This paper first describes the growing pains and challenges of the positive psychology (PP) movement and identifies the four pillars of the good life as meaning, virtue, resilience, and well-being, which are all shaped by culture. I then introduce three issues that characterise the second wave of PP (referred to as PP 2.0). The first concerns the need for a comprehensive taxonomy of PP. The second involves the hypothesis that meaning-orientation and happiness-orientation represent two different visions of the good life with profound practical implications. Eudaimonia is viewed as meaning plus virtue. The third issue concerns a dual-systems model as a way to integrate the complex interactions between the negatives and positives to optimise positive outcomes in various situations. I conclude that PP 2.0 is characterised by a balanced, interactive, meaning-centered, and cross-cultural perspective. Keywords: meaning, subjective well-being, resilience, virtue, eudaimonia Positive psychology (PP) has been all the rage since Martin Seligman's APA president address in 1998. In spite of its controversial nature (Carstensen & Charles, 2003; Held, 2002, 2004; Lazarus, 2003), PP has effectively changed the language and landscape of mainstream psychology and it continues to grow exponentially in the teaching, research, and applications of PP. The potential of applying PP to enhance well-being is almost unlimited; it has already opened up new career opportunities for psychologists in coaching, counselling, and consultation (Linley & Joseph, 2004; Linley, Joseph, Harrington, & Wood, 2006). The PP movement has been spreading like a forest fire with no sign of abating: research articles, books, and academic conferences on PP continue to multiply. The formation of the International Association of Positive Psychology is one of the many recent developments attesting to the global appeal of PP. The vitality and creativity of PP research can be found in mainstream psychology journals as well as specialized journals such as the Journal of Positive Psychology and the Journal of Happiness Studies. By all indications, the prospects of PP are bright, but there is a need to take stock and assess its future direction, now that the dust has settled after the initial explosive growth. The present paper represents both a reassessment and a reformulation of PP from a Canadian vantage point. Seligman's (1998a) primary reason for launching the PP movement is to address the imbalance in mainstream psychology. He emphasizes what is good about people to counteract psychology's preoccupation with psychopathology. This premise is correct with respect to applied psychology and the study of emotions, but it becomes questionable if one considers the totality of mainstream psychology research. For example, numerous PP topics were already well researched prior to Seligman's (1998a) APA presidential address. Hart and Sasso (2011) have found evidence of substantial growth of several PP sub domains, especially resilience. Given the above, would PP become superfluous when an analysis of publication rates of all the growth-oriented research topics fail to show a negativity bias in mainstream psychology? I think not. I propose that a stronger argument in support of the legitimacy of PP is that PP is much more than a corrective reaction to the perceived imbalance in the literature. Properly understood, the overarching mission of PP is to answer the fundamental questions of what makes life worth living and how to improve life for all people ? this is also the heart and soul of the mission of both APA and CPA. The Growing Pains and Challenges of Positive Psychology Like any new movement, PP has attracted both supporters and detractors. Some of the criticisms are caused by overstatements, resulting in unnecessary controversies and criticisms. For example, the controversy regarding humanistic psychology's contribution to PP remains unresolved (Bohart & Greening, 2001; Robbins & Friedman, 2008). …

Positive psychology 2.0: Towards a balanced interactive model of the good life.

To promote psychological health among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals, more comprehensive research on resilience factors in LGB individuals is needed. This article presents a theoretical framework based on the existing literature, with an eye toward guiding future research in this area. Social support clearly serves as a resilience factor for LGB individuals, in part through its ability to lower reactivity to prejudice. Social support is particularly effective when it specifically supports people's sexual orientation and is congruent with individuals' developmental needs. The ability to accept emotions and to process them in an insightful manner also buffers the negative impact of prejudice. In addition, hope and optimism allow LGB individuals to maintain psychological health when faced with prejudice.

Resilience in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals

Since the original call by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) for a new science of happiness, excellence, and optimal human functioning, there has been an explosion of activity in, acclaim for, and criticism of positive psychology. The purpose of this study was to identify and examine the peer-reviewed literature linked to the positive psychology movement. An extensive systematic review identified 1336 articles published between 1999 and 2013. More than 750 of these articles included empirical tests of positive psychology theories, principles, and interventions. The results show a fairly consistent increase in the rate of publication, and that the number of empirical studies has grown steadily over the time period. The findings demonstrate that positive psychology is a growing and vibrant sub-area within the broader discipline of psychology, committed to using the same rigorous scientific methods as other sub-areas, in pursuit of understanding well-being, excellence, and optimal human functioning.

Happiness, Excellence, and Optimal Human Functioning Revisited: Examining the Peer-Reviewed Literature Linked to Positive Psychology

For this review strengths intervention studies were located using online searches and collegial networks and included if they explicitly sought to teach or use a strengths classification to enhance well-being, and used pre- and post-intervention measures and a comparison group. Eight studies met the criteria and have been summarised by this review. To date, the effect sizes achieved by character strengths interventions have been small to moderate. An understanding of how these interventions work may facilitate development of more effective interventions, while expanding the field of character strengths interventions to include a broader range of activities and approaches may also offer benefits. Research examining individual factors, such as strengths use, psychological need satisfaction, goal-setting and goal-striving provides promising leads to explain how strengths interventions work. However, the effect on intervention efficacy of relational or contextual factors, such as intervention environment or facilitator attitude to strengths, has not yet been explored. Implications for interventions in school settings are considered.

