Positive Psychology

"There are two complementary strategies for

improving the human condition. One is to relieve
what is negative in life; the other is to strengthen
what is positive. Mainstream psychology focuses
largely on the first strategy; Positive Psychology
emphasizes the second" - Martin Seligman
"Positive psychology is the scientific study of
what enables individuals and communities to
thrive"
International
Positive
Psychology
Association.

o Previous focus on pathology; disease model

(whats going wrong) World Wars and
trauma, and yet some great progress in
treatment!
PP aims to improve quality of life (whats
going right) for individuals and various
groups to flourish it focuses on
strengths rather than weaknesses, health and
vitality
rather than illness and pathology.
o A science of positive psychology its not self
help, or life coaching PP is providing an
empirically sound vision of the good life (what
makes life worth living)

 Drawn from the work of Snyder (2000) and

Luthans and Jensen (2002), the following
specific guidelines could be used to build
hope for positive psychological capital:
1. Set and clarify organizational and
personal goals that are specific and
challenging. Include numbers,
percentages, and target dates to help with
goal specificity, and form difficult but not
impossible stretch goals to help make the
process challenging but doable.

 Schulman (1999) offers some specific

guidelines for building optimism that
can be applied to enhance
psychological capital:
identifying self-defeating beliefs when
faced with a challenge
evaluating the accuracy of the beliefs
once dysfunctional beliefs are
discounted, replacing them with more
constructive and accurate beliefs that
have been developed