What (and Why) Is Positive Psychology?

Shelly L. GableUniversity of California, Los Angeles

Jonathan HaidtUniversity of Virginia

Positive psychology is the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to theflourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions. In this briefintroduction, the authors give examples of current work in positive psychology and tryto explain why the positive psychology movement has grown so quickly in just 5 years.They suggest that it filled a need: It guided researchers to understudied phenomena. Theauthors close by addressing some criticisms and shortcomings of positive psychology,such as the relative lack of progress in studying positive institutions.

The gross national product does not allow for thehealth of our children, the quality of their education, orthe joy of their play. It does not include the beauty ofour poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intel-ligence of our public debate or the integrity of ourpublic officials. It measures neither our wit nor ourcourage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neitherour compassion nor our devotion to our country; itmeasures everything, in short, except that which makeslife worthwhile. (Kennedy, 1968)

Robert F. Kennedy’s lament about the grossnational product is analogous to positive psy-chology’s lament about what might be calledthe “gross academic product” of psychology. InJanuary 2000, when Seligman and Csikszentmi-halyi edited a special issue of American Psy-chologist devoted to positive psychology, theyclaimed that psychology was not producingenough “knowledge of what makes life worthliving” (p. 5). In the second half of the 20thcentury, psychology learned much about de-pression, racism, violence, self-esteem manage-ment, irrationality, and growing up under ad-versity but had much less to say about characterstrengths, virtues, and the conditions that lead tohigh levels of happiness or civic engagement. Inone metaphor, psychology was said to be learn-ing how to bring people up from negative eightto zero but not as good at understanding howpeople rise from zero to positive eight.

In just 5 years since that special issue, quite abit has happened in what has become known asthe positive psychology movement. Many ed-ited volumes and handbooks have been pub-lished (e.g., Aspinwall & Staudinger, 2003;Keyes & Haidt, 2003; Lopez & Snyder, 2003;Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Schmuck & Shel-don, 2001; Snyder & Lopez, 2002). Dozens ofconferences have brought researchers togetherfrom all over the world. Numerous grants havefacilitated the research of young investigatorsand created collaborations among researchersfrom many countries. Courses in positive psy-chology are springing up in scores of universi-ties and high schools. Those of us involved inpositive psychology are often amazed at howfast the train has been moving.

However, scholars who are not involved inpositive psychology may be skeptical aboutboth the cargo and the destination of the train.In this introduction, we would like to addressthose who are doubtful about positive psychol-ogy, or just unfamiliar with it. We relate ourview of positive psychology, how we respond tosome recent criticisms of the positive psychol-ogy movement, and where we think the field isgoing. Both of us are experimental social psy-chologists whose work happens to fall withinthe purview of positive psychology. We alsoco-run a yearly conference, the Positive Psy-chology Summer Institute, in which 20 graduatestudents, postdoctoral students, and assistantprofessors from all over the world and from allof the subfields of psychology are brought to-gether for 6 days to learn from each other andfrom a handful of more senior researchers. Weare excited by the quality of the work we seeeach summer and by the caliber and diversity of

Shelly L. Gable, Department of Psychology, Universityof California, Los Angeles; Jonathan Haidt, Department ofPsychology, University of Virginia.

Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-dressed to Shelly L. Gable, Psychology Department, Uni-versity of California, 4560 Franz Hall, Box 951563, LosAngeles, CA 90095-1563. E-mail: gable@psych.ucla.edu

Review of General Psychology Copyright 2005 by the Educational Publishing Foundation2005, Vol. 9, No. 2, 103–110 1089-2680/05/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1089-2680.9.2.103

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the scholars who attend the summer instituteand participate in other positive psychology ac-tivities. We would like to invite you to considergetting involved too, because if all goes well,positive psychology may not be around formuch longer. If the positive psychology move-ment is successful in rebalancing psychologyand expanding its gross academic product, itwill become obsolete.

What Is (and Was, and Is Not) PositivePsychology?

