Positive Psych Lecture Notes 3BA3

Positive Psychology (Class lecture notes)
Introduction
Has grown like a weed over the recent history. its about improving the quality of people's lives, finding happiness.
Its the opposite of abnormal psychology, we are trying to identify the abnormally good.
We can use the same criteria to identify abnormally good.
Criteria:
1. Statistical criteria: we measure where someone falls on a distribution of data, to then label them for having a mental disorder. We would be looking for people abnormally low in anxiety, stress and abnormally high in happiness etc.
2. Personal satisfaction: People who are pleased with their own emotions, traits & cognitions. Rather than people who are depressed/distressed with their own behaviour.
3. Adaptive criteria: If your behaviour, thoughts and emotions make it easier for you as a person to succeed in life, to get along with others, to be a productive member of society, to be a good student and so on.
4. Sociocultural criteria: Emotions, behaviours and beliefs that are considered desirable by the society in which the individual lives in. Traits that SOCIETY values.
Contemporary/modern background of positive psychology lies with Rogers, Maslow &
Jung (post 1920s/30s)
It is the fastest growing field in psychology
Definitions of PP:
"pos psych…is about valued subjective experiences: well-being, contentment, and satisfaction in the past, hope and optimism for the future; and flow and happiness. At the individual level, it is about positive individual traits: the capacity for love and vocation
(like freud), courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent and wisdom."
- Csikszentmihalyi & Seligman
"What is pos psych? it is nothing more than the scientific study of ordinary human strengths and virtues. Pos psych revisits 'the average person' with an interest in finding out what works, what is right, and what is improving….positive psychology is simply psychology" - Gable & Haidt, 2005
"Pos psych is about scientifically informed perspectives on what makes life worth living. it focuses on aspects of the human condition that lead to happiness, fulfillment, and flourishing" - Journal of Pos Psych
"Pos psych is the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that allow people and communities to thrive. Pos psych has 3 central concerns: 1. Pos emotions, 2. Pos individual traits, 3. Pos institutions. Understanding pos emotions entails the study of contentment with the past, happiness in the present, and hope for the future.

Understanding positive individual traits consists of the study of the strengths and virtues, such as the capacity for love and work (Freud), courage, compassion, etc…
Understanding positive institutions entails the study of the strengths that foster better communities, such as justice, responsibility, nurturance, teamwork, etc…"
- Pos Psych Center, Penn
History
Aristotle & the Good life
The good life = the happy life
The good life = functioning well as a person => living a life of Virtue
Virtue:
1. Moral virtue: subordinate carnal appetites to reason (nothing in excess)
2. Intellectual virtue: wisdom and understanding
Virtues are character traits between excess & deficiency (just the right amount)
Normally associated with the eudaimonic approach (Self development, making the most of what you have)
Eudaimonic = eastern, collective cultures practice this more hedonistic = western, individualistic cultures
William Bennet & Virtues (1995)
Book: The Book of Virtues
5 years before Pos Psych started
Listed virtues:
Self discipline, compassion, responsibility, friendship, work, courage, perseverance, honesty, loyalty, faith
Freud
Our motivation is to seek pleasure.
He was a hedonist in terms of his theory.
He saw- life is a struggle between desires and real-world & moral constraints.
(like Aristotle's virtues)
Mental health is the ability to work and to love
Love: work with other people (have relationships) and to be able to relate with others.
Work: doing something constructive, something that you like.
Precursor to humanists, introduced eudaimonic viewpoint
Our highest motivation is to realize the archetype of the self in our own personality
About realizing a wholeness in ourselves
One symbol of the self is the *Mandala* (figure that represents self-development)
Maslow
Took Jung's self-actualization and ran with it
Self actualization is the highest motivation - achieved by very few people
Moving beyond our carnal desires, but being guided by a set of "being values"
So that we can appreciate the world we live in better.
The self-actualizing individual has many positive qualities.
Identified the eight-fold way to self-actualization

Erich Fromm
"I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the development of all his human forces, which are produced in three orientations. These can be presented separately or together: biophilia, love for humanity and nature, and independence and freedom"
"there is is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all men and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not by primary ties but as a free and independent individual…"
Viktor Frankl
"we who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, fgiving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last o the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way"
"we can discover this meaning in life in 3 different ways: 1. by creating a work or doing a deed; 2. by experiencing something or encountering someone. 3 by the attitude we take towered unavoidable suffering."
Martin Seligman
- Modern godfather of Pos Psych
- undergrad from princeton in philosophy
- Clinical Psychologist interested in depression
- Did a lot of work on learned helplessness, also studied learned optimism
- Pres of American psych association in 1998-1999 (APA), focused on Pos Psych
- Before WWII, psych had 3 missions
1. Curing Mental Illness
2. Helping people lead more fulfilling, productive lives
3. Identifying and nurturing exceptional talent
- After WWII, founding of VA (1946) & NIMH (1947) left only the first mission. He said we need to get back to the other 2 missions
- Set up a APA Pos Psych steering committee
- Founded Pos Psych Center @ U of Penn
- Special issue of American Psychologist on Pos Psych published
- Then the field took off like a rocket
Pos Psych is related to a lot of other fields as well:
Developmental, personality, social, clinical & cognitive psychologies

Positive States of Mind and Being
Two main worldviews about the "good life".
Western, individualistic environment vs eastern, collective, religious environment
Both have come to similar conclusions/correspond with one another quite a bit
There is more integration of eastern thoughts in western realms - i.e. meditation, mindfulness, etc

