Positive Psychology
Writing Project Guidelines: Positives/Negatives
In class, we have talked about how Positive Psychology “bridges the Ivory Tower and Main Street”
(Ben-Shahar, 2001), and how our class is not simply about information, but about both information
and transformation.
Your Writing Project is an opportunity for you to connect the topics from lecture, the research from the
readings, and the discussions in section to your own lives and to your personal experiences, especially
as they relate to life at Hopkins.
For this assignment, you will be turning in 4 essays over the course of the semester. Look at the
Syllabus for due dates.
Guidelines:
1) You will be identifying 4 different examples:
a. Identify 2 positive examples for the following in your life at it relates to JHU:
experience/event, space, habit, group, or person. Each example should be different and
unique – you cannot pick the same theme twice during the semester.
b. Identify 2 negative examples for the following in your life as it relates to JHU:
experience/event, space, habit, group, or person. Again, each example should be
different and unique – you cannot pick the same theme twice during the semester.
c. If you have difficulty thinking of examples from JHU, or if you have just arrived here,
you can pick examples from your life outside of JHU (e.g., family, past teachers, past
events etc), but please try to have as many examples as possible come from things
related to JHU.
2) At the beginning of each entry, state the example. Then write at least two pages about each
example, applying the themes from the course (see “Positive: Space” example below from
Prof. Halberda or other examples made available). You must cite at least 6 sources for each
example (2 journal articles from the assigned readings for the course, 2 professional journal
articles that were not assigned in the course that you find, and 2 citations to the lecture slides).
Citing more than just six in your entries can help ensure a higher grade. For all articles, please
be sure to describe the article or the results from it that are important to your example – don’t
just give a citation, describe a key result from the paper and relate it to points in your essay (see
“Positive: Space” example from Prof. Halberda). (note: each extra citation will earn you some
extra points and it is possible to get higher than 100% credit on an essay in this way. Each
essay is graded on its own, so you can add extra different citations into some or all of your
essays as you like). For your lecture citations, work the observation into your narrative and cite
the slide number that is the source.
3) Further notes on citations: In your writing for each entry, be sure to also connect your example
with the topics that we have discussed in class, using the course readings and the appropriate
additional readings as support. (you can cite more than just two course readings for extra credit
as well, but you must have at least 2 citations from the class readings and 2 from an outside
journal article that you find). For citations from class, any citations from assigned readings,
bonus readings or experiments from lecture slides that have a citation you can find the paper for
count. Please also include 2 examples/results from lecture slides. For these, you should
describe the result or claim and say how the result supports your argument. These should be
cited in the bibliography. For your 4 citations, ensure that you have read the cited paper and
demonstrate this by giving detailed points in your essay. For citations from the literature, these
must be professional journal articles or book chapters. No newspaper articles, reviews of an
article/book, Psychology Today articles or those from other magazines, or dissertations. Ensure
that you have read the cited paper and demonstrate this by giving detailed points in your essay.
4) It is also possible to earn some extra credit points for including a photograph or figure in your
entry (see rubric). For example, include a picture from your positive event, or positive group, or
negative space etc. Include the picture/figure within the essay itself. Please note that pictures
do not count towards the text total of at least 2.5 pages – so when including a picture make sure
that you also have sufficient text written for the essay (e.g., the total page length should be ≈ 3+
pages per entry if you include picture and citations)
5) At the end of each entry, please be sure to include an APA formatted Reference list with all of
the articles that you cite for that entry (i.e., a different reference list for each essay). Note that
the reference list also does not count towards the 2.5+ pages of text.
• Some prompts to help inspire your writing (note, you don’t have to address all of these prompts
in your answer – please see section “writing guidelines” below)
Positive Examples, Things to consider:
a. Why is each a positive example of the topic (experience, space, habit, group, and person
in your life)?
b. What positive outcomes result from this example?
c. Why is this important to you, to your classmates/faculty/staff, to the college
community, or to JHU as a whole?
d. How could you inspire others to incorporate these positive examples into their own
lives?
e. If appropriate, how could JHU staff/faculty/administration contribute to making this
example even better? How could you, as an individual, contribute to making this
example even better or more beneficial to yourself and/or others?
