Research Paper On Positive Psychology

In the book Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile by Daniel Nettle he states that happiness offers a remarkable portrait of feelings that poets, politicians, and philosophers all agree truly make the world go around. Nettle is currently at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom and is the Co-director of the center for behavioral and evolution. He mainly studies humans. Nettle is a behavioral biologist that that has interest in evolution, development and psychological underpinning of behavior. His study spans from biology into social science. He is a very successful writer who has a BA in psychology and philosophy from Oxford, as well a PHD in biological anthropology from university college London. Nettle goes through his book shedding light on happiness which is the basic human desire. Studying the human happiness wasn’t easy for Nettle but when he examined human happiness he reached a conclusion that success can make us happy. People are fascinated by the idea of happiness and will follow any system that seems to promise it. In the book Nettle goes in depth over the three levels of happiness and what could happen if we don’t reach or attempt to each those certain levels. The first level is momentary happiness, second level describes judgment and feelings, and the third and final level talking about the quality of life.

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

Positive psychology according to Gable and Haidt (2005) can be defined as “the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing of people, groups and institutions” (p. 103). Similarly, it can be described as the study of human strength and virtue to understand positive and emotionally fulfilling behaviour (Sheldon & King, 2001). There are three dimensions or levels of positive psychology which are based on aspects of our life experiences. Our positive subjective experiences are involved at the subjective level of positive psychology and they can be thoughts of the past such as satisfaction, the present such as happiness or the future such as optimism. At the individual level positive psychology focuses on positive individual traits such as the ability to forgive and love. Whilst at the group level it is about ensuring that groups care for the people involved such as establishing a positive work environment, creating healthy families and communities (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). A person is said to be flourishing when all three levels are working optimally (Compton & Hoffman, 2013).

107th Annual Convention of the APA in Boston, Massachusetts, 21 August 1999, that Seligman proposed the concept of positive psychology as a complement of the then existing and widely practised 'pathology' based psychology. Since then there has been no looking backwards. After Seligman’s speech, researchers have

Heffernan and Boniwell (2011) illustrate a number of psychological interventions that an individual can adapt in order to enhance the positive affects they encounter in their lives. In their book Heffernan and boniwell state that the latest and clearest definition of positive psychology interventions comes from the meta-analysis by Sin and Lyumbomirsky, who defined PPI as: “Treatment methods or intentional activities that aim to cultivate positive feelings, behaviours or cognitions…programs, interventions or treatments aimed at fixing, remedying, or healing something that is pathological or deficient – as opposed to building strengths – do not fit the definition of a PPI” (Sin and Lymbomirsky, 2009: 468).

In class on Monday, we had a very engaging presentation on positive psychology and how flourishing shapes our perspective to be the successful young adults we are today. Positive psychology is the study of promotion for successful functioning. Building enabling conditions for a life worth living is vital to being satisfied with our lives and within ourselves. A few enabling conditions for a life worth living for my own perspectives is my resilience, my supportive buffers, and using my signature strength to help others.

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).

The term happiness continues to perplex psychologists. With the recent study of positive psychology or the study of happiness, psychologists have unintentionally attached a negative connotation to all other emotions. However, all emotions, even the ones coined as negative, are valuable to humans. An analysis of human emotions proves that feelings of sadness, anger, fear, and happiness are equally beneficial to human development because they allow for a safer and more open mind-set.

Positive Psychology is defined as “…the scientific study of human flourishing, and an applied approach to optimal functioning. It has also been defined as the study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals, communities and organizations to thrive” (Gable & Haidt, 2005, Sheldon & King, 2001, as cited by Positive Psychology Institute). According to Martin Seligman, one of Positive Psychology’s pioneers, positive psychology consists of three major components- “pleasure and gratification”, “strength and virtue”, & “meaning and purpose”. He believes that the road to “lasting fulfillment” is a journey in which an individual must pass through each component in chronological order. (Seligman)

According to Seligman (2000), positive psychology is a science that “promises to improve the quality of life” through positive individual traits, experiences and institutions (p.5). Positive psychology plays an essential role and articulates a view of good life, which can show what actions of a person would lead to well-being and into positive individuals (Seligman, 2000, p.5). Seligman formed this focus of positive psychology to study the happiness and well-being of individuals. He believed this exclusive new focus emphasizes attention on individuals’ flourishment and their ability to thrive in their commonalities and institutions. Similar to Seligman, Gable and Haidt (2005) believed that positive psychology takes an aim to study “the other side of the coin”; the ways people express their emotions and build healthy relationship with their families and institutions (p.104-105). According to Linley, Govindji and West (2007), positive psychology has grown into the study of what is right for people, particularly within the topics of strengths and happiness (p.44-45).However the negatives in life are not forgotten it is simply overridden by the focus of what makes people thrive in happiness (Gable & Haidt, 2005, p.104).Therefore the focus of positive psychology alternated from pathology to forward growth of people to be simply defined as the “science of optimal human functioning” (Linley, Govindji and West, 2007

Happiness is the meaning and purpose for life. Humans have been in search for that fulfillment since the beginning of time. This thirst for happiness caused psychologist to emergi with the study of positive emotions in other words positive psychology. Positive psychology is a study of positive emotions, positive characters traits and positive institutions; which lead to the study of individuals well-being. Researchers are still in search of finding what is the core solution that can increase people's happiness for a lifetime. However, they have found one major thing that might increase happiness is the cultivation of gratitude.

The concepts of Positive Psychology are explored through an intrapersonal, interpersonal, and pro-social lens using empirical research as the basis. The paper examines the history, intentions and scope of positive psychology in relationship to personal experiences and character traits that lead to personal effectiveness. The specific Areas of Focus examine the major principles of Positive Psychology and their importance with regards to; changes in emotional states, cognitive processes and experiences in juxtaposition with current research. The concepts and principles are then applied to current

Positive psychology, which has emerged recently, is the scientific study of human thriving. Psychology traditionally focuses on dysfunction—on people with mental illness or other psychological problems and how to treat them. Positive psychology, by contrast, is a relatively new field that examines how ordinary people can become happier and more fulfilled. In his 1998 APA presidential address, Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, argued that psychology had become too focused on curing mental illness according to a disease model, and that, for all intents and purposes, it had become a “victimology” (Seligman, 1998). What was needed, he averred, was a new “science of human strengths,” a positive psychology (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

Central Idea/Thesis statement: To demonstrate that positive thinking has the ability to help a person heal and cope with adversity.

The happiness system is designed to help us gain a better understanding of our core values, and to push us to continually strive to excel. Stagnancy is not beneficial to our relative fitness as a human race, and we must remain motivated by some force to avoid its grasp, as it has been proven over time to be a deadly mechanism of nature. Our “happiness” will be discovered as a result of not just what we choose to pursue in life, but how we choose to pursue it, and the fact we even chose to pursue it at all. Because happiness is in itself hard to define, psychologists have developed a scale of various levels of happiness to help describe it. But to understand the levels, one must first be introduced to the idea of “flow.” As defined by Nettles, flow is a “state characterized by total absorption in a challenging activity for which the individual has the