East Versus West
Comparing: philosophy, psychology & religion
Both agree on (theological):
- Material world unpleasant, it has to be transcended
@West: Transcendence mostly occurs after death; primarily dependent on Christian theological thinking. There is little opportunity for us to transcend this world of woe, but mostly we were waiting for death & afterlife. THere would be union with the divine etc…
@East: Transcendence possible during this life. Their traditions did not place much emphasis on the afterlife.
@West, philosophy & religion were treated separately.
@East, they are one and the same. Religions have their own philosophies.
@West, psychology is very different from religion.
Psychology in the West began as a part of philosophy.
@East, psychology stemmed from religion. Hinduism & buddhism are religions with strong psychology. These things are largely fused together in the East.
Buddhism specially, is very big on human psychology. (human thinking, meditation)
@Eastern thought, fate is mostly in our hands. We are not under the control of an allseeing, all-knowing creator - we can alter our circumstances, UNLIKE western thought.
Hedonia & eudaimonia present in both.
Hedonic: we live to explore & express pleasure (Freud)
Eudaimonic: we live to reach self fulfillment (Aristotle)
Eudaimonic is much more apparent in the East & vice versa
Aristippus & Hedonism
Freud got his ideas from Aristippus. He argued:
- Our ultimate goal is pleasure
- Present pleasures should not be deferred for the sake of future pleasures (Id)
- We should control, not be controlled by, our pleasures (we should rational about our desires; not be heedless about it) (ego - controls impulses with constraints of the world)
- Pleasure includes mental pleasure, love, friendship, moral contentment
^Aristippus was talking about "pleasures" in many facets of life: of debate, of virtuous conduct, of vigorous studying (Freud's sublimation = we redirect our aggressive & sexual pressures through socially acceptable actions)
Aristippus was not talking about sensual pleasures only.
Aristotle & the Good Life
Eudaimonic Guy (the "good impulse")
Happiness, the Good Life, is pursued for its own sake and cannot be improved
The pleasurable life is the end of all things. Its not a means for some other end, its the end itself.
Moral virtue: Subordinate sensual appetites to reason
- Acquired by practice, not part of human nature
- To be virtuous morally, you have to behave/practice in that way.
- As you practice it, it becomes the natural thing to do - and you enjoy doing it

Intellectual virtue: wisdom, understanding
- Big part of the Eastern tradition
- Knowing how things work, how to apply knowledge
- Can only be acquired by teaching, we are taught/learn understanding
- Both Aristotle & Socrates/Plato founded schools
Hinduism
The goal of life is ultimate self-knowledge and self-betterment.
Partial understanding and good works improves our position when reincarnated.
If we don't do well in this life, we get good karma, so we can fulfil our full set of capabilities in the next life
We lose touch with our true Self due to involvement with our physical self and its search for happiness
By achieving awareness of our true Self and ultimate reality (Brahman), we are liberated from unhappiness and reincarnation. life = full understanding of who we are, what we do.
Confucianism
To perfect our lives, we need to attain virtue & morality.
5 virtues central to a moral life:
1. Humanity (benevolence, charity, love)
2. Propriety (sensitivity to others, etiquette)
Western tradition focuses more on individual goals/achievements
Easter tradition wants to stress how we relate with other people
3. Duty (appropriate treatment of others)
Fulfilling responsibilities given to us by people/society
4. Wisdom
Not the same as knowledge
Wisdom is the application of knowledge to improving life
It is the correct understanding of how things are
That is why education is such an enormous value in chinese society
5. Honesty
Accepting responsibility for what one does
Dealing with others openly & honestly, without deception
Eastern traditions emphasize conformity more, western traditions more.
BUT, both traditions/cultures are real/pre-existing in both.
Confucianism -- much more about contributing to society and making a positive difference. Taoism
Striving is vain and counterproductive (// Maslow: ultimate goal is to be unmotivated)
You don't want to be working at things, you want to be doing things naturally.
One should follow the natural flow of events and be spontaneous in one's actions
(wu-wei)
JUST BE YOURSELF (// Maslow & Rogers -- big mantra in their time)

Naturalness and spontaneity in life is the most important goal; humanity, justice, temperance, and propriety must be practiced without effort.
The Taoists are about withdrawing from the social world, unlike confucianism.
"Without form there is no desire; without desire there is tranquility. In this way all things would be at peace"
-- Don't want things, eliminate your desire for stuff.
-- Without desire, there is tranquility
-- In this way, all things would be at peace
DONT WANT/DONT DESIRE
-- Things are not the 'problem'. the 'problem' that causes unhappiness = the DESIRE for things Buddhism
Has had the greatest impact on western thinking, psychology, meditation & so on.
Maslow: brought buddhist ideas through his viewpoints a lot - to the west
Dalai Lama: 14th Dalai Lama has had a high profile, brought Buddhism to the forefront
Has a lot of interest in Western neuroscience. Neuroscience studies the affects of meditation, and there is a growing field about it.
- We have to be careful in dismissing buddhist ideas because they are presented in a non-western language
- Founding figure: Siddhartha Guatama; 6th Century BCE
- Becomes Buddha (enlightened) later in life
- Almost the same time as the Greek thinkers & other religious movements
Siddhartha
- Son of a royal family
- Locked up in a castle, so he didn't have to worry about the world
- As a teenager he was taken on a trip, and there he saw things he never knew existed: pain, suffering, death, disease and so on
- He was so horrified, he abandoned the castle, and sought *enlightenment*
- Meditating under a tree, he achieved enlightenment
- Then sought out to teach what he had learnt
- Sprang from HINDU TRADITION
- SIDDHARTHA WAS A HINDU
- Buddha as a cognitive psychologist
- Human problems arise from the way we think: Bandura & Mischel
- Buddhist practices are like cognitive therapy
- They have been incorporated in CBT
- Have an *8-fold path*
- which gives a "Middle Way" between indulgence & asceticism
- LIKE ARISTOTLE
The Nature of "things"
There are no fixed, unchanging things in the world. If we see that, its not real, its an

illusion. Everything in the world changes. Some things change more quickly…
Its different everytime you see it
Sensation vs Perception
- we take a messy sensation from the eye, and alter it to fit something
- we see the world differently/more accurately due to certain things (i.e. drugs)
- we are also in constant flux & change
- personalities are in a constant set of changes
- everything is a changing and ephemeral process: Bandura & Mischel
- everything interconnected in a web of causes & conditions:
- The butterfly effects in chaos theory
- Our presence here is VERY CONDITIONAL
- We are part of a web of contingencies
Buddhism & Physics
The imposed categorization of things that we do in the world are all artificial
This impermanence extends to outside & ourselves. Therefore, we don't have a fixed, unwavering personality type or a fixed "self"
Whereas for bandura & Michel - personality is a continued changing process
Eastern ideas: correspond remarkably well with quantum theory
Quantum theory: objects, at the microscopic level, do not exist - until we look at them.
At the macro level, we don't notice this. At the micro level, we understand this by only seeing the existence of something as a probability function.
Objects can appear out of nowhere, and then vanish equally quickly.
Books try to relate western quantum theory to eastern philosophical traditions
"Tibetan Buddhism & Modern Physics"
"Zen Buddhism & Modern Physics"
ETC…..
2
Buddhism
Its about "how to live the good life"
We are looking at it in terms of a cognitive psychological system
4 Noble truths:
1. Life is filled with suffering.
2. Suffering is caused by ignorance of reality, and our attachment & craving. In particular, it is caused by our belief that things out there can end our suffering. Not by the things themselves, but the craving of things. Its about the attachment/the wanting of things. 3. Suffering can be ended by overcoming ignorance
4. Relief from suffering comes through the Eightfold Path.
Eightfold Path
1. Right view: to see and understand things as they really are.
2. Right intention: commitment to mental & ethical self-improvement
3. Right Speech: truthful, gentle; speak only when necessary
4. Right Action: kind, compassionate, honest, respect good of others
5. Right livelihood: earn a righteous, peaceful living
6. Right effort: work toward wholesome states of mind - buddhism is other-directed

