Since 2000, Seligman’s call for a greater focus on the positive in life has been answered by thousands of researchers around the world, provoking tens of thousands of studies on positive phenomena and establishing a base for the application of positive principles to coaching, teaching, relationships, the workplace, and every other life domain. The foundational paper of this new field, positive psychology, was published in 2000 by Seligman and the “founding father” of flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He proposed a new subfield of psychology with a focus on what is life-giving rather than life-depleting. When he was elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1998, he jumped at the opportunity to alter the direction of the field from such an influential position. Seligman grew frustrated with psychology’s overly narrow focus on the negative so much attention was paid to mental illness, abnormal psychology, trauma, suffering, and pain, and relatively little attention was dedicated to happiness, wellbeing, exceptionalism, strengths, and flourishing. He found what he was looking for in resilience and learned optimism, findings that became the groundwork for his widely administered resilience programs for children and members of the military, among others. After making a name for himself with learned helplessness, he turned his attention to other traits, characteristics, and perspectives that could be learned. While this is impressive enough on its own, Seligman knew that he had more to offer the psychology community and the world at large-in particular, more work on the positive, the uplifting, and the inspiring. His work on the subject provided inspiration, ideas, and evidence to back up many treatments for depressive symptoms, as well as strategies for preventing depression.
Seligman connected this phenomenon with depression, noting that many people suffering from depression feel helpless as well. This theory, which has been backed by decades of research, explains how humans and animals can learn to become helpless and feel they have lost control over what happens to them. Seligman’s research in the 1960s and 70s laid the foundation for the well-known psychological theory of “ learned helplessness.” If you had never heard of the positive psychology movement until now, you still might have heard his name at some point. Martin Seligman is a researcher with a broad range of experience in psychology.
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These topics are studied in order to learn how to help people flourish and live their best lives. Positive institutions (applying positive principles within entire organizations and institutions).Īs a field, positive psychology spends much of its time thinking about topics like character strengths, optimism, life satisfaction, happiness, wellbeing, gratitude, compassion (as well as self-compassion), self-esteem and self-confidence, hope, and elevation.
Positive states and traits (like gratitude, resilience, and compassion).Positive experiences (like happiness, joy, inspiration, and love).Positive psychology focuses on the positive events and influences in life, including: What Positive Psychology Focuses on in a Nutshell To push this brief description a bit further, positive psychology is a scientific approach to studying human thoughts, feelings, and behavior, with a focus on strengths instead of weaknesses, building the good in life instead of repairing the bad, and taking the lives of average people up to “great” instead of focusing solely on moving those who are struggling up to “normal” (Peterson, 2008). “Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living” (Peterson, 2008). Positive psychology has been described in many ways and with many words, but the commonly accepted definition of the field is this: What is Positive Psychology: A Definition Criticism of the Movement in Perspective.Examples of Positive Psychology in Practice (+PDF).Meaning of Topics Like Flow and Flourishing.Goals of Positive Psychology (in Coaching).
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