The positive approach flashcards
What are some strengths to the positive approach?
The assumptions for positive psychology have been applied in many field of life to help individuals, communities, organisations to then flourish. Like in education, stress management, occupational psychology and therapy. An application has been resilience training for the US army - aim is so they can improve resilience aspects and reduce the incidence of stress and suicide - employing techniques from positive psychology it focuses on mental toughness and building signature strengths so they can return home without the serious mental health problems
What are some of the weaknesses towards the positive approach?
A question is whether we can define and measure happiness scientifically - defining happiness is difficult as each individual as different ideas about what happiness means to them - (eg: two different people say they are happy could refer to 2 different states of mind) - this becomes a problem as when it comes to measuring happiness and developing “scientific” measurements for this subjective state of mind
Although, neuroscience advancing have allowed researchers to objectively measure emotional experiences of happiness - e.g: according to meta analysis - Wagar et al positive emotions activating the basal ganglia than negative emotions - this has then brought the question of whether happiness is a discrete emotion that can be measured in a lab or whether it is on a continuum with other emotions