7. Right mindfulness: see things and concepts clearly; be aware
Don't place value judgments on them, just act on them.
8. Right contemplation, or right meditation: Concentration on wholesome thoughts & actions 4 functions of meditation
1. Focusing
2. Developing mindfulness: deliberate attentional awareness
In mindfulness, you begin by being more aware about parts of your body
Objective, distance observers. Not judges, not evaluators, just be there to notice them.
I. Body mindfulness
II. Feelings mindfulness
III. Thought mindfulness
3. Desensitizing oneself
4. Seeking understanding
Nirvana
The good life on Earth
Perfect understanding after death
Universal Virtues:
Loving kindness (Maitri)
Compassion (Karuna)
Altruistic joy (mudita) - joy in the achievements/pleasures of others equanimity (upeksa) - not being overly disturbed by anything, taking everything as it comes to you, let things come with the 'flow'
Dalai Lama
Man's always smiling
Written a ton of books
Maslow
Deficiency motivation; D-cognition: talking about attachment/lust/desire such as buddhism does
D-cognition is that focused and active striving state to find things, directly relevant to our current set of needs. This desire for things = root of all problems
- Active, narrow, purposive, striving
- Buddhist attachment
Self-actualization; B-cognition: once you surpass the D-motives, you leave behind the attachments, and strive for the B-motives
- More purely expressive - to be non-striving
- Passive, broad awareness
"Self actualization is intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately, of what is the organism itself…development then proceeds from within rather than without, and paradoxically the highest motive is to be unmotivated and nonstriving, that is to behave purely expressively"

- Maslow on self-actualization
"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be at peace with himself. …"
- Maslow
The Self-Actualizing Person
I. Accurate perception of reality:
--> Buddhist right view.
II. Acceptance:
--> Buddhist equanimity
III. Spontaneity:
- non-striving, unmotivated, simplicity, naturalness
IV. Problem-centered:
--> Buddhist right action
- strongly focused on problems outside themselves
- customarily have some mission in life, some task to fulfill
(V.) Comfort with solitude:
- comfortable with being alone; self-sufficient
- They bring to any situation all the tools they need
- can be solitary without harm to themselves
- a lot of this comes from his own character, he was a solitary child
- he knew a number of people that he considered to be self-actualizing/actualized
VI. Autonomy:
--> "The greatest action is not conforming with the world's ways"
- resistant to enculturation
- Relatively independent of their social & physical environment
VII. Fresh appreciation:
--> Buddhist right mindfulness
- children will take the repetition of the same thing in different ways all the time
VIII. Human kinship:
--> Buddhist compassion, loving-kindness
- Have a deep feeling for self-identification
- As if all people were of a single family
- That is why they have a genuine desire for the human race
IX. Humility & Respect:
--> "The greatest patience is humility"
- respect for everyone on common humanity
X. Deep Interpersonal relationships:
- Relatively few ones
- deeper & more profound relationships with few people
- capable of fusion, more greater love, more obliteration of ego boundaries
- Have deep ties with rather few individuals
XI. Peak Experiences (B-cognition):
--> Buddhist right view, right mindfulness
--> Object-oriented peak experiences
--> philosophical or religious peak experiences

- Intense, brief - passive, openness that is intensified around us
- Many of us have had peak experiences in the past
- Some self-actualizers have continuous peak experiences, and ones that are not so intense - Acc to Maslow, self-actualizers actualize until middle age. We are fighting through the
D-motive hierarchy until then.
- You simply start practicing moral virtues/meditation, and its really hard at first
--> Wholeness and universality
- Experience is seen as a complete unit, as a complete whole, as if it were all that were in the universe
- William Blake poem, "to see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wildflower…" - Psychedelic drugs allow one to achieve these moments
--> Full absorption
- We are fully and completely absorbed in the moment
- Also similar to the notion of mindfulness
--> Richness of perception
- similar to one of Maslow's B-value
--> Sense of Human Irrelevance
- We see things in the world in relation to ourselves, in terms of what they mean to us
- So we are always looking at the world in an ego-related way
- In peak experiences, we see things as they are, for itself, by itself. Not related to yourself --> Ego transcendent perception
- Perception can be unmotivated, unselfish, not needing, detached, object-centred rather than ego-centred
- There is a fusion of a larger whole
- Also important in buddhism -> complete pouring of oneself in the activity one engages in --> Spatial & Temporal disorientation
- There is a loss of placing in time and space
- Passage of time is distorted
- Either the event goes by really quickly, or it goes by really slowly
- Subjective experience of time is distorted
--> Always a positive experience:
- suffering, pain stem from ignorance - same thing is perceived in peak experiences
- Sometimes the peak experience is so rapturous that they are almost painful
- But never seen as negative, always seen as a positive experience
- Being is only neutral or good; evil comes from not seeing the world as it is
- True understanding leads to charity, kindliness, compassion
--> Provides a different view of reality
- They are more absolute, less relative
- less unmotivated, perceptions of reality of man beyond themselves
--> Passive rather than active
- let it happen, go with the flow
- "gazing, rather than looking. "
- Child-like quality

