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POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGYMARTIN SELIGMAN
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Martin Seligman
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BELIEFS
Psychology should:
Be focused on strength as well as weakness
Be interested in improving as well as repairing
Help normal people live fulfilling lives as well as healing
From Authentic Happiness to Well-Being theory
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AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS
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+Authentic Happiness
Authentic Happiness Theory:Topic: happinessMeasure: life satisfactionGoal: increase life satisfaction
Suggests happiness could be analysed into three different elements – three ‘happy lives’
These lives can be independent of each other.
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THREE HAPPY LIVES
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THREE HAPPY LIVES
THE M E A N I N G F U L
LIFE
+The Pleasant Life
Having as many positive emotions as you can: pleasure, rapture, ecstasy, warmth, comfort, etc.
Shopping, watching tv, etc.
Learning skills that amplify them
+The Good Life
About engagement and flow
During flow, you cannot feel anything – time stops, loses self-consciousness during an absorbing activity.
Seligman believes that the concentrated attention that flow requires uses up all the cognitive and emotional resources that make up thought and feeling.
Using highest strengths to recraft your life (work, relationships, etc)
+The Meaningful Life
Pursuit of pleasure and the pursuit of engagement are often solitary endeavours. Meaningful life involves others.
The Meaningful Life consists in belonging to and serving something you believe is bigger than the self, and humanity creates all the positive institutions to allow this: religion, political party, being green, the family, etc
Knowing your signature strength and using them to belong to something larger than you are
+Life Satisfaction
Does Life Satisfaction = Pleasure + Engagement + Meaning?
15 replications over thousands of participants
To what extent do these each pursuits contribute to life satisfaction?
Pursuit of pleasure very little
Engagement and Meaning highest
Pleasure matters when you have both engagement and meaning – “the cherry on top”!
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Well-Being Theory:Topic: well-beingMeasures: positive emotion, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (PERMA)Goal: increase flourishing by increasing PERMA
Five elements…
Well-Being Theory
+1) Positive Emotion Similar to the authentic happiness theory
BUThappiness and life satisfaction are now under this element rather than being the goal of the entire theory
2) Engagement Again, like in authentic happiness theory, one’s
thoughts and feelings are absent during the flow state and only in retrospect do they say “that was fun/wonderful”.
3) Meaning As retained from the Authentic Happiness Theory
+4) Positive Relationships Premise that high points of ones life involves the
presence of others.
5) Accomplishment Often pursued for its own sake – ‘winning for winning’s
sake’
People who lead the achieving life are often absorbed in what they do, often pursue pleasure and feel positive emotion when they win and they may win in the service of something larger
+GOAL – TO FLOURISH
What is ‘flourish’?
An individual must have all the ‘core features’ and three of the six ‘additional features’:
Administered items to > 2000 in numerous nations…
Core Features Additional Features
Positive emotionsEngagementInterestMeaningPurpose
Self-esteemOptimismResilienceVitalitySelf-DeterminationPositive relationships
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+Authentic Happiness vs Well-
Being Theory
Authentic happiness is one-dimensional: about feeling good and claims that our goal in life is to maximise how we feel
Well-being is about all five elements (PERMA) and about a combination of feeling good as well as having meaning, good relationships and accomplishment. The goal is to maximise all five elements.
In authentic happiness theory, the strengths and virtues fall under engagement – in well-being, these strengths underpin all five elements. Therefore, it is about using your strengths to pursue more positive emotion, more meaning, more accomplishment and to better relationships.
+What are these ‘STRENGTHS’?
Values in Action (VIA) Strengths Survey and The Authentic Happiness Inventory Questionnaire (amongst many others) onwww.authentichappiness.org
Over 1.8 million surveys completed
These tests measure various elements.
Data collected helps form further studies to examine and measure differences in affectivity after participating in positive psychology interventions.
