Age Related Positivity Effect On Children

Since I was young, I have always had an affinity of people watching, and trying to figure out what type of life they lived. Especially, what type of events would cause people to adopt a positive (happy) outlook in comparison to people that dwell on the negatives attributes? Growing up, my mother had a peculiar thought process that would always managed to lead to negative (not happy) thoughts. In the beginning, I too would follow similar thought process, but I quickly realized how exhausting it was to maintain. Before reading Shawn Achor’s book, I wanted to clear my mental database and allow for this new information to be absorbed into my life.

Lang, explains through a series of scientific studies that pessimism can sometimes be a better form of seeing life than optimism. Throughout the article studies are being done on different age groups, the youngest group always shows a “sunny” outlook on life while the middle aged group is logical and realistic. Optimism has shown health complications and mental issues in older people (Lang, 2013). I usually do not think negatively about life, but as an improvement I should start seeing life for what it truly is, unpredictable and inconvenient in order to prevent a distasteful lifestyle in the

According to the Center, “Positive psychology is the systematic study of human strength, resilience and qualities that empower individuals and group of people to succeed” (Positive Psychology Center, 2014). Positive psychology’s founders learned through study that people usually place more emphasis on what goes wrong in their lives; they focus on their failures. For instance, divorce, financial obligations, or losing a job. It is imperative to comprehend the characteristics of undesirable experiences in an individual’s life. As an alternative to focusing on failure, focus can be placed on the positive situations in life and understand those are the occasions worth living for. Positive psychology emphasizes strengths and weaknesses, magnifying the positive aspects of life, and healing the effects of negative experiences. Positive psychology focuses on a person’s strengths and the hope of something larger then oneself to lead individuals to a more meaningful

The myth that old age is typically associated with decreased happiness is one that can perhaps be easily believed at first glance. Never having experienced old age, it is easy to think: “all of one’s friends must be either dead or dying; disease at old age must be rampant; one’s partner may have already passed; the only thing one is looking forward to must be death” so therefore old age must be a time of unhappiness. In addition, this “age-happiness” bias is reported even by older individuals when attempting to rate their happiness at 70 vs. 30 years old (Lacey et al. 2011). However, research in the field of psychology does not fully support the assertion that old age should be equated with unhappiness (Lacey et al., 2011). Quite the contrary, many studies point to the conclusion that aging can actually increase happiness (Lacey et al., 2011). However, it is important to explore other factors that may contribute to that being the case, such as one’s expectations when it comes to aging, cultural expectations.

Positivity is all around life even though in times it may look like it is impossible to see. Being in a positive state is when happiness is attained in someone’s life resulting in a boost of confidence and power. Wanting to just fight for more and get the most out of life is instinctive in society. Trying to get past a certain point just to crave more explains the need for positivity resonance to play out. Seeing a problem in a different way and solving it with skills that would not be thought of to use explains that need to improve life’s content. Seen in Barbara Fredrickson’s writing, “Selections from Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Do and Become”, life experiences certain blockades that limit outlooks on life

During late adulthood, there is certain way of thinking in which older adults choose to focus on the positive things in their lives and suppress the negative ones, this is called the positivity effect (Berger, 2016, p. 543). The positivity effect is a way older adults can shield themselves from negative things that could harm their emotional state. In an interview conducted with Dolly Parton, when asked what the happiest time in her life was she replied seeing her grandchildren grow. She expressed that she chooses to focus her thoughts on the innocence of her grandchildren rather than the negative events going on in the world. She also described that when she reflects on her greatest achievement she thinks of her children and who they grew up to be.

Our continuous quest for success has a bearing on our lives. It has made an impact on our relationships, our health, peace of mind and our fulfillment. It has also made an impact on our life expectancy, why so? The stress that we experience each day can have an impact on our health. Our health can be affected and this may not be for the positive. A life coach for personal

The concept of optimistic response or being positive is by no means ideal where you don’t experience negative emotions. Obviously, we can’t avoid negativity in our lives; bad things do happen always. What matters is the rate of positive to negative emotions over time. We have to be sure that we have more than enough positive experiences to counterbalance the negative ones. (Carbrera, 2010)

The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” (Chuck Palahniuk). The first concept I learned is positive psychology, and unexpectedly I have applied this concept throughout my life for the last sixteen years without realizing it until this course. People who employ positive psychology are those who make people happy throughout the course of their life and are optimistic during difficult times to cope with the challenges (Franzoi, 2014, pg. 8). People who incorporate positive psychology into their life have less stress and are tend to be happier and healthier. Positive psychology brings similar effects to positive emotions like happiness and pleasure as clinical psychology that treats depression and anger (Max, 2007).