Positive psychology is the study of the con-ditions and processes that contribute to theflourishing or optimal functioning of people,groups, and institutions. Defined in this way,positive psychology has a long history, datingback to William James’s writings on what hetermed “healthy mindedness” in 1902, to All-port’s interest in positive human characteristicsin 1958, to Maslow’s advocacy for the study ofhealthy people in lieu of sick people in 1968,and to Cowan’s research on resilience in chil-dren and adolescents (e.g., Cowan, 2000). How-ever, for reasons discussed later, the past halfcentury has seen the study of the psychologicalaspects of what makes life worth living recedeto the background, whereas studies on disorderand damage have taken center stage. The recentpositive psychology movement grew out of rec-ognition of this imbalance and a desire to en-courage research in neglected areas.

What are some neglected areas? A samplingof the research topics covered by the 60 scholarswho have taken part in the Positive PsychologySummer Institute in the past 3 years1 provides anice illustration of some of them. Many of thescholars are studying areas that were not trulyneglected, such as attachment, optimism, love,emotional intelligence, and intrinsic motivation.But others are studying areas of human experi-ence about which there was very little publishedresearch before the year 2000, such as gratitude,forgiveness, awe, inspiration, hope, curiosity,and laughter (there are commonalities betweentickle-induced vocalization in rat pups andyouthful laughter in humans, highlighting thelikely possibility of common underlying neuro-biological systems; Burgdorf, 2001). Some arestudying well-being or flourishing in unusual orunderstudied populations, including Latinos inthe United States, South Asians in arranged

marriages, elderly people with cognitive impair-ments, cancer patients, and people with schizo-phrenia (whose daily lives turn out to includeabout the same balance of positive and negativemoments as those of nonschizophrenics; Gard,2001). Others are studying the psychobiologicalunderpinnings of happiness and morality. Someare studying techniques to improve well-being,such as mindfulness meditation, journal writing,well-being therapy, savoring, and exposure togreen spaces. If these research programs seemworthwhile and interesting and you agree thatour field is better off with an understanding offlourishing to complement our understanding ofdespair, then you too may be a positivepsychologist.

However, positive psychology does not im-ply that the rest of psychology is negative, al-though it is understandable that the name mayimply that to some people. In fact, the largemajority of the gross academic product of psy-chology is neutral, focusing on neither well-being nor distress. Positive psychology grewlargely from the recognition of an imbalance inclinical psychology, in which most researchdoes indeed focus on mental illness. Research-ers in cognitive, developmental, social, and per-sonality psychology may not believe that thingsare so out of balance. However, even in thesefields, we believe that there are many topics thatcan be said to have two sides, and although agreat flurry of research occurs on the negativeside, the positive side is left to lie fallow. Forexample, in the two areas with which we aremost familiar, this imbalance is evident. In thefield of close relationships, many studies haveexamined how couples respond to each other’smisfortune (e.g., social support) or bad relation-ship behavior (e.g., criticisms and infidelities),but little is known about how couples respond toeach other’s triumphs (e.g., savoring positiveevents) or good relationship behavior (e.g.,compliments and displays of affection; see Reis& Gable, 2003). And there are volumes of workexamining how couples and families resolveconflict but very few studies examining themhaving fun and laughing together. In the area ofmorality, there are thousands of published stud-ies on the negative moral emotions, the emo-

1 The first year of the summer institute was run by DacherKeltner and Lisa Aspinwall.

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tions we feel when others do bad things (anger,contempt, and disgust) or when we ourselves dobad things (shame, embarrassment, and guilt);however, there are only a few empirical studiesof the positive moral emotions, the emotions wefeel when others do good things (gratitude, ad-miration, and moral elevation; see Haidt, 2003).

