WHAT POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY IS
A flourishing study
Positive psychology is grounded in rigorous research. It is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living—optimal functioning, performance and wellbeing. It aims to build the best things in life and crystallizes the concepts of total wellBEING including happiness, engagement, grit, meaning, unique strengths and virtues, relationships, resilience, and optimism. In doing so, it explores the positive skills, experiences, characteristics and practices that enable individuals, institutions and communities to excel and flourish.
Positive psychology is the study of how human beings prosper in the face of adversity (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).3 This flourishing study, spearheaded in 1998 by Dr. Martin Seligman, has changed the trajectory of mainstream psychology and has spread rapidly across social and human sciences. It now spans many branches that builds on the philosophies and practices from Socrates to Maslow.
Today positive psychology has its applications in diverse fields such as economics, human and social services, education, parenting, healthcare, politics, leadership, management and organizational behavior.
Brief history
Positive Psychology as we know it today can be traced back to Martin E. P. Seligman’s 1998 Presidential Address to the APA (Seligman, 1999).4 Following a 1997 chance meeting between he and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Csikszentmihalyi, 2003)5, and an epiphanic moment when gardening with his daughter, Nikki (Seligman, 2000)6, Seligman realized that psychology had largely neglected the latter two of its three pre-World War II missions: curing mental illness, helping all people to lead more productive and fulfilling lives, and identifying and nurturing high talent.
He noted that psychology had been overwhelmingly focused on what was “wrong” and broken, such as disease, negative emotions, and pathologies. He observed that while much was known about the nature of ill health, the effect of negative stressors and the factors that help people survive through adversity, little was known about how normal people flourish in more nonthreatening circumstances.
With this realization, Seligman resolved to use his APA presidency to initiate a shift in psychology’s focus toward a more positive psychology (Seligman, 1999).7 Seligman challenged the field to bring as much focus to what was “right” and worthy of replication, such as kindness, love, awe, and gratitude.
“Unevenly looking only at pathology victimizes people.” 8 – Martin Seligman
Past research
Research into positive psychology topics might even be traced back to the origins of psychology itself, for example, in William James’ writings on ‘‘healthy mindedness’’ (James, 1902).9
In broad terms, positive psychology has common interests with parts of humanistic psychology, and its emphasis on the fully functioning person (Rogers, 1961),10 and self-actualization and the study of healthy individuals (Maslow, 1968). 11
In recent years, utilitarianism and humanistic psychology were among key movements that also elevated happiness and mental health as a meaningful goal and field of study.
Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi and those who took up the task of positive psychology aimed to reset the balance.
The future
Today scholars are calling for a more balanced approach, a second wave that builds on an abundance focus by integrating study of the positive with the negative to encompass human experience in all its complexity (Wong, 2011).12
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