Negative Examples, Things to consider:
a. Why is each a negative example of the topic (experience, space, habit, group, and
person in your life)?
b. How could these examples be improved or changed? (This may (but need not) take up
the majority of your “negative” entries.)
c. Why is this important to you, to your classmates/faculty/staff, to the college
community, or to JHU as a whole?
d. If appropriate, how could JHU staff/faculty/administration contribute to turning this
example from negative to positive? How could you, as an individual, contribute to
making this example positive?
e. What recommendations do you have to create and implement/what metrics can you
suggest to evaluate positive change?
Writing Guidelines:
We want to encourage you to use this assignment to focus on applying the information from the course
that you find most important for your particular example. You are encouraged to write your entries in
complete paragraphs, not bullet points. You do not need to touch on every aspect highlighted above (ae). Instead, focus on the ones that you find most important for your particular example.
Further Guidelines:
We are particularly interested in your experience as a student here at Hopkins, but also as a member of
the Baltimore community. It is acceptable to write about something in your home-life outside of
school – particularly if you feel that this would be the most useful topic for you to explore personally –
but please try to think about Positivity and Negativity as you experience it on a daily basis in your
present environment. This project may include information about your past, but we prefer that you
think more broadly about your present experience, the experiences of your fellow JHU students and
community members, and the situations that you encounter every day on and around campus.
We encourage you to work on these topics as they arise throughout the semester and so the due dates
are staggered throughout the semester. Again, you will need a total of 4 essays. For this assignment,
everyone must turn in their own unique work. Talking to your friends and classmates about your ideas
is encouraged, but everyone should write their own unique entries and find your own citations.
Your project should be typed in 12-point, Times New Roman font. The minimum length per entry is 2
double-spaced pages. Your references should be at the bottom of the each entry (on the third page).
Please begin each entry at the top of a new page (i.e., insert page breaks between entries). This means
that your total page length will be around 12 pages by the end of the semester.
We encourage you to work on this project in several sittings, though you can feel free to work in the
way that best suits you. Ideally, you will begin to think about positivity and negativity as it impacts
you and your environment on a daily basis. You will also begin to generate ideas about how to
maximize the positive examples and shift the negative examples to positive ones.
You should be able to identify the topics that we cover this semester in many aspects of your life. In
this way, we hope that you are able to bridge, not only the Ivory Tower and Main Street, but the Ivory
Tower and your own, personal, daily life.
In some cases, the Provost and others at the University have expressed interest in reading some of the
entries from our students – with the goal of understanding the students’ feelings and their ideas for
making Hopkins better. I will never share your entries without your express written permission. And,
I will only share your anonymized writings if you include a release at the end of your paper (I will
never share your name or any other identifying information in your essay) or if I contact you over
email for your express permission. If you would be willing to help the University in this way please
include the following statement at the end of each essay:
I hereby give Professor Halberda permission to share my anonymized essays, in whole or in
part, with other interested members of the leadership of Johns Hopkins University, with the
understanding that they will be used for information purposes only.
Some Positive and Negative examples to help inspire you:
This is a list of some examples to help inspire your thinking. You should try to not simply copy these
examples (you should generate your own), but it is OK if one or two of your examples is related to or
inspired by one of these. A very helpful way to come up with examples is to look at the topics
highlighted in the syllabus (e.g., Grit, Resilience, Mindfulness, Flow, etc). Use these to think of
examples – because when you do that, it is very easy to see which papers in the syllabus are the most
relevant.
These examples have both the idea and the topics in class that might relate most to the idea (in
parentheses)
Positives:
Experience/Event = Spring Fair (Depression and Happiness), good grade in a class that was a struggle
(Grit), a particular class you took (Meaning/Purpose), a particular sport event you competed in
(Flow, Physical Health) …
Space = Brody Learning Commons (Luck), sitting on the beach (Mindfulness), improvements in the
Charles Village community around Hopkins (Optimism) …
Habit = journaling (Change), phoning family members (Gratitude, Relationships), doing assignments
before they are due (Perfectionism and Failure)…
Group = a sport activity (Physical Health), A Place To Talk (PTG), Psi Chi Honors Society (Success)
…
Person in your life = caregiver who worked their way from lower socio-economic status (SES) to high
SES (Grit), Resident life assistant who got to know you personally (Gratitude) …
Negatives (remember, for each of these you should write about what you can do to implement positive
change):
Experience/Event = failing a test that was important (Failure/Procrastination), you helped a friend who
never thanked you (Gratitude) …
Space = having small classes meet in a large lecture hall where students sit towards the back (lowCreativity), the upper and lower quad where students don’t tend to hang out – sit –meet up (Luck,
Meaning, Relationships – but note the colored chairs are a big help) …
Habit = waiting to do assignments at last minute (Perfectionism and Failure), constantly saying how
things could be better (Luck/Grit – interpreting things as worse) …
Group = a socio-cultural community where older individuals tend to dominate the relationship (SelfEsteem), …
Person in your life = own negative self-talk (Depression and Happiness), mom’s talking about and
reliving past failures (Perfectionism and Failure) …
Helpful hints about how to find professional journal articles for your examples:
To find these additional articles, we recommend that you use Google Scholar (typing in key words:
https://scholar.google.com/) or PsychINFO (it is a Psychology database of articles that JHU Libraries
subscribes to: http://jhsearch.library.jhu.edu/databases/alphabetical?alpha=P). The goal for this aspect
of the final project is for you to support your ideas and opinions with the science, and for you to gain
experience hunting through the scientific literature for relevant papers. This is an important general
skill to develop. Below are some techniques we find useful.