- Open approach & wonderment
- Richness of perception
--> Experienced as awesome, wonderful
- Emotional response of peak experiences has a special flavour
- The experience may have a piercing quality
- Ex: St. Teresa of Avila
--> Compassion
- Generic compassion, all of the time, for everything
--> Falling away of negative emotions
Peak Experiences: The Individual
--> Feeling more integrated
--> More spontaneous and expressive
- Being acutely aware of how others will react, is not a concern for a self-actualized person - They simply behave as they feel they should
- Similar to Rogers' view of trusting your judgment
--> More Effortless, more natural
- Its not about the amount of work, its a psychological state
- Doing them in a way that doesn't feel like work/effort
- Rolling with the flow…
--> More fully functioning
- Working to full capacities
- Drawing from one's positives of their psyche
--> More in charge
- The individual feels more able to make choices
- More the source of decisions in their life
--> More creative
- During and after peak experience
- It does not mean any particular kind of creativity
- It means that in every area of your life, you find new ways to do things
--> More unique and individual
- Specific to yourself, your individual self
--> More ego-less, at one with the world
- Coupled with above criteria
- Both with the world & with yourself
- See yourself as individualized & as part of this larger universal whole
Peak experiences: afterwards
--> Remove Neurotic Symptoms
- Transforms everyones life at least for a period of time
- The nature of these changes is that neurotic symptoms disappear
- Anxieties/tensions are all gone
--> Change in self-awareness
- We see ourselves more clearly, more openly
--> Change view of others, relationships
- Clearer more compassionate view of others
--> Creativity released
- Access to heightened creativity remains there

--> Wants to repeat experience
- We want to go through it again, because it was so rewarding, enriching
- sometimes it takes a decade or two
--> Life seems more worthwhile
- Life feels more meaningful, more desirable
- Fading remnant of this peak experience
Maslow's B-Values - Self Actualized people
1. wholeness
Integration, simplicity, dichotomy transcendence
- borrowed from Buddhists & Jung
- These things are values shared by the self-actualizing individual
- Dichotomy transcendence: we have a strong view of characterizing things/people in two groups - distinct ones
- There are lots of shades, variations of right and wrong
- To see things in various shades, is a value for self-actualizing people
2. Perfection
Necessity, rightness, completeness
3. Justice
Fairness, Lawfulness, orderliness
4. Aliveness
Process, spontaneity, full functioning
5. Richness
Complexity, intricacy, differentiation
- Finding meaning in small stuff
- Kids are particularly good at this
6. Beauty rightness, aliveness, simplicity, richness
7. Goodness
Rightness, benevolence, honesty, justice
8. Uniqueness
Individuality, novelty, non-comparability
9. Effortlessness ease, lack of striving, grace
- Buddhist practice of repeating menial tasks to make them effortless
- to do things without feeling that one is working
10. Playfulness
Joy, Humor, exuberance, effortlessness
11. Truth, Honesty, Reality
Simplicity, richness, beauty
12. Self-sufficiency
Autonomy, independence, environment-transcendence
Maslow's 8-Fold Way
Doesn't exactly match Buddhist 8-fold Path
Habit of mind/behaviour that we can cultivate, they bring us closer to self-actualization
1. Self Awareness - knowing who you are, understanding yourself

2. Self-development - using all your skills to achieve your goals, self-developing goals
3. Growth Choices - a choice which will force us to go beyond what we currently are, with uncertain outcomes, risks of failures BUT huge personal payoffs
4. Trusting Judgment - we are the only ones who have knowledge about who we are, and we have to trust that, we have to trust our judgment (Rogers = organismic trusting)
5. Peak Experiences - having those moments
6. Honesty - Accepting full responsibility for the choices we make in our lives, we often blame other people for our choices - we should take full responsibility of it
7. Concentration - be in the moment fully
8. No Ego Defenses - we defend ourselves against knowing things about ourselves that we might find negative or disturbing. We have to drop our ego barriers/defenses to see things the way they are. We distort things so we come out looking the way we were.
Rogers' Fully-Functioning Person
The actualizing tendency is the ONLY motive that anyone is every moved by.
For Maslow, there are self-actualizing people & the ways to get there. For Rogers, the self-actualizing person = fully functioning = everyone.
1. Openness to Experience - More aware of person's own feelings & reality
2. Existential mode of living - Rolling with the flow; to live in each moment; absence of tight rigidity and organization
3. Organic trusting - if we are open to experiences, doing what is right will just come. We should be responding to our internal feelings; not external pressures. trusting your judgment 4. Experiential freedom - The sense that we are in charge of our lives, we are able to make choices about how our life goes.
5. Creativity - every single positive state of mind = increasing our ability to be creative
FLOW - by Mike Csikzcentmihalyi (Dr C from now on…)
- Still alive, a faculty member
- One of a few contemporary leaders in positive psychology (worked under Seligman)
Conditions for Flow
1. Challenging Activity Requiring Skill
2. Skills equal to the challenge
3. Clear goals and feedback
4. An autotelic Experience - There is no external goal, its the act itself that is desired. Its the process, not the final product that gives the experience of flow
5. Concentration on the task
6. Merging of action and awareness
7. Loss of self-consciousness
8. Transformation of time
9. Sense of Control
Diagram - Comparing Skill & Challenge
Skill: Low
Challenge: Low
Skill: Low
Challenge: High
Skill: Low
Challenge: Mediocre

Apathy
Anxiety
Worry

Skill: Mediocre
Skill: High
Skill: Mediocre
Skill: High
Skill: Mediocre
@ Anxiety
@ Flow
@ Relaxation
@ Apathy

Challenge: Low
Challenge: Low
Challenge: Mediocre
Challenge: High
Challenge: High
Concentration: High
Concentration: R High
Concentration: Low
ALL: Low

Relaxation
Boredom
Arousal
Flow
Arousal

Esteem, enjoyment: Low
Esteem, enjoyment: High
Esteem, enjoyment: Low

Self-Growth After Flow
1. Integration of the Self - in deep concentration, thoughts are well-ordered. All the senses are focused on the same goal. When the flow episode is over, one feels mentally together.
2. Higher complexity of Self-organization - complexity allows one to grow
- Differentiation - implies a movement to uniqueness, separating from other people
- Integration - fitting with other people
- More complexity = both of the above characteristics fit together well
3. Self-Transcendence - temporarily forgetting who we are, expanding beyond ourselves; temporary loss of self-consciousness. Extension of the self
Other Effects of Flow
1. Asakawa (2009)
- Looking at Japanese students, these students reported flow several times a year
- Looked at students who had experienced highest levels of flow
- Had:
- Higher self-esteem
- Lower anxiety
- More active coping
- More strongly committed to daily life, university, future career (goal-oriented)
Q: is the relationship unidirectional?
A: Flow could produce these, or it could be that flow is a result of these characteristics.
2. Rogatko (2007)
- Looked at US Students
- Half of participants engaged in top 3 flow inducing activity & bottom 3 flow inducing activity - Those that engaged in flow activity, had higher positive affect afterwards
- I.e. engaging in flow = makes us happy
3. Salanova et al (2006)
- Study done with teachers
- Diagram = structural equation model (SEM)
- Measured self-efficacy, degree of flow