Despite these inequities, positive psycholo-gy’s aim is not the denial of the distressing,unpleasant, or negative aspects of life, nor is itan effort to see them through rose-coloredglasses. Those who study topics in positive psy-chology fully acknowledge the existence of hu-man suffering, selfishness, dysfunctional familysystems, and ineffective institutions. But theaim of positive psychology is to study the otherside of the coin—the ways that people feel joy,show altruism, and create healthy families andinstitutions—thereby addressing the full spec-trum of human experience. Moreover, positivepsychology makes the argument that these pos-itive topics of inquiry are important to under-stand in their own right, not solely as buffersagainst the problems, stressors, and disorders oflife (although we believe the evidence is clearthat many positive processes shield us fromnegative outcomes, a point we return to later).

Sheldon and King (2001) defined positivepsychology as “nothing more than the scientificstudy of ordinary human strengths and virtues,”one that “revisits the average person” (p. 216;italics added). In this definition is the acknowl-edgment that our field as a whole is relativelysilent regarding what is typical, because what istypical is positive. Indeed, 9 of 10 Americansreport being “very happy” or “pretty happy”(Myers, 2000). And, contrary to the notion thatthis is unique to American soil, studies haveconsistently revealed that most people acrossthe globe score well above the neutral point onmeasures of life satisfaction (Diener & Diener,1996), and even people who many might as-sume would be very unsatisfied with their lives,such as slum dwellers in Calcutta, are actuallyquite satisfied with their lives (Biswas-Diener &Diener, 2001). Thus, despite the very real im-pact of the negative aspects of life documentedin the past few decades of psychological re-search, most people are doing well, and we, aspsychologists, tend to overlook the greater partof human experience and the majority of peo-ple, families, groups, and institutions.

Why a Positive Psychology Movement,and Why Now?

Why do we need a movement in positivepsychology? The answer is straightforward. Thescience of psychology has made great strides inunderstanding what goes wrong in individuals,families, groups, and institutions, but these ad-vances have come at the cost of understandingwhat is right with people. For example, clinicalpsychology has made excellent progress in di-agnosing and treating mental illnesses and per-sonality disorders (e.g., American PsychiatricAssociation, 1994). Researchers in social psy-chology have conducted groundbreaking stud-ies on the existence of implicit prejudice andnegative outcomes associated with low self-esteem (e.g., Josephs, Bosson, & Jacobs, 2003;Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 1997). Health psy-chology has shown us the detrimental effectsthat environmental stressors have on our phys-iological systems (e.g., Dickerson & Kemeny,2004). And cognitive psychology has illumi-nated the many biases and errors involved in ourjudgments (e.g., Gilovich, Vallone, & Tversky,1985). These are all important findings in ourfield, but it is harder to locate correspondingwork on human strengths and virtues.2

So why has our field been so much moreinterested in foibles than in strengths? We seethree reasons. The first is compassion. Thosewho are suffering should be helped before thosewho are already doing well. We certainly agreewith this notion; however, we also think that anunderstanding of human strengths can actuallyhelp prevent or lessen the damage of disease,stress, and disorder. For example, research oncoping has demonstrated that appraisals of neg-ative life events that put them into perspectivewith one’s own capabilities for meeting thechallenge mediate the actual experience of dis-tress (e.g., Folkman & Lazarus, 1988). AndTaylor and colleagues (Taylor, Kemeny, Reed,Bower, & Gruenwald, 2000) have provided per-suasive evidence that beliefs such as optimismand a sense of personal control are protectivefactors for psychological and physical health.

2 One can point to inspiring work such as the jigsawclassroom of Aronson, Blaney, Stephan, Sikes, and Snapp(1978), which brought out the best in students, but suchcases are few and far between.

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This evidence, as well as a plethora of findingsfrom other research programs, leads us to be-lieve that a better understanding of the environ-mental conditions and personal strengths thatbuffer against illness will actually equip us tobetter help those who are suffering.