- Search engines. Go to Google Scholar. This is a search engine that tries to filter the
net for just scientific articles and books. It is fairly good at it, but (we find) it always
gives too broad a set of hits. So, you do not want to simply type in one or two key
words (e.g., if you type in “Positive Psychology” you will get very general hits).
Instead, play with it like you are hunting for something. Type in a few keywords and
then look at only the first page of hits. Then modify your keywords to try to find
papers that focus on the topic you care about. (For example, in my search for papers
related to how chance encounters can make people happier and how public spaces
can lead to chance encounters I searched on Google Scholar for 3 minutes, but ran at
least 14 different searches as I tried to hunt for something that seemed just right. I
started with broad searches (e.g., Positive Psychology luck), and then got more and
more specific (e.g., Positive Psychology luck chance encounters space). Each search
I would look at only the first page of entries, usually only looking at the titles. (Also,
I glanced at authors to see if the same names came up on various searches as a way to
start to learn if there are important authors in this area). In the end, I removed
“positive” from my search and “psychology” from my search (trying to remove the
very general hits I was getting) and I found several articles that looked interesting to
me with the search “happiness chance encounters luck how spaces create
encounters”. (Some of the text in my search may be redundant – but I don’t tend to
mind because it is easier for me to keep typing in things and just see where it takes
me).
- Another search engine is PSYCinfo (free access via Eisenhower Library @
http://jhsearch.library.jhu.edu/databases/alphabetical?alpha=P). This database will
filter for only Psychology related articles. As with Google Scholar, you will want to
try various searches with different keywords as you hunt out articles that are most
relevant.
- Another good strategy is to use the readings from class to find new articles (e.g., if
you have a reading from class that is relevant, then use it to find another relevant
article that wasn’t given in class, either by looking up relevant papers listed in the
references or by searching for a particular study or Researcher who is mentioned in
the article).
- Another strategy is to search for faculty webpages who work in your area of interest.
For instance, as you use search engines, if you see a particular Author’s name
coming up frequently, then you can type in that name, find their webpage, look at
their CV to see what papers they have published. Many Professors will have these
papers available for free on their webpage. Likewise for Authors of the papers that
are assigned for class. You can look up their webpage to see what other papers they
have written.
Good Luck, and Happy Hunting!
Example Answer: Positive Space
The style of this entry is what you should aim for. Notice that it presents evidence for its assertions.
Notice how citations are used.
For each of your entries, provide a title that notes both the category and one or more topics from the
semester that your example touches on. E.g., “Space (Luck)”
Next provide a statement of your example and a thesis statement. E.g., “Impromptu interaction
between students…”
See attached sample below.
Positive Example: Space (Luck).
Impromptu interactions between students, faculty, and university members are encouraged by the
casual reading areas throughout the Brody Learning Commons.
One of the challenges I have experienced at Johns Hopkins is that students seem to leave the
campus to go off-campus for hanging out. The upper and lower quads are often nearly empty with the
exception of transitions between classes. There doesn’t tend to be people (students, faculty, etc)
spending time relaxing, reading, playing Frisbee etc on the quads as much as I would expect at college.
This means that the opportunities for chance interactions among people are greatly decreased. Smith
and Worth (2019) pointed out that, “‘Lucky’ people were also more likely to display a relaxed attitude
and be open to experience.” If there were more attractive places to spend time reading, or having a
snack during studying time, perhaps students and faculty would spend more time in these shared public
spaces – and this would naturally lead to a more relaxed attitude and chance encounters. Given that
research has demonstrated that chance encounters among people, and taking advantage of them by
initiating an interaction and following up with the person, are a major factor in increasing one’s sense
of luck in the world and increasing one’s overall happiness in life (Wiseman, 2003), any change that
could increase the likelihood of such encounters would be a positive addition to our campus.