- At time 1, flow & self-efficacy were related as were work resources (context of teaching) were conducive to flow --> oriented towards newness etc…
- Experiencing more flow = feeling more able, more skilled at time 2
- Was also related to job-resources at time 2
- CONCLUSION: Flow has positive influences on your performance, your environment
4. Bakker (2004)
- SEM as well
- Participants = music teachers & students
- Job resources available to teachers -> contribute to a sense of balance between challenges of teaching and skills the teacher has to bear
- That balance is strongly related to flow (absorption, enjoyment, intrinsic motivation)
- Flow experienced by teachers = leads to flow experienced by students
- We contribute through our flow experiences to other people's flow experiences
Personality & Flow
1. Curiosity (individuals who are high in curiosity)
2. Persistence (conscientiousness - people who stay invested with an activity)
3. Low self-centredness (more open to other people's views, less self-conscious)
4. Autotelic personality (more likely to find intrinsic motivation in activities they engage in) - High intrinsic motivation in situations of high skills & challenges
- Although you only MAY do well on that activity
The Flow Questionnaire
Developed by Dr C
- Asks 3 questions about a series of activities
1. when you are engaged in activity x, what happens
2. To what extent do u agree/disagree with the following statements
a. "My mind isn't wandering…i am totally involved in what I am doing"
b. My concentration is like breathing. I never think of it…"
c. I am so involved in what I am doing. I don't see myself as separate from what I am doing." The Flow State Scale
- Questions asked about challenge vs skills
-->Challenge-Skill Balance:
"My abilities matched the high challenge of the situation"
--> Action awareness merging:
"I performed automatically"
--> Clear Goals
"I knew what i wanted to achieve"
--> Unambiguous feedback
"It was really clear to me what I was doing"
--> Concentration on the task
"I had total concentration"
--> Sense of Control

"I Had a feeling of total control"
--> Loss of self-consciousness
"I had no concern of how others saw me"
--> Transformation of time
"It felt like time stopped when i was performing"
--> Autotelic experience
"I really enjoyed the experience"
1 study: Flow experiences by u.s. Workers
How often?
- 85% identify flow experience in their lives
- 20% say it happens often, 16% said daily
- 15% say it never happens
What produces it?
- 30% = work
- 23% = hobbies, home activities
- 20% = sports, outdoor activities
- 18% = Socializing
2nd study: flow experiences by u.s. teen (activities)
- Games, sports = Flow 45%
- Hobbies = Flow 35%
- socializing = 20%, relaxation = 40%
- Thinking = apathy = 35%, flow = low
- Music & TV, flow=low, relaxation & apathy = high (40%)
- Teenagers have part-time jobs
Mindfulness (Jon Kabat-ZInn)
- Goes back 3000 years
- Part of buddhist practice for over 1000 years
- Become part of western fields in the past 30 years
- Fastest growing area of positive psychology
- Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program/clinic
Qualities of Mindfulness
1. Non Judging - observing the moment without evaluating
2. Patience - allowing things to unfold in their own time
3. Beginner's Mind - seeing as though for the first time.
4. Trust - Trusting one's body, intuition and emotions
5. Non-striving - not goal-oriented, unattached to achievement
6. Acceptance - acknowledging things as they are
7. Letting go - non-attachment
Emerging qualities
Gentleness

Generosity
Empathy
Gratitude
Loving Kindness
Developing Mindfulness
1. Body mindfulness - Follow the breath; whole body scan
2. Thought & Emotion mindfulness
3. Mindfulness in daily life
Mindfulness Practices
Dialectical Behaviour Theory (DBT)
- Developed for treating borderline PD
- Balance & synthesis of opposing ideas
- Opposite ideas = Acceptance & Change
- Mindfulness exercises to accept your feelings, thoughts without judging, dismissing them - If you can do this properly, you can change on your own
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Used for anxiety and so on
- Clients recognize an observing self - not to evaluate the ideas/emotions that come to them. Third person standpoint of one's ideas/thoughts etc.
- Accept, don't change feelings - change behaviours
Contextual Anger regulated Therapy (CART)
- to control anger
- For people to note the existence of those thoughts & feelings
- Relatively new therapy form
Mindfulness vs CBT
Mindfulness:
- No evaluation of thoughts as irrational
- No specific change goals
- Therapist as practitioner
Uses of Mindfulness
1. Management of Chronic Pain:
- Pre vs post-treatment comparisons; no controls
- Immediate and long-term benefits
- Less pain, or less concern about pain (for months afterwards)
2. GAD & Panic disorder
- Panic disorder: intense, quick attacks of anxiety
- Pre vs post-treatment comparisons; no controls
- Immediate and long-term benefits

- New GAD evaluation began in 2005
3. Binge Eating Disorder (very recent disorder)
- Pre vs post-treatment comparisons; no controls
- Immediate and long-term benefits
4. Psoriasis
Kabat Zinn et al (1998)
- Psoriasis: before there were drugs, a treatment used to be shining light on it
- in study: light vs mindfulness vs light alone
- Cleared up in both, but: 65 days (with mindfulness) & 97 days (for light alone)
5. Relapse from Major Depression
- Episodic disorder
- Teasdale et al (2000) - Toronto
- After remission with antidepressants
- 2 groups: 1. Treatment as usual (TAU) vs MBCT
- 12 months later: 67% of TAU had relapsed, 37% of MBCT
- But only for 3 or more prior MD episodes
7. Cancer Patients (management of the pain)
Carlson et al. (2003) - Alberta Group
- Pre vs post-treatment comparisons; no controls
- Lower stress, fewer mood disturbances
- Still present after 6 months
- Immune profile returns to normal from depressed state (another study)
8. Adolescent BP & HR (down to age 6/7 year olds)
Barnes et al (2004)
- Mindfulness vs health-related info
- More young people have hypertension: high BP
- About 10-13 years
- 2 groups: 1: Pamphlets about reducing BP, 2: mindfulness training
- Mindfulness: reduced systolic BP, reduced nighttime HR
- Controls increased HR & BP (Pamphlets - H-R Info)
9. McMaster (ST Mindfulness in students)
- Mindfulness training for mind-wandering challenges for students, to improve Working memory (& related tasks)
- Results: Mindfulness training benefits in sustained operational tasks, but not in working memory
- May help curb mind-wandering
10. Davidson et al (2003)
- Mindfulness vs waitlist controls (waiting to do the experiment After vaccine)
- Gave flu vaccine at end of training
- Increased left hemisphere activation in mindfulness (positive affect)

