A science of positive subjective experience, positive individual traits, and positive institutions promises to improve quality of life and prevent the pathologies that arise when life is barren and meaningless, The exclusive focus on pathology that has dominated so much of our discipline results in a model of the human being lacking the positive features that make life worth living. Hope, wisdom, creativity, future mindedness, courage, spirituality, responsibility, and perseverance are ignored or explained as transformations of more authentic negative impulses. The 15 articles in this millennial issue of the American Psychologist discuss such issues as what enables happiness, the effects of autonomy and self-regulation, how optimism and hope affect health, what constitutes wisdom, and how talent and creativity come to fruition. The authors outline a framework for a science of positive psychology, point to gaps in our knowledge, and predict that the next century will see a science and profession that will come to understand and build the factors that allow individuals, communities, and societies to flourish.

https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/amp/55/1/5.pdf

Positive psychology: An introduction.

Major perspectives concerning stress are presented with the goal of clarifying the nature of what has proved to be a heuristic but vague construct. Current conceptualizations of stress are challenged as being too phenomenological and ambiguous, and consequently, not given to direct empirical testing. Indeed, it is argued that researchers have tended to avoid the problem of defining stress, choosing to study stress without reference to a clear framework. A new stress model called the model of conservation of resources is presented as an alternative. This resource-oriented model is based on the supposition that people strive to retain, project, and build resources and that what is threatening to them is the potential or actual loss of these valued resources. Implications of the model of conservation of resources for new research directions are discussed.

Conservation of resources. A new attempt at conceptualizing stress.

In this article, the author describes a new theoretical perspective on positive emotions and situates this new perspective within the emerging field of positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory posits that experiences of positive emotions broaden people's momentary thought-action repertoires, which in turn serves to build their enduring personal resources, ranging from physical and intellectual resources to social and psychological resources. Preliminary empirical evidence supporting the broaden-and-build theory is reviewed, and open empirical questions that remain to be tested are identified. The theory and findings suggest that the capacity to experience positive emotions may be a fundamental human strength central to the study of human flourishing.

http://www.elaborer.org/cours/A13/lectures/Fredrickson2001.pdf

The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.

▪ Abstract Well-being is a complex construct that concerns optimal experience and functioning. Current research on well-being has been derived from two general perspectives: the hedonic approach, which focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance; and the eudaimonic approach, which focuses on meaning and self-realization and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning. These two views have given rise to different research foci and a body of knowledge that is in some areas divergent and in others complementary. New methodological developments concerning multilevel modeling and construct comparisons are also allowing researchers to formulate new questions for the field. This review considers research from both perspectives concerning the nature of well-being, its antecedents, and its stability across time and culture.

/pdf/on-happiness-and-human-potentials-a-review-of-research-on-1t2vu3ifq9.pdf

On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

Positive psychology has flourished in the last 5 years. The authors review recent developments in the field, including books, meetings, courses, and conferences. They also discuss the newly created classification of character strengths and virtues, a positive complement to the various editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (e. g., American Psychiatric Association, 1994), and present some cross-cultural findings that suggest a surprising ubiquity of strengths and virtues. Finally, the authors focus on psychological interventions that increase individual happiness. In a 6-group, random-assignment, placebo-controlled Internet study, the authors tested 5 purported happiness interventions and 1 plausible control exercise. They found that 3 of the interventions lastingly increased happiness and decreased depressive symptoms. Positive interventions can supplement traditional interventions that relieve suffering and may someday be the practical legacy of positive psychology.

/pdf/positive-psychology-progress-empirical-validation-of-1qjf6t52ld.pdf

Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions.

The importance of intellectual talent to achievement in all professional domains is well established, but less is known about other individual differences that predict success. The authors tested the importance of 1 noncognitive trait: grit. Defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals, grit accounted for an average of 4% of the variance in success outcomes, including educational attainment among 2 samples of adults (N=1,545 and N=690), grade point average among Ivy League undergraduates (N=138), retention in 2 classes of United States Military Academy, West Point, cadets (N=1,218 and N=1,308), and ranking in the National Spelling Bee (N=175). Grit did not relate positively to IQ but was highly correlated with Big Five Conscientiousness. Grit nonetheless demonstrated incremental predictive validity of success measures over and beyond IQ and conscientiousness. Collectively, these findings suggest that the achievement of difficult goals entails not only talent but also the sustained and focused application of talent over time.

https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/92/6/1087.pdf

Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals

The classification of strengths presented in this book is intended to reclaim the study of character and virtue as legitimate topics of psychological inquiry and informed societal discourse. By providing ways of talking about character strengths and measuring them across the life span, this classification will start to make possible a science of human strengths that goes beyond armchair philosophy and political rhetoric. We believe that good character can be cultivated, but to do so, we need conceptual and empirical tools to craft and evaluate interventions.

Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

Of current interest are the causal attributions offered by depressives for the good and bad events in their lives. One important attributional account of depression is the reformulated learned helplessness model, which proposes that depressive symptoms are associated with an attributional style in which uncontrollable bad events are attributed to internal (versus external), stable (versus unstable), and global (versus specific) causes. We describe the Attributional Style Questionnaire, which measures individual differences in the use of these attributional dimensions. We report means, reliabilities, intercorrelations, and test-retest stabilities for a sample of 130 undergraduates. Evidence for the questionnaire's validity is discussed. The Attributional Style Questionnaire promises to be a reliable and valid instrument.

The attributional Style Questionnaire

The attributional reformulation of the learned helplessness model claims that an explanatory style in which bad events are explained by internal, stable, and global causes is associated with depressive symptoms. Furthermore, this style is claimed to be a risk factor for subsequent depression when bad events are encountered. We describe a variety of new investigations of the helplessness reformulation that employ five research strategies: (a) cross-sectional correlational studies, (b) longitudinal studies, (c) experiments of nature, (d) laboratory experiments, and (e) case studies. Taken together, these studies converge in their support for the learned helplessness reformulation.

Christopher Peterson

Papers

Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions.

Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals

Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification

The attributional Style Questionnaire

Causal explanations as a risk factor for depression: Theory and evidence.