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Character Strengths Interventions: Building on What We Know for Improved Outcomes

This study quantitatively assessed the size, disciplinary reach, impact, and topic breadth of positive psychology (PP), in order to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the growth and significance of the field. Over 1.7 million documents in 700 PsycINFO ® journals covering the fields of psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, management, business, public health, and sport science were analyzed using semantic and bibliographic methods. Results indicate that PP covers many different research topics from a diverse range of disciplines, and that PP literature has been growing rapidly in significance. Over 18,000 documents were identified as belonging to PP, with 2300 published in 2011. These documents represent over 4% of PsycINFO ® documents within the data-set published that year, and make PP close to the median size of all disciplines listed in the Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports ®, Social Sciences Edition. The aggregate impact factor for PP in 2011 was 2.64.

Tracing the size, reach, impact and breadth of positive psychology

This paper seeks to quantify scholarly interest in the rapidly emerging field of Positive Psychology (PP) and to empirically map the contours of the discipline using six different methodologies. Results document extraordinary growth in the last decade and confirm that scholars in this area have devoted the lion's share of their attention to two of the three 'Pillars' of PP as proposed by SeUgman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000): (1) the study of positive subjective experience and (2) positive personal traits. While interest in positive institutions has been somewhat sparse, there has been increased concern with the topics of 'resilience' and eudaimonia (broadly defined). The latter developments help to dispel the myth that PP is an elite endeavour solely concerned with Pollyanna-style 'happiology' in people who find themselves in idyllic circumstances. Hopefully the results of our content analysis of the field will encourage instructors who teach PP to provide their students with a well-balanced curriculum, one that accurately reflects the heterogeneity of the field, and one that mirrors recent scholarly trends. Keywords: definition, positive psychology, review, domains, temporal trends, specializations As Noted by Yen (2010), "over the past 10 years, there has been a literal explosion of work within the new subdiscipline of positive psychology. Commanding record enrollment rates in undergraduate psychology courses across North America and around the world and attracting a considerable amount of media attention, positive psychology has become positively faddish. It is Harvard's most popular course, having recently supplanted introductory economics. . . . Within the academy, the field has rapidly established itself through a large and growing body of research data, journals, books, articles and special issues, international associations and conferences, funding, dedicated research centers, and courses and graduate programs. " (p. 67) While a number of authors have noted that increased attention is being given to Positive Psychology (PP), pronouncements of a boom have rarely been substantiated by empirical research that has approached the question using a quantitative methodology. In the current article, we document the growth of scholarly interest in PP by performing a year-by-year count of citations contained in PsycINFO. At the same time, in an effort to contribute to 'boundary work,' we also empirically map the contours of the field using six different methodologies. To briefly preview our findings, we were able to confirm anecdotal observations (e.g., Yen, 2010) suggesting PP has experienced extraordinary growth in the past decade. Our empirical efforts to demarcate PP' s self-narration yielded a heterogeneous picture. Content analyses of subdomains of concern to PP suggest a complex identity, one that is incongruent with the popular cultural stereotype that depicts PP as an elite endeavour concerned solely with grinning yellow smiley faces and Pollyanna-style positive thinking. We conclude our paper by encouraging instructors who teach PP to make use of the current results so as to provide students with a well-balanced and comprehensive curriculum, one that accurately reflects the empirically determined breadth and scope of the field. What Is the Evidence for a Boom? Wong (2011) agrees with Yen (2010) in suggesting PP has rapidly become a 'hot' topic in academic circles and in the popular culture. While anecdotal accounts touting the PP boom are plentiful, research is lacking that documents changes in the extent of interest in the academy over time. There is also a dearth of empirical evidence to quantify how much scholarly attention has been given to specific topic areas and whether interest is burgeoning equally in these emerging subdomains of inquiry. Thus, we do not know whether the boom that has ostensibly occurred since the year 2000 is generalised or localised to a few constructs/processes. …

Mapping the Contours of Contemporary Positive Psychology

DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF THE PERCEIVED VICTIMIZATION

Development and Validation of the Perceived Victimization Measure

The focus and inclusion of gay men in academic literature has fluctuated throughout the years. The purpose of the present rapid review was to establish the predominant discourses and research gaps ...

Framing gay men’s sexual relationships: A rapid review of the literature from 2011–2018

Students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer (LGBTQ+) are at high risk of being harassed and discriminated. As such, they are in need of a welcoming and inclusive campus envir...

LGBTQ+ students in higher education: an evaluation of website data and accessible, ongoing resources in Ontario universities

Victim precipitation is embedded deeply within industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. Cortina, Rabelo, and Holland (2018) are right to challenge the assumptions that have perpetuated victim blaming in our discipline (consciously and unconsciously); however, a significant source of victim precipitation discourse within our field was strikingly absent in their discussion: construct measurement. The nature of how we measure most of our workplace aggression and mistreatment constructs (e.g., incivility, abusive supervision, bullying) have potential to negate the experiences of targeted employees as well as the unique impact of various perpetrator behaviors. Furthermore, how we interpret these measures can result in researchers and practitioners privileging the experiences of some individuals and dismissing the experiences of others. How can we hope to achieve a progressive approach to mistreatment in our disciplines if our measures do not keep pace?

Thomas Sasso

Papers

Mapping the Contours of Contemporary Positive Psychology

Development and Validation of the Perceived Victimization Measure

Framing gay men’s sexual relationships: A rapid review of the literature from 2011–2018

LGBTQ+ students in higher education: an evaluation of website data and accessible, ongoing resources in Ontario universities

Centering the Target of Mistreatment in Our Measures