- Left hemisphere = happiness, good mood etc
- More flu antibodies in mindfulness group
- Left hemisphere activation predicted antibody levels
- the happier you are // higher left hemisphere activation // higher antibody levels
11. Lazar et al (2005)
- MRI measures of cortical thickness in experienced meditators compared with nonmeditating matched controls
- Results: Prefrontal cortex and attention- and sensory-processing areas were THICKER in MEDITATORS
- Thickness differences most pronounced among elderly participants
12. Lutz et al (2008)
- fMRI measures of brain activity during novice/expert loving kindness medication.
- Emotional sounds presented during meditation, and comparison periods
- Sounds = positive and negative
- @meditation, emotional sounds = greater pupil diameter & activation of limbic regions in meditation than at rest; more empathy
- Limbic activation related to intensity of meditation on both groups
- Greater detection, enhanced activity to emotional human sounds for experts than novices during meditation
13. Holzel et al (2011)
- MRI measures of cortical thickness before & after MBSR training compared with waitlist controls
- PFC & attention and sensory processing areas thicker in meditators
- Thickness differences in learning, memory, emotion-processing areas
- Thickness differences in self-referential processing & perspective-taking areas
- Brain is changing/actually growing
14. Aftanas & Golosheikin (2003)
- Internal attention and emotional information processing in experienced meditators
15. Maclean et al (2010)
- Compared with waitlist controls, meditation improves sustained attention and visual discrimination 16. Really new study
- Meditation's physical body affects (molecular changes)
- Study looked at 1-day intensive mindfulness of trained vs non-trained meditators
- after 8 hours - meditators showed genetic & molecular differences
- Had reduced pro-inflammatory genes & better reflexes
- I.E EPIGENETIC CHANGES due to meditation
17. One study found increase in capacity of working memory
18. Beddoe & Murphy (2004)

- The profession is very stressful, along with the learning
- Nursing students reduced stress, increased empathy after 8-week MBSR clinic
19. Shapiro et al (2005)
- Health-care professional resorted improved life satisfaction, self-compassion & reduced stress after 8week MBSR
20. Singh et al (2006)
- Parents of autistic children taught mindfulness (12 weeks)
- Decreased aggression, non-compliance, self-injury in children
- Increased parenting satisfaction, interactions with children in mothers
21. Zylowska et al (2008)
- 8 weeks of MBSR to adults, adolescents, with ADHD
- Reduced self-reported symptoms; improved attention & cognitive inhibition performance; reduced anxiety, depression
Mindfulness in Therapy
"Within the client-therapist relationship, mindfulness is a way of paying attention with empathy, presence, and deep listening that can be cultivated, sustained, and integrated into our work as therapists through the ongoing discipline of meditation practice. mindfulness places the therapist directly in the here-and-now encounter with client. It is a nonjudgmental moment-to-moment awareness"
- Much like Rogers unconditional love
Mindfulness & Relationships
1. Carson et al (2004)
- Meditators vs wait-list controls
- Meditators report greater closeness, acceptance of each other, autonomy, relationship satisfaction 2. Barnes et al (2007)
- Replicated carson study, found same results
- Mindfulness related to improved quality of communication between couples
How does Mindfulness Work?
1. Baer et al (2006)
Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire
1. Observing: attending to internal/external stimuli
2. Describing: mentally labelling stimuli with words
3. Acting with awareness: rather than automatically, or absent-mindedly; being THERE
4. Nonjudging of inner experience: not evaluating one's sensation, thoughts, emotions
5. Nonreactivity to inner experience: allowing them to come and go, without attention getting caught up in them

Mental components and Mindfulness
Holzel et al (2011)
--> Attention Regulation: sustaining attention, returning when distracted
[Brain area: cingulate gyrus]
--> Body Awareness
[Brain area: temporo-parietal junction]
--> Emotion Regulation: Reappraisal: accepting ongoing emotions nonjudgmentally
[Brain area: PFC]
Exposure, extinction: not reacting to emotional stimuli
[Brain area: amygdala, hippocampus, ventral PFC]
--> Change in perspective on the self: detachment from identification with a static self
[Brain area: medial PFC; temporo-parietal junction; posterior cingulate cortex]
--> Brain changes in mindfulness:
- Medial temporal lobe (memory)
- Medial PFC (Theory of mind)
- Posterior cingulate cortex (integration)
- Parts of parietal cortex (self-awareness)
Study: Privette & Bundrick (1991)
- Tried to understand overlap between flow & peak experiences
- Unique to peak experiences:
Spirituality, significante, fulfillment, positive affect, selflessness, unmotivated, meaningful - Unique to Flow:
Play, outer structure, goal-directed, active, automaticity
- Overlap:
Absorption, Unity of Self, Autotelic, Role of others
**Movie to Watch: Groundhog Day (!! during exams? !!)**

Positive Emotions
Defining Happiness
--> The Hedonic Tradition:
- Aristippus: Not just sensual pleasure
- Freud: Sexuality & aggression
- Most modern research in this tradition
Happiness, or subjective well-being (SWB)
--> The eudaimonic tradition:

