POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
GOOD OR BAD?
What is PP?
• The field of positive psychology has grown
dramatically over the past decade and has
many exuberant supporters and
evangelists. Rather than focusing on
distress and pathology, they emphasize
human strengths and virtues, happiness,
and the potential to derive positive
meaning from stressful circumstances.
Critics
Writers and pychologists such as
Lazarus
Barbara Held
Barbara Ehrenreich
Eugene Taylor
James Coyne
have offered critiques of positive psychology
Criticisms
• Failure to sufficiently recognize the valuable functions
played by “negative” emotions like anger, sorrow, and
fear;
• Its slick marketing and disregard for harsh and
unforgiving societal realities like poverty;
• Its failure to examine the depth and richness of human
experience;
• Its growing tendency to promote claims without sufficient
scientific support (e.g., the relationship between positive
psychological states and health outcomes, or the
mechanisms underlying “posttraumatic growth”).
What ‘negative’ psychology?
• PP’s claim that psychology
has over-emphasized the
negative is inaccurate.
• Psychology is mostly
neutral: perception, memory,
language, volition etc.
• A lot of positive before PP
(e.g. Jahoda’s positive
mental health, Humanistic
psychology, Bandura’s selfefficacy, decades of stress
and coping research
(positive reappraisal,
acceptance, social support)
How do we know what is good or
positive?
• What people think is good – but can we trust them? (e.g.
they may be spoiled or suffer from ‘status anxiety’).
• People’s experiences of positive subjective states (what
feels good) – but can we really rely on feelings?
• Value assessment based on norms, beliefs, or culture –
whose norms and beliefs? If some are right some must
be wrong.
• Scientifically objective – but science does not deal with
value judgements, does it?
• Conceptually objective – how far can we go with
philosophy before going too far?
• Historically or universally objective – can we rely on the
past or prove God?
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The march of positivity
“Our popular culture and
now… our professional
culture are saturated with
the view that we must
think positive thoughts,
we must cultivate positive
emotions and attitudes,
and we must play to our
strengths to be happy,
healthy, and wise.” (Held,
2004, p.12)
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It may not be good to be always positive
• We need the negative to fully appreciate the positive (the
positive stops being positive if there is nothing else)
• The tyranny of positive may in fact reduce SWB: “In my on
experiences as … a clinical psychologist, I have
repeatedly noticed that some people seem to feel guilty,
defective, or both when they can’t feel good. They
sometimes apologize for not being able to smile in the face
of adversity, as if they were committing an act of treason
by feeling and acting unhappy.” (Held, 2004)
• It may lead to suppressing the negative.
• It is against human nature (two sides of the same coin).
• It is superficial. Research suggests that co-activation of
negative emotions and memories is also necessary for
integration and growth (Larsen et al., 2003)
• Positive illusion may become positive delusion.
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Well-being v. development
• Do we inadvertently promote
mediocre well-being?
• Perhaps the simpler people deal
with stress easier.
• Development can be sometimes
painful, effortful and asocial
(Irving & Williams, 2001).
• Highly developed people are by
definition in the minority. Is an
empirical research based on the
majority really informative and
comprehensive?
Procrustes psychology
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Social factors also play a role!
• A side effect: victims of unfortunate
circumstances and other sufferers
may be blamed for their own misery.
• They fail to exhibit the necessary
optimism, strength, virtue and
willpower
‘Happy slave’ - perhaps making
people to be more happy in fact
prevents galvanising the forces
for social change.
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Does PP make ‘happy slaves’
and ‘content bastards’?
SOME SPECIFIC ISSUES
POSITIVE EMOTIONS
• What are positive emotions?
• Why is fear negative emotion (certainly useful from
evolutionary perspective)?
• Is it justifiable to identify positive emotions with pleasant,
and negative emotions with unpleasant (hedonic bias)?
• Pleasant emotions can be negative (enjoyment in
suffering of others), and unpleasant positive (crying after
a sad movie).
• Do positive emotions have some negative sides (e.g.
superficiality)?
• In reality, our emotions are often mixed, have negative
and positive side (e.g. love, pride, hope, anxiety etc.)
Are positive emotions really that good?
• Some research suggests
that mildly depressed
older women live longer
(Hybels et al., 2002)
• …and cheerfulness
(optimism & sense of
humour) associated with
younger age of death in
longitudinal study
(Friedman et al., 1993)
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OPTIMISM AND HOPE
• Why is it good? Martin Seligman’s message sometimes
too one-sided and messianic:
– “Pessimists are losers on many fronts” (Authentic
Happiness)
– Implicit message that “accentuating the positive” (and
ignoring the negative) is maximally beneficial.
• Defensive pessimism: cognitive strategy to set low
expectations for upcoming performance, despite having
performed well in previous similar situations (Norem &
Cantor, 1986).
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Benefits of DP
Defensive pessimism can:
• Cushion the potential blow of failure.
• Motivate reflection and rehearsal.
• Prevent naivety.
• Harness anxiety for motivation
• Apply “worst case scenario” technique used in CBT.
In comparison to equally anxious students who do not use
defensive pessimism those who do (Norem & Chang, 2002):
• Show significant increases in self-esteem and satisfaction
over time.
