Archive for the ‘positive psychology’ tag
Epicurus: a pre-cursor to positive psychology?
I’m partway through the book The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton
- Wealth does not necessarily mean happiness. (In fact, relishing simple indulgences tends to make one happier than acquiring a sophisticated taste.)
- In order to be happy, you should surround yourself with friends.
This reads straight out of Seligman’s Authentic Happiness
What Makes Us Happy? – The Atlantic June 2009
Interesting (albeit long) article on a very large psychological study spanning many years:
As Freud was displaced by biological psychiatry and cognitive psychology—and the massive data sets and double-blind trials that became the industry standard—Vaillant’s work risked obsolescence. But in the late 1990s, a tide called “positive psychology” came in, and lifted his boat. Driven by a savvy, brilliant psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania named Martin Seligman, the movement to create a scientific study of the good life has spread wildly through academia and popular culture dozens of books, a cover story in Time, attention from Oprah, etc..
Vaillant became a kind of godfather to the field, and a champion of its message that psychology can improve ordinary lives, not just treat disease. But in many ways, his role in the movement is as provocateur. Last October, I watched him give a lecture to Seligman’s graduate students on the power of positive emotions—awe, love, compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, joy, hope, and trust or faith. “The happiness books say, ‘Try happiness. You’ll like it a lot more than misery’—which is perfectly true,” he told them. But why, he asked, do people tell psychologists they’d cross the street to avoid someone who had given them a compliment the previous day?