Week 1: Key Principles in Positive Psychology Flashcards
The cycle to builds a character/personality
- Thoughts
- Words
- Actions
- Habits
- Character
What is Positive Psychology?
The study of what makes life worth living.
As opposed to focusing on people’s faults, what does positive psychology focus on?
People’s strengths.
What makes something good for you though? Wellbeing, etc?
Percentages that make up Life Satisfaction. What are the three categories and their percentages?
50% Personal Qualities
40% Intentional Activity
10% Life Circumstances
From Mental Wellness to Mental Illness, what are the four stages?
Meaningful Life
Engaged Life
Pleasurable Life
Struggling
Martin Seligman
What is the Disease Model?
The Three “Happy Lives”
The Pleasant Life
The Good Life (Engagement)
The Meaningful Life
The Pleasant Life
To chase pleasure and the ability for one’s person to achieve that.
-Pleasant emotions are 50% heritable
-An indiviudal can maximise 20-30% of pleasant emotions
-Habituates
The Good Life
How one uses their strengths everyday to bring abundant gratification and authentic happiness.
-Flow, can’t feel anything. Is it the reward?
The Meaningful Life
Using your signature strength to serve something/cause larger than oneself.
PERMA
Positive emotions
Engagement
Relationships
Meaningful
Accomplishment
Various Interventions
Have a beautiful day.
Gratitude visit
Strengths Date
Fun vs Philanthropy
Is pop psychology similar to positive psychology?
Yes, just with a scientific basis
Why the instinctual negative focus on psychology?
-Negative beliefs around the basis of human nature. Freud and Altruism
-Scepticism around the science behind abstract concept of positivity and wellbeing.
Positive vs Negative, which creates a lasting effect/impression?
Generally negative, this can be evidenced through higher remembrance in impression formation, ‘trait negativity bias’, relationships, comments, etc.
Which is more pronounced and carried through in our daily lives? Negative or positive?
Positive experiences are likely to happen frequently and form our expectations. Which is why when a negative experience occurs the remembrance is far more prominent (Gable & Hadit, 2005)
Attending more to the bad than the good may show a survival adaptive response (Reis & Gable, 2003)
‘Attention-grabbing power of negative social information”- Pratto and John 1991
The Disease Model- Martin Seligman
Treating illnesses vs building strengths. Perpetuates the idea that humans are broken. We work perfectly fine for what we were made for. Although, has been rather advantageous in advancing psychopathology.
Would eliminating mental illness give way to a healthy person?
Is there truly a neutral state.
No
What is ‘subjective wellbeing’ (SWB)?
Subjective wellbeing is one of the ways Positive Psychology is measured. Understanding what Positive Psychology means to different people.
Evidence of the study of subjective wellbeing dates back to the 1920s.
George Gallup and others introduced what technique which formed the back
Polling techniques
How much does positive psychology interact with other fields of psychology?
Positive psychology reveals the potential for research into the positive side of any field.
It is interesting how the presence of something
The interaction between health psychology and positive psychology
Negative emotions make you sick and positive ones heal. Suggesting a linkage from positive wellbeing to physical health.
Broaden and build Fredrickson’s (2001) theory - Health Psychology
“Positive emotions have the ability to broaden people’s thought-action repertoires and build their enduring personal resources.”
The Nun study
Expressions of positive emotion led to longevity and a sense of fullfilled being
Clinical pschology and positive psychology
Finding words that describe the presence of mental health, and not just mental illness.
Prevention of mental illness and promotion of mental health.
Developmental Psychology
Despite initial suppositions that positive psychology is defined entirely by pleasureable vice chasers, this is found to be a relatively closed in perspective as findings in Developmental Psychology broaden our understanding through the concept of resilience.
It was appealed that adversity may cause debilitating growth in children. However, an observation of resilience found those capable of thriving beyond such experiences.
Posttraumatic stress disorder to Posttraumatic growth.
Human strength and positive coping abilities
Ed Diener 2000
Studies happiness through subjective wellbeing (SWB)
What does SWB measure?
SWB measures life satisfaction and frequency of positive/negative emotions
Much of positive psychological research is focused on what two things?
Traits. Prevailing patterns of behaviour that form a character. Something a person is endowed with.
To give an example…
-Self-esteem
-Physical attractiveness
-Optimism
-Intelligence
Extraversion
States. A current snapshot of life.
To give an example…
-Work situation
-Involvement in religion
-Number of friends
-Marital status
-Quality of relationships
Social psychology
Cultures have sensitized particular groups as to what makes them happy.
Consumer culture is the willingness to sacrifice what for what?
Sacrifice life satisfaction and own happiness for fame and fortune.
Positive psychology and the problem with psychology mentioned by Kuhn.
The problem with psychology is the instantaneous pigeon-holing into various fields. Martin Seligman intended for positive psychology to encompass many fields.
Positive psychology is the study of…
optimal mental functioning and happiness
Positive institutions
How do you transcend?
Just a question on how to get yourself above neutral on the mental illness mental health scale
Culture allows positive psychology to study what?
The idea of universal happiness, the differences or commonalities between
Paradox of Affluence, emergence in the 1990s
Despite the general populations affluence going up, so is the subjective reports of distress
Zeitgeists
Misery Index
Negative life circumstances that do effect positive psychology, or are very likely to.
Economic discomfort
“No one should have to show that they are miserable and unhappy to justify fair treatment or equal opportunity.”
