Positive Psychology

Rubina Kauser
DEFINITION

“Positive psychology is the study of the

conditions and processes that contribute
to the flourishing or optimal functioning of
people, groups, and institutions” (Gable &
Haidt, 2005 )
 Introduction
“Psychology is not just study of weakness, disease and damage. It
is also the study of strength and virtue. Treatment is not just
fixing what is broken; it’s also nurturing what is best within
ourselves.”
(Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000)
Positive psychology is the recent branch of psychology whose
purpose was described in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi; “We believe that a psychology of positive
human functioning will arise, which achieves a scientific
understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in
individuals, families and communities.”
Aim of Positive Psychology
Scope of Positive Psychology
Subjective Level
• it is about valued • it is about positive
subjective experiences;
well-being, contentment
and satisfaction (in the
past), hope and optimism
(for the future), and flow
and happiness (in the
present).
Individual Level
• it is about civic virtues and
individual traits: the
capacity for love and
vocation, courage,
interpersonal skill,
aesthetic sensibility,
perseverance, forgiveness,
originality, future
mindedness, spirituality,
high talent and wisdom.
Group Level
institutions that move
individuals towards better
citizenship: responsibility,
nurturance, altruism,
civility, moderation,
tolerance and work ethics.
How Positive
Psychology
Emerge?
History of Positive Psychology
• The term “positive psychology” first appeared in Abraham Maslow’s
1954 book “Motivation and Personality”

• Ed Diener coins the term subjective well-being.

1984 • 1985 – Ed Diener publishes his Satisfaction with Life scale

• Seligman was elected President of the American Psychological Association

1988 (APA). During this the term positive psychology became the main theme.

• Martin Seligman delivers his "Manhattan Project for the Social Sciences" inaugural
presidential address at the American Psychological Association convention.
1998
History of Positive Psychology
• Barbara Fredrickson's "broaden and build" theory of the value of positive
emotions is published.
1998

• First positive psychology summit was conducted.

1999

• First International conference on positive psychology was held.

2002
History of Positive Psychology
• First dedicated Positive Psychology Journal appeared (The
2006 Journal of Positive Psychology)

• First world congress on positive psychology was held.

2009

• Harvard Business Review publishes issue on "The Value of

2012 Happiness."
Why positive
psychology?
• Before WW II psychology had three distinct missions;
1. Curing mental illness
2. Making the lives of all people more productive and fulfilling
3. Identifying and nurturing high talent
After the war, two events both economic – changes the face of
psychology.
I. 1946 – Veterans Administration
II. 1947 – National Institute of Mental Health
Psychologists found out that they could make a living treating mental
illness. Psychology’s empirical focus shifted to assessing and curing
individuals suffering. There has been an explosion in research on
pathology because academics found out that they could get grants if
their research was about pathology. This arrangement brought many
benefits in understanding and therapy of mental illness. The downside,
however, was the other two missions of psychology were all forgotten.
• Ryff and Singer (1998) argued that psychology should be more than
a “repair shop” for broken lives. A major assumption of positive
psychology is that the field of psychology has become unbalanced.

Traditional Psychology

Disease Model – what’s wrong

Life at and below zero

• Absence of illness isn’t health.

 Disease/Health Continuum
•
Disease Model • Health Model
• Focus on weaknesses • Focus on strengths
• Overcoming deficiencies • Building competencies
• Avoiding pain • Seeking pleasure
• Running from unhappiness • Pursuing happiness
• Neutral state (0) as ceiling • No ceiling
• Tensionless as idol • Creative tension as ideal
• Wishful thinking Positive
• Setbacks or ignore the adversity psychology is
people experience not..
• Does not discard traditional
psychology viewpoints.
Major Focuses of Positive Psychology
Positive Emotions

Hope
Trust
Joy
Gratitude
Love
Serenity
Important Psychological Contributions
 • Seligman is an American Psychologist, educator,
and author of self-help books. He is famous for
his experiments and theory of learned
helplessness, as well as for being the founder of
Positive Psychology.

• His work in learned helplessness and pessimistic

attitudes garnered an interest in optimism,
which led to his work with Christopher Peterson.

• In 1996, he was elected President of the

American Psychological Association. He wanted
mental health to be more than just the “absence
of illness” and ushered a new era that focused on
what makes people feel happy and fulfilled.

• Today he is the director of the Positive

Psychology Center at the University of
Martin Seligman Pennsylvania.
 Czikszentmihalyi was born in Hungary in 1934,
and like many other people of that time, he was
deeply affected by the Second World War. He was
stripped from his family and friends as a child
and was put in an Italian prison.

He noticed that many adults he had known as

successful and self-confident became helpless and
dispirited once the war removed their social
supports. Without job, money and status they
were reduced to empty shells. Yet there were few
who kept their integrity and purpose despite the
surrounding chaos.

This experience set me thinking ‘what source of

strength were these people drawing on?”

