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.

So far in this course we have dealt entirely with the evolution of characters that are controlled by simple Mendelian inheritance at a single locus. There are notes on the course website about gametic disequilibrium and how allele frequencies change at two loci simultaneously, but we didn’t discuss them. In every example we’ve considered we’ve imagined that we could understand something about evolution by examining the evolution of a single gene. That’s the domain of classical population genetics. For the next few weeks we’re going to be exploring a field that’s actually older than classical population genetics, although the approach we’ll be taking to it involves the use of population genetic machinery. If you know a little about the history of evolutionary biology, you may know that after the rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1900 there was a heated debate between the “biometricians” (e.g., Galton and Pearson) and the “Mendelians” (e.g., de Vries, Correns, Bateson, and Morgan). Biometricians asserted that the really important variation in evolution didn’t follow Mendelian rules. Height, weight, skin color, and similar traits seemed to

Human biochemical genetics

because observed behavior is the result of interactions between environmental factors and genes during the extended period of development. Therefore, to better understand expert and exceptional performance, we must require that the account specify the different environmental factors that could selectively promote and facilitate the achievement of such performance. In addition, recent research on expert performance and expertise (Chi, Glaser, & Farr, 1988; Ericsson & Smith, 1991a) has shown that important characteristics of experts' superior performance are acquired through experience and that the effect of practice on performance is larger than earlier believed possible. For this reason, an account of exceptional performance must specify the environmental circumstances, such as the duration and structure of activities, and necessary minimal biological attributes that lead to the acquisition of such characteristics and a corresponding level of performance. An account that explains how a majority of individuals can attain a given level of expert performance might seem inherently unable to explain the exceptional performance of only a small number of individuals. However, if such an empirical account could be empirically supported, then the extreme characteristics of experts could be viewed as having been acquired through learning and adaptation, and studies of expert performance could provide unique insights into the possibilities and limits of change in cognitive capacities and bodily functions. In this article we propose a theoretical framework that explains expert performance in terms of acquired characteristics resulting from extended deliberate practice and that limits the role of innate (inherited) characteristics to general levels of activity and emotionality. We provide empirical support from two new studies and from already published evidence on expert performance in many different domains.

/pdf/the-role-of-deliberate-practice-in-the-acquisition-of-expert-3j9768t5su.pdf

The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance.

Building Leadership Effectiveness This program encourages leaders to develop practices that transform values into action, vision into realities, obstacles into innovations, and risks into rewards. Participants will be introduced to the five practices of exemplary leadership: modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act, and encouraging the heart Coaching & Communicating for Performance Coaching & Communicating for Performance is a highly interactive program that will give supervisors and managers the opportunity to build skills that will enable them to share expectations and set objectives for employees, provide constructive feedback, more effectively engage in learning conversations, and coaching opportunities. Skillful Conflict Management for Leaders As a leader, it is important to understand conflict and be effective at conflict management because the way conflict is resolved becomes an integral component of our university’s culture. This series of conflict management sessions help leaders learn and put into practice effective strategies for managing conflict.

기독교 사역과 Leadership

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

Gender Differences in Birth Order and Family Size Among 186 Eminent Psychologists

Creative genius and psychopathology: Creativity as positive and negative personality.

Creativity as variation and selection: Some critical constraints.

Creativity’s Role in Society

Many creative geniuses attain reputations of almost mythical proportions. Apparently gifted with a special insight or intuitive power, creative ideas are supposed to pop into their heads in flashes of inspiration. In earlier times, this almost mystical process would be attributed to divine intervention, as is evident in the Greek doctrine of the Muses. Even during the Renaissance the greatest artist of the period would be called the “divine Michelangelo,” an artistic genius who, according to his biographer Vasari, was sent to earth by God to bless the world with his talent. Centuries later, when such religious attributions were no longer fashionable, creative genius would become linked with madness. This linkage became especially prominent during the Romantic Era of nineteenth-century Europe. A well-known illustration is to be found in the Preface to “Kubla Khan” in which the poet Coleridge claimed to have conceived his poem in an opium-induced stupor. Eventually psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and even psychologists were joining the chorus, associating creative genius with insanity and even criminality. The consensus seemed to be that creative geniuses were not like normal human beings. They had thought processes and personalities that set them apart from other members of the species. Yet at the beginning of the twentieth century a shift was taking place. Creative genius was not so special after all. This change first was apparent in attitudes toward scientific creativity. According to the emerging discipline known as the philosophy of science, scientific discovery was the product of the scientific method, a system of thinking identified with hypothetico-deductive reasoning or some other analytical technique. All scientists who acquire this approach can engage in scientific creativity, regardless of their personal qualities or gifts. For instance, the philosopher Ortega y Gasset (1932/1957) maintained that “it is necessary to insist upon this extraordinary but undeniable fact: experimental science has progressed thanks in great part to the work of men astoundingly mediocre, and even less than mediocre. That is to say, modern science, the root and symbol of our actual civilization, finds a place for the intellectually commonplace man and allows him to work therein with success” (pp. 110–111). This statement implies that creative genius has become largely irrelevant in modern science. This seemingly extreme claim has received endorsement in a whole school of research devoted to the psychology of science (Simonton, 2003a).

Dean Keith Simonton

Papers

Gender Differences in Birth Order and Family Size Among 186 Eminent Psychologists

Creative genius and psychopathology: Creativity as positive and negative personality.

Creativity as variation and selection: Some critical constraints.

Creativity’s Role in Society

Creative Genius, Knowledge, and Reason: The Lives and Works of Eminent Creators