Furthermore, there is the question of ratio.Even if everyone agrees that we should spendmore money and research time on problems andsuffering than on health and strength, the ques-tion is, how much more? Five, 10, or 50 timesmore? If our research “investment portfolio”gets too far out of balance, we are passing upopportunities to make rapid scientific progresswith minimal investment. Many of the partici-pants in the Positive Psychology Summer Insti-tute are now leaders in their fields of studydespite their young ages, because they havechosen fascinating and important topics thatnobody had bothered to invest in before.

A second reason for psychology’s focus ondistress and disease in the past 50 years ispragmatic and historical. After World War II,psychologists found that funding agencies wereprioritizing research into mental illness andother problems, and much work could be foundhelping returning veterans (Seligman, 2002).Moreover, by this time, clinical psychology hadcome to focus on diagnosis and treatment ofdisorders, in the fashion of a medical diseasemodel (Maddux, 2002). And, as Keyes andLopez (2002) have argued, akin to the medicaldisease model, we have invested greatly in iden-tifying proximal causes of mental illnesses andcreating effective therapies for those who arealready suffering from disorders, but we havefallen short in identifying distal buffers to men-tal illness, such as personal strengths and socialconnections and prevention aimed at the largerpopulation. Ironically, then, one cost of focus-ing resources solely on the treatment of thosewho are already ill may be the prevention ofthese very same illnesses in those who are not illthrough research on the strengths and circum-stances that contribute to resilience and well-ness. And this analysis applies equally well tobranches of psychology other than clinical. Forexample, a focus on prejudice overlooks theprocess of acceptance, a focus on conflict ig-nores how compromises are forged, and a focuson bias misses the many instances of accuracyand the circumstances that surround it.

The third reason for our field’s focus on thenegative may very well reside in our own natureand our theories about psychological processes.As Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, andVohs (2001) have documented, “Bad is strongerthan good.” In a review of the literature, theyargued that negative events have more impactthan positive events and that information aboutbad things is processed more thoroughly thaninformation about good. For example, there isevidence that automatic vigilance tends to begreater to negative stimuli than to positive stim-uli (e.g., Pratto & John, 1991). There is alsoevidence that we see negative acts as morediagnostic about someone’s inner qualities thanpositive acts by making internal attributions forthe former and external attributions for the latter(e.g., Vonk, 1994).

It may be evolutionarily adaptive to recog-nize potential threats more readily than poten-tial rewards. The former may have had imme-diate and irreversible consequences for survivaland reproduction, whereas the latter’s impact onsurvival and reproduction may have been moreindirect and reversible. For example, Cosmidesand Tooby (1992) have demonstrated that peo-ple have a mechanism for the detection of indi-viduals who violate social contracts by benefit-ing themselves without reciprocally contribut-ing to the group (i.e., cheaters), but thus farthere is no evidence that we possess a mecha-nism for the detection of the reverse (i.e.,altruists).

Moreover, a key reason for the primacy ofnegative information may be that it violates ourexpectations (Olson, Roese, & Zanna, 1996).Positive events, information, processes, and in-teractions simply occur more frequently thannegative ones. For example, one study showedthat when asked how often a list of eight pos-itive (e.g., “A friend, romantic partner, or fam-ily member complimented me”) and eight neg-ative (e.g., “A friend, family member, or roman-tic partner insulted me”) social events hadoccurred in the past week, participants reportedthat the negative interactions occurred an aver-age of 5.9 times and the positive interactionsoccurred an average of 19.0 times. This yieldeda ratio of 3.2 positive events for each negativeevent (Gable, 2000), and the pattern of experi-encing more positive than negative events hasbeen replicated in daily experience studies in-

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cluding both social and nonsocial events (e.g.,school or work; Gable, Reis, & Elliot, 2000).Thus, negative information, events, and interac-tions become the figure to the positive groundbecause they are the exception and not thenorm.