• Perform better academically.
• Form more supportive friendship networks.
• Make more progress on their personal goals.
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FLOW
• What is flow?
• Is flow (as originally defined)
necessarily positive? What
about a larger perspective?
• Is flow so important if it is only
about pockets of experience?
After all, how many activities in
everyday life can we have that
meet the criteria?
• How about a mental flow (day
dreaming)?
• Would it be possible, by
modifying its definition, to
create life-flow that
encompasses most of our
waking life?
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STRENGTHS
• Is the evidence that is better to
work with your strengths than
improve your weaknesses
compelling enough?
• What are strengths?
• Does the classification of
strengths make sense?
• How comprehensive is the list?
• Is the way of allocating
strengths really valid? Do we
find strengths that we would like
to have, that we aspire to, or the
ones that we really have?
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Let’s remind ourselves:
Wisdom and knowledge
• Curiosity, interest
• Love of learning
• Judgement, critical thinking, openmindedness
• Practical intelligence, creativity,
originality, ingenuity
• Perspective
Courage
• Valour
• Industry, perseverance
• Integrity, honesty, authenticity
• Zest, enthusiasm
Love
• Intimacy, reciprocal attachment
• Kindness, generosity, nurturance
• Social intelligence, personal
intelligence, emotional intelligence
Justice
• Citizenship, duty, loyalty,
teamwork
• Equity, fairness
• Leadership
Temperance
• Forgiveness, mercy
• Modesty, humility
• Prudence, caution
• Self-control, self-regulation
Transcendence
• Awe, wonder, appreciation of
beauty and excellence
• Gratitude
• Hope, optimism, futuremindedness
• Playfulness, humour
• Spirituality, sense of purpose,
faith, religiousness
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Method and
IMPLEMENTATION
How scientific is really PP?
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Even if…
Even if we get everything right (theory, research,
interventions), there are possible challenges regarding
application:
• Do we have the right to be prescriptive?
• Even if they do, how to translate it into practice?
• Even if we can, how far can we go?
• And, what if living well is not all it’s crack up to be?
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How far can we go?
• Well-being can be specific rather
than universal, so we may not be
able to justifiably make
generalisations.
• Interventions may have only
superficial and short term effect, if
done in isolation (rather than being
a part of a coherent framework, a
philosophy of one’s life.
• The value and potency of
interventions may be lost if they are
done for ‘wrong reason’ or
artificially (relevant for training).
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What if living well is not all it’s
crack up to be?
• Why don’t people seek out what will make them
happy? (Peterson, 2006)
• What if there is a meta-negative state that is
provoked by living well?
• For example, people may find living well boring, or it
may create anxiety, or it may limit freedom.
• What if there is something more important than wellbeing (e.g. self-destructive artist).
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Samuel Becket: Waiting for Godot
• ESTRAGON:
– I am happy.
• VLADIMIR:
– So am I.
• ESTRAGON:
– So am I.
• VLADIMIR:
– We are happy.
• ESTRAGON:
– We are happy. (Silence.) What do we do now, now
that we are happy?
Happiness of pursuit, rather
than pursuit of happiness?
Bicycle psychology –
balancing between left and
right, and you can balance
only when you are moving.
Examples:
•
•
•
•
•
Improve the world AND yourself
Accept AS WELL AS change
Both, experience and thinking matter
Independence AND inter-dependence
Use your strengths AND work on your
weaknesses
• Being AND doing
• Prepare for the worst and hope for the best
• Positive and negative
Suggested reading
• Christopher, J. C. & Richardson, F. C. (2008) Thinking
through Positive Psychology. Theory & Psychology, 18, 5,
555-561.
• Gable, S. L. & Haidt, J. (2005). What (and why) is Positive
Psychology? Review of General Psychology, 9, 103-110.
• Haybron, D.M. (2008). Philosophy and the Science of
Subjective Well-Being. in M. Eid & R.J. Larsen (eds) The
Science of Subjective Well-Being. New York, London: The
Gilford Press.
• Kingwell, M. (2000) Better Living. Crown Publications.
• Lazarus, R. (2003). Does the positive psychology
movement have legs? Psychological Inquiry, 14, 93-109.
• Slife, B. D. & Richardson, F. C. (2008) Problematic
Ontological Underpinning of Positive Psychology: A
Strong Relational Alternative. Theory & Psychology, 18, 5,
699-723.
References
• Irving, J. A. & Williams, D. I. (2001) The path and price of
personal development. The European Journal of
Psychotherapy, Counselling and Health, 4(2), 225-235.
• Linley, P. A., Joseph, S., Harrington, S. & Wood, A. M.
(2006) Positive psychology: Past, present and (possible)
future. Journal of Positive psychology, 1(1): 3-16
• Pawelski, J. (2008) What does positive psychology mean
by ‘positive’? jamespawelski.com/2008/06/28/what-doespositive-psychology-mean-by-positive/
• Ryff, C.D. and Singer, B. (1996). Psychological wellbeing: Meaning, measurement, and implications for
psychotherapy research. Psychotherapy and
Psychosomatics, 65, 14-23.
• Sheldon, K. M. & King, L. (ed.) (2001). Positive
Psychology [special issue] American Psychologist, 56(3),
216-263