UNIT 7
Positive Psychology
What is Positive Psychology?
Positive psychology is the
branch of psychology focused
on the character strengths and
behaviours that allow
individuals to build a life of
meaning and purpose, the
scientific study of what makes
life most worth living, focusing
on both individual and societal
well-being, to move beyond
surviving to flourishing.
Founders of Positive Psychology
Martin Seligman (1942 -) American
• Learned helplessness
• President of the APA 1998
• Scientific Director of VIA institute
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934 - ) Hungarian American
• Flow
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Martin Seligman at the 2nd
World Congress on Positive Psychology - Philadelphia 2011
Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi agreed about what the focus of Positive Psychology should be: “The
substance was anchored by the opposite concerns from clinical psychology: the good life—what it is
to be healthy and sane, and what humans choose to pursue when they are not suffering or oppressed”
(Seligman 2019).
Positive Psychology takes you through the countryside of
Dimensions of happiness pleasure and gratification, up into the high country of strength
and virtue, and finally to the peaks of lasting fulfilment:
meaning and purpose ~ Martin Seligman
According to Seligman, we can experience three kinds of happiness:
1) Pleasure and gratification
2) Embodiment of strengths and virtues
3) Meaning and purpose.
Each kind of happiness is linked to positive emotion but from his quote, you can see that in his
mind there is a progression from the first type of happiness of pleasure and gratification to
strengths and virtues and finally meaning and purpose.
It studies "positive
The focus of Positive Psychology subjective experience,
positive individual
traits, and positive
Eudaimonia, "the good life" or flourishing. institutions … it aims to
improve quality of life.“
~Martin Seligman
Positive subjective experience:
Past - Well-being and satisfaction
Present - flow, joy, the sensual pleasures, and happiness
Future - optimism, hope, and faith.
Individual level:
Positive personal traits:
The capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic
sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future-mindedness, high talent, and
wisdom.
Group level:
Civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship:
Responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, moderation, tolerance, and work ethic (Seligman
2002)
5 Essential Components of Wellbeing
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A deeper look at the PERMA model:
Positive Emotions
• Build physical, intellectual, and social abilities.
• Seeking inventive and adaptable ways of thinking and doing widens awareness and thought-action
repertoire.
• This broadening effect develops skills and resources over time.
• Research supports the theory that people who experience positive emotions make more meaningful
connections, create more inclusive categories, and have higher levels of creativity.
• Positive emotions increase performance and strengthen our relationships.
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“The best moments in our lives are not
A deeper look at the PERMA model:
the passive, receptive, relaxing
times . . . The best moments usually
Engagement occur if a person’s body or mind is
stretched to its limits in a voluntary
Flow:
effort to accomplish something difficult
Space of optimal psychological functioning and worthwhile.” ~Mihaly
Prefrontal cortex shows lower levels of activation Csikszentmihalyi
Heightened level of performance and creativity.
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Conditions to experience flow
• Knowing what to do
• Knowing how well you are doing - Immediate feedback.
• Knowing how to do it
• High perceived challenges Balanced opportunity and capacity.
• High perceived skills
• Deep concentration.
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• Being in the present. under CC BY-SA
• Altered sense of time.
• Ego-lessness
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CC BY-SA-NC
Benefits of flow
• Better emotional regulation
• Greater enjoyment and fulfilment
• Greater happiness
• Greater intrinsic motivation
• Increased engagement
• Improved performance
• Learning and skill development
• Increased creativity
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A deeper look at the PERMA model: “Other people matter.”
~ Christopher Peterson
Relationships
Neurologically hardwired to connect with others.
Human babies depend on others to care for them.
Humans develop and learn about life and navigating the world through others.
The one thing that sets happier people apart is the quality of their relationships.
What keeps us happy and healthy? Good relationships.
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A deeper look at the PERMA model:
Meaning
One’s level of well-being is affected by choices, attitudes, and behaviours.
A deeper, more enduring sense of well-being requires an exploration of meaning.
Martin Seligman defines meaning as “using your signature strengths and virtues in the service of
something much larger than you are.”
We feel more fulfilled when we apply and develop our unique strengths and virtues toward something
larger than ourselves.
Authentic happiness is: “A preface to the
meaningful life and that while it is possible take
drugs to generate the effects of positive
emotion and pleasure through pharmacology, it
is not possible to synthesize the positive
effects of being in the flow or of experiencing
meaning.” ~ Martin Seligman
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A deeper look at the PERMA model:
Accomplishments
People who feel personally involved in achieving their goals indicate higher levels of well-being and are in
better health than people who lack a sense of direction in their lives.
Goals that lead to well-being are personally meaningful.
We often pursue accomplishment for its own sake, even if it doesn’t translate into an increase in positive
emotions, meaning, or the quality of relationships.
Measuring character strengths
and virtues
• “Sanity” manual
• “VIA (Values in Action) Signature Strengths
Test,”
Based on a list of 24 essential virtues or strengths
that seemed to have cross-cultural and cross-
historical validity: (Peterson and Seligman
2004)
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The relevance of the Positive Psychology in Education
Three aims of Positive Psychology:
• To optimise positive emotions
• To identifying individual positive strengths
• To be supported by positive people around you, institutions and organisations
How can we foster this in the classroom and school environment?
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Feet of clay
Positive psychology has been accused of
advancing a Western, ethnocentric creed
of individualism. At its core is the idea
that we can achieve well-being by our
own efforts, by showing determination
and grit. But what about social and
systemic factors that, for example, keep
people in poverty? What about physical
illness and underserved tragedy — are
people who are miserable in these
circumstances just not trying hard
enough?
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Author is licensed under
CC BY-SA-NC
Critique of Positive Psychology
• Unrealistic focus on positive emotions without considering role of negative emotions
• Pressure to be happy, successful and accomplish goals can lead to feelings of failure
• Conceptual and methodological problems in interventions designed to "improve the lives of the
people whose days are largely free of overt mental dysfunction".
• The tenets and experiments based on “positive” psychological practices may have especially
detrimental effect on marginalized individuals and communities.
• Serious concerns around unsound statistical measures and calculations, replicability and reliance on
unreliable self-reports.
• Academic elitism as positive psychologists are accused of not reading and citing broader literature.
• Scientism – the belief that the positivist paradigm (there is only one reality) of the scientific method is
the only way to examine truth claims and the only good and trustworthy method to achieve
happiness, well-being, and flourishing.
• Left the field of science and entered the realm of ethics in that it is no longer a purely factual enterprise,
but is now concerned with promoting particular values. For science, positive psychology sounds a lot like
religion.
• Commodified and commercialised psychology
References
Peterson, C. and Seligman, M.E. 2004. Character strengths and
virtues: A handbook and classification (Vol. 1). Oxford University
Press.
Seligman, M.E. 2019. Positive psychology: A personal history. Annual
Review of Clinical Psychology, 15, 1-23.
Seligman, M.E. 2002. Positive psychology, positive prevention, and
positive therapy. Handbook of positive psychology, 2(2002), 3-12.
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