaces.
– Positive psychology has had real life applications in education both in the UK and USA. In 2007 the department of children, schools and families, set 10 new targets to improve wellbeing by 2020.

Free will Approach:
– The positive psychology approach does not explain behaviour from a determinist viewpoint, stating individuals are neither pre-determined nor restricted therefore it supports the freewill end of the argument.
– Other approaches have been regarded as losing validity compared to the views of positive psychology.
– Positive psychology recognises that humans are self- regulating and not ‘victims’ of their past.

Question 2

Weaknesses

Answer 2

Not a new idea:

• Many have argued that positive psychology is not a new approach. The positive potential of human beings was first created by Abraham Maslow in humanistic psychology.
• Many critics of positive psychology state that Seligman ignores the work of psychologist such as Maslow, Rogers and Jung who first criticised the psychological approaches for looking at the negatives of behaviour.
• However positive psychologist have argued they have a scientific methodology in the approach compared to the humanistic approach.

Can happiness be measured:
– Positive psychology has been criticised to whether happiness can be scientifically measured.
– Defining happiness can be difficult as people may have different ideas of how they state happiness, this can raise issues of how happiness can be scientifically measured.
– However, advances in neuroscience have over the years allowed researchers to objectively measure the emotional experience of happiness. A meta-analysis by wager et al. (2003), stated positive emotions were found to be more likely to activate the basal ganglia than negative emotions.

Ignoring individual differences:
– Positive psychology has been criticised for ignoring individual and cultural differences. (One size fits all)
– Christopher and Hickinbottom (2008) suggests the approach are ethnocentric, based on culture bound western ideas based on individual autonomy and fulfilment.
– Julie Norem (2001) further highlights the danger in ignoring individual differences in the assumption that all positive qualities are beneficial and should be developed. I.E optimism or positive thinking on individuals with anxiety can be harmful.