- Mostly stems from the East
- Aristotle: Life of moral, intellectual virtue
- Rogers, Maslow
--> Process Theories:
- Dr. C: Autotelic activities
- Snyder: Hope = goal expectancy
- Meaningfulness as goal selection
--> Modern empirical tradition:
- Ed Diener: Since early 1980s
- Past president of APS
- Current president of IPPA (Int pos psych)
- His work is under the topic: Subjective well-being (SWB)
- Substitute term for happiness: brings into play eudaimonic & hedonic
Diener's SWB:
- Positive affect (PA) : positive emotions
- Negative affects (NA): negative emotions
- Look at ratio of PA: NA for happiness
- Having a high PA does not mean a low NA, or vice-versa
- These two are remarkably on separate dimensions
- Life satisfaction (LS): we operate in many domains - work, academic, family etc
- The question is: how satisfied are we with our activities in each domains
- A summative evaluation across these = a measure of our overall LS
- ^Closer to eudaimonic tradition
- SWB = PA, NA, LS
PANAS
Positive & Negative Affect Scale: 20 item, 5 choice likert scale
--> Positive emotions: interested, excited, strong, enthusiastic, proud alert, inspired
--> negative emotions: distressed, upset, guilty, scared, hostile, ashamed, nervous
PANAS-X
(extended)
Positive & Negative affect scale-X: 60 item, 5-choice likert scale, 11 scales via factor analysis --> Positive emotion scales:
- Jovialty (8); Self-assurance (6); Attentiveness (4)
--> Negative emotion scales:
- Fear (6); Hostility (6); Guilt (6); Sadness (5)
--> Other Affective scales
- Shyness (4); Fatigue (4); Serenity (3); Surprise (3)
[DON'T NEED TO MEMORIZE SCALES]
Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS)
4 items, 7-choice likert scale - choices vary

"In general I consider myself…" : from: not a very happy person…a very happy person
"Compared to most peers, I consider myself…": from: less happy…more happy
"Some people are generally very happy. They enjoy life regardless of what is going on, getting the most out of everything. Does this describe you?" not at all…a great deal
"Some people are not very happy. Though not depressed, they never seem as happy as they might be. Does this describe you?" not at all….to very much
Satisfaction with Life Scale (Ed Diener's scale)
5 items, 7-choice likert scale
Items:
1. In most ways, my life is close to ideal
2. The conditions of my life are excellent
3. I am satisfied with my life
4. So far, I have gotten the important things I want in my life.
5. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing
State-level of happiness vs trait-level of happiness
Trait variables: remain very constant; average level of happiness
Top-down influences on emotion: stable: built into a person's personality - related to trait-level bottom-up influences on emotion: much more variable - related to state-level
Q: the extent to which trait vs state variables affect bottom-up vs top-down - i.e.stability
Low correlations: state-level/bottom-up
High correlations: trait-level/top-down
Stability of SWB
--> Ed & Diener (2004): Analyzed SWLS over 2 months
75-85% of variance stable over time
--> Lucas & Donellan (2006): British Panel Study
0.37 of variance in any one year = stable variance therefore, 1. high levels of stability
2. the levels decrease gradually
--> Lucas et al (1996): stability of PA, NA, LS over 3 years correlations between 0.56 and 0.60
--> Magnus & Diener (1991): analyzed SWLS over 4 years
0.58% stability (test-retest correlation)
--> have to square the value to see the proportion of variance it accounts for
--> normally less than half

--> Fajita & Diener (2005): German measure over 17 years
Coefficients in 0.5 - 0.6 range generally
0.3 stability over full 17 years = ~10% of variance
1. There is a lot of stability, high levels of consistency & correlation in measures of SWB
2. BUT, it does not even account of even half of the variance
3. Most of variance is accounted for by bottom-up/state-level factors (situational)
--> Diener & Larsen (1984): Assessed momentary affect across situations and time
PA/NA at work vs PA/NA at recreation: r = ~0.70
PA/NA social vs PA/NA alone: r = ~0.70
PA/NA novel vs PA/NA typical: r = ~0.70
--> Lucas (2004): compared life satisfaction in a number of domains
50% (or less) of stable variance shared over domains up to 70% of stable variance unique to domains
(we might me generally happier in one domain to another domain)
Objective measures related to both unique & shared variance
Chicago Health, Aging, Social Relations Study (CHARS)
Looked at people from Chicago for '35-'82
Happiness (Diener's SWL) & PA, NA:
- Depression & dejection: r= -0.31
- Fatigue, Inertia: r= -0.30
- Vigor, activity: r= 0.30
- Tension & anxiety: r= -0.24
- Confusion, bewilderment: r= -0.14
- Anger, hostility: r= -0.09
Happiness (Diener's SWL) & social circumstances:
- Defined pension plan value: r= 0.29
- Bank account value: r= 0.28
- Stock value: r= 0.22
- Debt amount: r = -0.19
- Home equity: r = 0.18
- Car value: r = 0.18
SWL & stress & coping:
- Money, financial stressors: r= -0.45
- Number of chronic stressors: r= -0.37
- Social life, recreation stressors: r= -0.33
- Love, marriage stressors: r= -0.32
- Residence/housing stressors: r= -0.29
- Work stressors: r=-0.27
- Family/children stressors: r= -0.23
- Number of negative life events: r= -0.22

SWL & Disposition:
- Self-esteem: r=0.48
- Loneliness: r= -0.43
- Optimism: r= 0.27
- Emotional stability: r= 0.2
SWL & Sexual intimacy:
- Emotional satisfaction: r=0.42
- Physical pleasure: r=0.27
- frequency of sex: r=0.18
SWL & Religiosity:
- No relationship
- Most other studies, have found a positive correlation between happiness & religiosity
Adaptation to life events
Usually, adaptation to events (return to baseline happiness) is rapid:
- Marriage: 2 years
- Widowhood: 8 years
- Divorce: Long-term effects
- Unemployment: Long-term effects
- Long-term disability: 8 years
Children & SWB: Instruments
1. PANAS-C (children)
2. Student's Life Satisfaction Scale
3. Multidimensional Students' Life Satisfaction Scale. Look at satisfaction in domains of:
- Friends
- Family
- Self
- School
- Living environment
Children & SWB: Events
LS & Life events:
Positive daily events: r= 0.39
Negative daily events: r= -0.39
Positive Major events: r= 0.30
Negative major events: r= -0.22
Weakest correlation: Negative major events
Children & SWB: Associates
LS & Personal attributes:
- Self-esteem
- Internal locus of control (who is in charge of what you do - internal=yourself in control)
- Emotional stable temperament