Researchers theorize the use of positive psychology in the treatment of cancer patients can diminish or eliminate depression. Researchers determined a structured positive psychotherapy program, designed to address the psychological challenges that cancer patients traverse. Breast cancer patients are taxed with medical, physical, emotional, and psychological stresses, that consume their lives. The natural instinct to survive allows patients to override the emotional and psychological fallout of the disease and focus on the eliminating the physical attack of the cancer, with medical interventions. This time proves to be chaotic, overwhelming and stressful; with patients inundated with fear, medical jargon, choices,

Hypothesis My hypothesis states that the age related positivity effect, may be a result of an individual’s history, adversities, challenges and their ability to thrive. Within the first third of life, human beings develop who they are by the challenges they face and the lessons learned. I hypothesis, that an individual’s ability to overcome multiple challenges, turmoil and strife build a natural positivity effect into their character. By simply being allowed to learn valuable lessons that come with the aforementioned challenges, lifelong coping skills are honed; valuable throughout their lifetime. Existing studies on the age related positivity effect, have focused on individual’s

My belief is that happiness in the latter stages of life, or successful ageing, is a multifaceted phenomenon that cannot be attributed to any one factor. Moreover, there are bound to be numerous elements that affect an individual's perceptions and beliefs about what constitutes happiness in late adulthood, including personality, biology, upbringing, and so on. Evidently, there exists an expansive body of knowledge that explores factors that determine happiness in the late adulthood developmental stage. Some of them include socioeconomic status, gender, siblings, brains development, attachment style during infancy, the historical period in which one lives (times of war, or economic downturns have been linked to reduced quality of life in old age), level of education, health, career, work values and healthcare access. All these factors can subsequently be categorized into nurture or nature related factors, biological, social, psychological, cognitive, and so on.

This module only refers to negative and says nothing to positive events. If there is no adversity, this framework suggests no differences between individuals who are resilient or vulnerable. Two different individual might have the same level of functioning, but when facing negative influence one will be resilient and won’t react to this influence, because of protective factors. These factors will lead the individual to find other types of meaning in life. The other individual will react to negative as he has risk factors- genetic makeup, which makes him

Empirical researches have used different terms in referring to positive adaptation or human capacity and tendency for growth to adverse events, i.e. post traumatic growth (Foregard, 2013), stress-related growth (Park, Cohen, & Murch, 1996), perceived benefits (McMillen & Fisher, 1998), benefit finding (Helgelon, Reynolds, & Tomich, 2006) and collectively as adversarial growth (Linley & Joseph, 2004a). Davydov and his colleagues (2010) once stated that adversity differs on contextual severity, and one’s resilience may differ on such. As they added, mild adversity is characterized by regular daily hassles such as work stress while, extensive stress like bereavement is counted as strong adversity.

There are numerous ways to define successful aging. The word “aging” usually has a negative connotation. However, when putting the word success behind it introduces positive aspects that can essentially promote a long-term developmental outcome for an individual. Happening around midlife and late adulthood, successful aging is simply when an individual has complete development and maintenance of control throughout life, has achieved in the selection of goals and purposes, as well as maximization of gains and compensations of failure. This is the complete and ultimate goal for those in their late adulthood and is quite fascinating to developmental scientist. Those who engross themselves with attempting to achieve a successful aging will most likely have characteristics which in turn encourage and advocate for things such as health, growth, and vitality, maintaining social encounters and productive activities, and lastly maintaining high physical and cognitive functioning. Two developmental scientist, Vaillant & Mukamal, have discovered the factors that predict satisfaction of life are those an individual is able to control. These factors include are health habits, marital stability, years of education, and coping strategies. On the other hand those factors that are out of an individual 's control can not predict the level of happiness or satisfaction with life. These include the length of life of a family member, early health status, parental SES, and family warmth in