Given these concerns, I have been especially pleased by the Brody Learning Commons.
Throughout the BLC, there are comfortable, attractive seats and café tables set up in public spaces.
These are highly visible, attractive and plentiful. Not only in the café area, but also out on the floor
where students tend to be studying and doing work. I’ve observed that this leads many people to spend
more time on campus, relaxing, reading, talking. And, because people are around more, these areas
also increase the likelihood of chance interactions. It id my belief that these positive, impromptu,
interactions help strengthen our Hopkins community, and as Marty Seligman argues, building positive
institutions is part of the meaningful life (Halberda, 2020a).
The way the space in the BLC is designed is a major factor leading to this increase in
interaction. First, the BLC is placed near the edge of the campus, between where students go to class
and where they live. This means that each day, many students are walking past the BLC on their way
home after class. This makes it a natural meeting spot and a place to drop in casually after your classes
have finished for the day. Second, because of the way the BLC lays out the space, with a large open
atrium, multiple open levels, and a lot of glass, it is possible to be on any one level and look
throughout the BLC for friends, an open table, etc. Third, the large size and groupings of the café-style
tables (or coffee tables) placed throughout the atrium space invites multiple people who may not know
each other to share the same table. In fact, this has led to chance encounters that have had a positive
impact on my own life. For example, one week I went to the BLC to grab coffee and a lunch with one
of my graduate students. We were only two people, but we sat down at a table that was big enough for
3 or 4. While we were eating and talking, 2 undergraduates happened by and said hi. Because they
saw us in the BLC. We invited them to sit down and join our conversation. This was a clear case of
the space inviting and encouraging chance encounters.
These kinds of chance encounters can have a large positive impact on our everyday life
satisfaction, and they also can have an impact that lasts far into the future. For example, Bright and
colleagues found that participants who were succeeding in a career reported that positive chance events
in their past had a much greater impact on their career path and satisfaction than did negative events
(Bright, Pryor, Man Chan & Rijanto, 2009). One of the students who joined our conversation is now
considering becoming a Research Assistant in my lab. This is the kind of positive impact on career
path that Bright et al (2009) were discussing.
Furthermore, I just really enjoy talking with my students. I “get in the zone” when I’m talking
science with people, and this conversation we had was a good example of this. As Csikszentmihalyi
and Rathunde (1993) pointed out, this is an autotelic activity that gets me into a flow state and may
make luck more likely. When I have a conversation like this, I embody most of the nine elements of
flow, especially 6) there is no worry of failure, and 7) self-consciousness disappears (Halberda,
2020b). It is also true that I’m getting immediate feedback of my success and failure – just by
watching the faces of the students to see if they are understanding my points.
Thus, in the context of my experiences at the BLC, my experiences having impromptu
interactions with undergraduates relates to what we have learned about “luck” and the ways in which
people can enhance their sense of luck and life satisfaction (Wiseman, 2003) and, because my chance
interactions with undergraduates have led some of them to consider doing research in my lab, my
chance interactions may also relate to what researchers are discovering about the impact of chance
positive events on career path and job success.
References
Citations From Class
Csikszentmihalyi, M. & Rathunde, K. (1993) The measurement of flow in everyday life: Toward a
theory of emergent motivation. In Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 1992 is Volume 40, in the
series CURRENT THEORY AND RESEARCH IN MOTIVATION, Eds. Dienstbier, Richard & Jacobs,
Janis, E.. the University of Nebraska Press.
Wiseman, R. (2003). The Luck Factor. The Skeptical Inquirer, 27 (3), 1-5.
Citations From the Literature
Bright, J.E.H., Pryor, R.G.L., Man Can, E.W., & Rijanto, J. (2009). Chance events in career development:
Influence, control and multiplicity. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 75, 14-25.
Smith, M. D., & Worth, P. (2019). Positive psychology and luck experiences. In Church, I. & Hartman, R. (eds)
(2019). Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Psychology of Luck. London: Routledge.
Citations From the Lecture
Halberda, J (2020a). Positive Psychology, Lecture 2, History, Slide # 33.
Halberda, J (2020b). Positive Psychology, Lecture 9, Flow and Luck, Slide # 15.