Our bias as humans to more readily perceiveand process negative information should not,however, be reflected in the subject matter ofour science. Indeed, because positive processesoccur more often, their impact on long-termoutcomes may be even greater, despite the moresubtle impact of any single positive process. Asevidence for this claim, we draw your attentionto two recent studies on positive emotions,which until recently (e.g., Fredrickson, 1998)have been undertheorized and understudied byemotion researchers. In the first, Harker andKeltner (2001) coded the emotional expressionsof women in their college yearbook photos andcorrelated them with outcomes such as maritalsatisfaction and psychological well-being 30years later. Women who expressed more posi-tive emotion in their photos at 22 years of agehad significantly more favorable outcomes intheir 50s. Similarly, Danner, Snowdon, andFriesen (2001) found that autobiographies ofCatholic nuns written in their early 20s pre-dicted survival in old age. Specifically, nunswhose essays contained positive emotionalcontent lived longer than nuns whose essayslacked such content. Astoundingly, there wasa 2.5 risk-ratio difference between the lowestand highest quartiles of positive emotionalexpression!

In summary, despite the philosophical, his-torical, and theoretical underpinnings that led tothe current imbalance in psychology, we believethat there is little empirical justification for ourpredominantly negative view of human natureand the human condition. Therefore, it is notsurprising to us that what has become known asthe positive psychology movement grew so rap-idly from its beginnings (Seligman & Csik-szentmihalyi, 2000). Research on positive psy-chology topics is not new, but the time was rightfor a correction and an organized positive psy-chology movement. In the past 5 years, manyinvestigators have been getting on the train anddiscovering that it is taking them to interestingplaces and new frontiers.

Challenges to Positive Psychology

The positive psychology movement is notwithout its challengers and critics. Many criti-cisms seem to arise from the assumption that ifthere is a positive psychology, then the rest ofpsychology must be negative psychology, and ifwe need a positive psychology it is because thisso-called negative psychology has taught us lit-tle. This interpretation is unfortunate and, moreimportant, untrue, as we hope what we havewritten here already demonstrates. In fact, it isbecause psychology (which is mostly neutral,but with more negative than positive topics) hasbeen so extraordinarily successful that the im-balance, the lack of progress on positive topics,has become so glaring.

A second criticism is that people who studypositive psychology fail to recognize the veryreal negative sides of life, preferring a Polly-anna view of the world. However, here we echothose who have come before us in articulatingthe goals of positive psychology. The aim is notto erase or supplant work on pathology, distress,and dysfunction. Rather, the aim is to build upwhat we know about human resilience, strength,and growth to integrate and complement theexisting knowledge base. A related concern isthat the movement has cultlike qualities inwhich people get together to share their Polly-annaism. Here we invite the reader to peruse alist of researchers involved in positive psychol-ogy conferences, meetings, and publications (acomprehensive list can be found at http://www.positivepsychology.org/). This list contains thenames of many of the top scholars in each field.Nearly all of us involved in positive psychologyresearch are housed in traditional psychologydepartments, and we publish in mainstreamjournals. We do not think of ourselves as rebels,and many of us rarely if ever refer to ourselvesas “positive psychologists.” We merely find thatthe positive psychology movement helps usstudy our topics more effectively.

Perhaps some of the most daunting chal-lenges to positive psychology stem from defin-ing what actually is positive and the ambiguousline between describing something as “good”and prescribing it as “good” (Held, 2004). Anappropriate analogy can be drawn from medicalresearch showing, for example, that exerciseand leafy green vegetables are “good” for us. Inthe same way, we believe that findings from

107SPECIAL ISSUE: WHAT IS POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY?

positive psychology can and should encouragepeople to adopt behaviors and mental practicesthat are “good” for them.