This led to his fascination with what he called

the flow, and he made it his life’s work to
Mihaly Csikszentmehalyi scientifically identify the different methods
through which one could achieve such a state.
Other Important Figures
Christopher Peterson  is Barbara Fredrickson-The
noted for his work in the Broaden and Build Theory,
study of optimism, hope, which proposes that positive
character, and well-being emotions are able to broaden
people’s minds, resulting in
resources for experiencing
well-being and resilience in
times of adversity.
Ed Dienner- aka “Dr.
Happiness”, is a leading
researcher in PP who
coined the term “subjective
well-being” as the aspect of
happiness that can be
measured scientifically.
Daniel Gilbert - his Deci and Ryan – Self- C.R. Snyder – famous
book “Stumbling Determination Theory for his work on Hope
Happiness” translated in also called theory of and forgiveness, wrote
more than 30 motivation. first book in the field
languages. “Positive Psychology.”
Perspectives in Positive
Psychology
 PERMA – Theory of Well-being
 Self – Determination Theory
 Broaden & Build Theory
 Carol Ryff’s Model of Psychological Well Being
 Positive Psychological Capital
P-E-R-M-A Theory of Well-Being
(Seligman, 2011)
• 1) Pleasure
• An individual leading a life of
pleasure can be seen as
maximizing positive emotions,
and minimizing negative
emotions.
• 2) Engagement
• An individual leading a life of
engagement constantly seeks out
activities that allow her to be in
flow.
• Seligman recommends that in order to achieve flow, you must identify your
signature strengths, or strengths that are deeply characteristic of yourself, and
learn how to practice them.
• 3) Meaning
• An individual leading a life of meaning belongs to and serves something that is
bigger than himself. These larger entities could be family, religion, community,
country, or even ideas.
• 4. Relationships
• Seligman believes that the need and tendency towards relationships is
biologically and evolutionarily ingrained in us. Positive relationships is especially
powerful because it plays a role in supporting the other four components of
well-being.
• 5. Accomplishment
• Accomplishment involves the pursuit of success, winning, achievement and
mastery, both as end-goals and as processes. Seligman argues that many people
would pursue accomplishment for its own sake, even when it is devoid of
positive emotions or meaning. We look at politicians, and we know this is true.
PERMA-Theory of Well-Being

Pleasure

accomplishment Engagement

Meaning relationships
Self – Determination Theory
(Deci & Ryan, 2000)
• This theory states that people
have three basic innate
psychological needs:
1. Competence
2. Relatedness
3. Autonomy
1. Competence
Competence is defined as a need
to effectively manage and control
yourself and your environment.
2. Relatedness
Social relatedness is defined as a
need to be understood,
appreciated by, connected to,
relate to and care for others.
3. Autonomy
 Autonomy is as a sense of
willingness and choice in your
actions; however, Deci and
Vansteenkiste (2006) note this
does not mean to be independent
of others.
Broaden & Build Theory (Fredrickson,
2000)
• “Positive emotions appears to broaden people’s momentary
thought-action repertoire and build their enduring personal
resources.” (Fredrickson, 1998, 2000)
• Positive emotions broaden the scopes of attention, cognition
and action, and that they build physical, intellectual and
social resources.
• Joy, for instance, creates the urge to play, push the limits
and be creative; urges evident not only in social and physical
behavior, but also in intellectual and artistic behavior.
• Interest, a phenomenologically distinct positive emotion,
creates the urge to explore, take in new information and
experiences, and expand the self in the process.
• Contentment, a third distinct positive emotion, creates the
urge to sit back and savor current life circumstances, and
integrate these circumstances into new views of self and of
the world.
• Love, viewed as an amalgam of distinct positive emotions
(e.g. joy, interest and contentment) experienced within
contexts of safe, close relationships—creates recurring cycles
of urges to play with, explore and savor our loved ones.
Carol Ryff’s Model of Psychological Well-
being
• Carol Ryff’s model of Psychological Well-being differs from past
models in one important way: well-being is multidimensional,
and not merely about happiness, or positive emotions. A good
life is balanced and whole, engaging each of the different
aspects of well-being, instead of being narrowly focused.
• 1) Self-Acceptance
• High Self Acceptance: You possess a positive attitude toward
yourself
• Low Self Acceptance: You feel dissatisfied with yourself.
• 2) Personal Growth
• Strong Personal Growth: You have a feeling
of continued development.
• Weak Personal Growth: You have a sense of
personal stagnation
• 3) Purpose in Life
• Strong Purpose in Life: You have goals in life
and a sense of directedness.
• Weak Purpose in Life: You  lack a sense of
meaning in life; have few goals or aims, lack
a sense of direction.
• 4) Positive Relations With Others
• Strong Positive Relations: You have warm,
satisfying, trusting relationships with others.
• Weak Relations: You have few close, trusting
relationships with others; find it difficult to
be warm, open, and concerned about
others.
• 5) Environmental Mastery
• High Environmental Mastery: You have a
sense of mastery and competence in
managing the environment.
• Low Environmental Mastery: You have
difficulty managing everyday affairs; feel
unable to change or improve surrounding
contexts.
• 6) Autonomy
• High Autonomy: You are self-determining
and independent; are able to resist social
pressures to think and act in certain ways;
regulate behavior from within; and evaluate
yourself by personal standards.
• Low Autonomy: You are concerned about
the expectations and evaluations of others;
rely on judgments of others to make
important decisions; and conform to social
pressures to think and act in certain ways.
Positive Psychological Capital
• According to these authors, Psychological Capital (or PsyCap) is a
term used for positive organizational behaviour and can be defined as
• “An individual’s positive psychological state of development which is
characterized by optimism (making positive attributions), self-efficacy
(having confidence), resilience (to attaining success) and hope
(redirecting paths to goals) (Luthans et al. 2007).”
• Specifically, they argued that confidence in one’s ability to achieve
desired outcomes (self-efficacy), positive outcome expectancies
(optimism), search for alternative paths to goals (hope), and ability to
bounce back from negative experiences (resiliency) taken together are
likely to contribute to the overall goal of maintaining and improving
one’s health and motivate engagement in behaviors helping achieve
that goal.
Status of Positive Psychology in Pakistan
• It is taught as a course at bachelor’s level.
• Only Abaseen Institute of Medical Sciences offers 2 years
diploma in Positive Psychology.
• National Institute of Psychology Quaid-e-Azam University
held its 7th International Conference on Positive Psychology.