However, in medicine, what is good is ratherstraightforward: living longer, without illness.In psychology, labeling something as positiveor good may not be as simple (Held, 2004).Diener and Suh (1997) suggested three bases forwhat is positive or what is valuable. First, thechoices people make are one indication ofvalue. That is, if something is chosen regularly,the chooser probably believes in its value orgoodness. Second, people can judge whether ornot something is satisfying: whether an object,event, process, or outcome is pleasant. Third,judgments of what is positive or good can bemade with reference to some value system or setof cultural norms. Our shared beliefs regardingwhat is wrong or unacceptable and what is rightor acceptable can guide decisions about whataims to pursue. These three criteria sometimesagree and sometimes do not. For example, sexoutside the context of a committed relationshipmay be pleasant and enjoyable but may be un-acceptable in terms of one’s religious valuesystem, and one may not choose to engage in itoften. Filling up one’s gas tank may be chosenoften, but it is neither experientially enjoyablenor valued by an environmentally consciousbelief system. Reporting for jury duty may begood as defined by civic values, but it may notbe pleasant and is rarely chosen freely. Con-versely, the three criteria may also converge, forinstance, in playing with one’s child.

In short, the meaning of what is positive orgood is complex and multidimensional, and thestudy of positive psychological topics requiresrecognition of this complexity in theories andempirical designs. An excellent example of thiscomplexity unfolding in psychological researchis Norem’s (2001) work on defensive pessi-mism. There is a great deal of evidence thatoptimism is associated with good outcomes(e.g., health and well-being) and pessimism isassociated with bad outcomes (e.g., Taylor etal., 2000). This may lead to the prescription“Think optimistically and you will do better.”However, as suggested by Norem and Chang(2002), people are much more complex, and a“one size fits all” model does not work. Specif-ically, Norem’s work shows that for a subgroupof people with a defensive pessimism personal-ity style, there are real costs associated with

positive thinking, and to insist that optimismwould be good for them would be a disservice.There are likely to be many other circumstancesin which the three criteria of goodness may notconverge, or may not converge for everyone. Tomeet the challenge of complexity, positive psy-chology must move beyond the description ofmain effects (optimism, humor, forgiveness,and curiosity are good) and begin to look moreclosely at the complex interactions that are thehallmark of most of psychology, as well as ofmedicine.

The Future of Positive Psychology: JustPlain Psychology

The final question is, where does psychologygo from here? We echo Ryff’s (2003) call thatpositive psychology needs to properly map “thedomain of human optimal functioning” (p. 158).The future task of positive psychology is tounderstand the factors that build strengths, out-line the contexts of resilience, ascertain the roleof positive experiences, and delineate the func-tion of positive relationships with others. Posi-tive psychology needs to understand how all ofthese factors contribute to physical health, sub-jective well-being, functional groups, and flour-ishing institutions. Ultimately, positive psychol-ogy needs to develop effective interventions toincrease and sustain these processes.

In this way, we see a final criticism of, anddirection for, positive psychology. The original“three pillars” of positive psychology (Selig-man, 2002) were positive subjective experience,positive individual characteristics (strengthsand virtues), and positive institutions and com-munities. So far, positive psychology has pro-duced a great deal of new research into the firsttwo areas but much less into the third. Earlyhopes for linking up with a “positive sociology”and a “positive anthropology” have gonelargely unfulfilled. If such links cannot beforged in the future, then we hope that positivepsychologists will become more daring in theirtheory and their interventions and will try, inthe coming years, to actually improve the func-tioning of schools, workplaces, and evengovernments.

We began this article with a quote from Rob-ert F. Kennedy, who nearly 40 years ago rec-ognized that the gross national product providesa woefully incomplete picture of the value of a

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country. It is our contention that the gross aca-demic product of psychology as it exists todayprovides an incomplete picture of human life.The recent movement in positive psychologystrives toward an understanding of the completehuman condition, an understanding that recog-nizes human strengths as clearly as it does hu-man frailties and that specifies how the two arelinked. Only a balanced, empirically grounded,and theoretically rich view of human experiencecan fulfill the mission of our field, as outlined inWilliam James’s (1890/1950) description ofpsychology as “the science of mental Life, bothof its phenomena and their conditions” (p. 1).

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Received September 25, 2004Accepted September 28, 2004 �

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