- Attribution style
- Good events: stable, internal, Global
- Bad events: unstable, external, Local
- Unrelated to IQ
Parent-Child Relations & SWB
1. Warm, attentive parenting
- Social Competence (higher)
- Internalizing, externalizing behaviours (lower)
2. Causal Mechanisms?
- Temperament (of the child's own personality)
- Continuity of caregiving quality
- Emotion regulation styles (managing emotions is relative to the person)
- Internal working model (our relationship with early caregivers=model for all other future relationships)
Parent-adolescent relations & SWB
Huebner (1991): children 10-13; LS more related to satisfaction with family than to friends; no relation to demographics, or grades
Amata (1994): Emotional closeness to mothers, fathers, make independent contributions to LS
Typical rule: relationships with mothers tend to be more important
BUT overall,
Boys relationships with their fathers are more impactful on them &
Girls relationships with their mothers are more impactful on them
Demo & alcock (1996): Mother-adolescent disagreement strongest predictor of adolescent well-being
- Particularly true for daughters/girls
Children & Adult SWB
- Childlessness by choice has no negative impact on SWB
- The presence of a child has a small negative association with life evaluation
- Associated with positive & negative hedonics
- Patterns are replicated in english-speaking parts of the world, not elsewhere
- In poor, high fertility countries - people have children even if it lowers SWB
- *In general, children increase LS, but decrease PA*
Diener & Suh (1998) - across 43 nations, # of children related slightly to SWB
- No distinction made between childlessness by choice of circumstances
- No indication of causal direction <-- happy people and children, which way is it?
Siblings & SWB
- Only children do not have lower SWB; may have higher SWB
- Little or no difference

Polit & Falco (1987): meta-analysis shows only children better adjusted than middle children. - If you are a middle child, you are less adjusted than an only child
- Low warmth, high hostility = lower SWB, more externalizing, poorer peer relationships
- Sibling favouritism = lower SWB, emotional & behavioural problems
- Positive effects of close relationships into adulthood
Marriage & SWB
- Marrieds = higher SWB than single, divorced
- Greater emotional commitment = greater SWB
- PA of marriage wears off after 2 years, but still has a positive affect
- Less benefit in collectivist countries
- Why the effect of marriage on SWB?
- SWB may influence events in marriage
- Higher SWB could lead to greater chance of marriage
- Marriage = emotional support, less stress
- Social support for marriage
- Lucas (2005): Sample of 30,000 Germans:
- Those who got married, stayed married had higher SWB long before marriage
Personality & SWB (individual variables)
1. Extraversion:
Correlates with PA & SWB: 0.17 - 0.42
2. Neuroticism:
Correlates with NA: 0.2-0.61
Correlates with SWB: -0.24
3. Agreeableness:
Correlates with PA: 0.34
Correlates with NA: -0.43
Heritability of SWB
- Says nothing about an individual
- Only talks about relative sources of variance, and to what extent do they contribute
--> Tellegen et al (1998): MZ & DZ twins, reared together or apart; well-being on MPQ
PA: h^2 = 0.40
NA: h^2 = 0.55
Well being: h^2 = 0.48
--> Roysamb et al (2002): Adult MZ & DZ twins
Global SWB: h^2: 0.46 (males), h^2: 0.54 (females)
No influence of shared environment

- Most of the remainder of the variance is due to non-shared environmental experiences
- For a long time, it was assumed to be non-important
--> Stubbe et al (2005): adult MZ, DZ twins, siblings
LS: h^2: 0.38
All effects non-additive
- ^unusual finding
- There is some heritability to SWB
- To the extent that personality differences contribute to state-level differences
- Bulk of variance is contributed by individual differences
Physiology & SWB
--> Hemispheric asymmetry:
- Left hemisphere more active than right - associated with PA
- Left = PA; Right = NA
- L-R differences associated with SWB
- Tomarken et al (1992): Higher L-R asymmetry associated with higher PA, Lower NA
- Urry et al (2004): Higher L-R asymmetry associated with self-acceptance, life purpose, personal growth, autonomy,
- Davidson et al (2003): Mindfulness meditation training increases L-R asymmetry
Material Wealth & Happiness
- Traditional books suggest that there is no relationship between money & happiness
--> Easterline Paradox (1974)
- Happiness increases with income within countries
- Was looking at data comparing different countries
- Happiness unrelated to GDP between countries
Hedonic treadmill
Happiness increases after increases in income, but returns to usual set point after period of time.
Relative income
Happiness depends more on increases in income compared with those around us, than on absolute income level.
Recent evidence
--> Kahneman & Deaton (2010)
- Analyzed >450,000 responses to Gallup-Healthways Well-being index, daily survey of
1,000 U.S. Residents
- LS rises with log (income); more change at lower levels than at higher levels of income
- There is a point beyond which dramatic increase in income does not do anything
- The most dramatic change occurs at the lower income bracket
- PA rises with log income, but only to about $75,000

- Study on lottery winners
- Some people lose all the money in a few years
- Some are still not happy with money leftover after a few years
--> Sacks, Stevenson & Wolfers (2012)
- looked at data from 122 countries sampled in Gallup World Poll
- No measure of PA or NA
- Graphed LS vs GDP per capita
- Perfectly linear relationship: log (real GDP) vs LS
- Canada: highest LS of 7.5 (highest in the world)
- Graphed linear relationship: annual household income vs LS WITHIN countries
- The affect of additional income decreases as your income level increases
Results
- LS rises linearly with log per capita income (GDP) between countries
- LS rises linearly with log per capita income (GDP) within countries
- No satiation point beyond which LS unrelated to income
- Economic growth related to growth in LS
BUT USA Is a paradoxical case:
- GDP has doubled since 1972
- LS has decreased slightly
--> Perhaps due to growth in income inequality
--> Huge proportion of income gains have gone to top few percent, and have increased in their proportional benefit
4 well-replicated findings:
- Weak correlations between national wealth & SWB between countries
- Strong correlations between income & SWB within countries
- Larger in poor countries
- Risk of low SWB higher for poor people
- 1970-1990 economic growth in developed countries = minimal gains in overall SWB
- Those with material goals less happy than those with other goals - unless very rich
-Those who are motivated by material concerns do not enjoy their experiences as much
Mixed messages
- Biswas-diener & Diener (2001): poor, homeless in Calcutta have positive SWB
SWB on SWLS: high=7; neutral=4
List:
Forbes richest Americans: 5.8
Traditional Masai (Kenya): 5.4
Penn Amish: 5.1
Illinois Uni students: 4.7
Calcutta slum dwellers: 4.4

Uganda Uni students: 3.2
Calcutta homeless: 3.2
California homeless: 2.8
- Easterline paradox stood until 2012/2013
- New data suggests that there is no paradox
- there is a positive correlation between income & happiness for BOTH within & between countries
- Other studies have asked the question on how ambiguous the data is
- There are confounding factors involved
- Wealthier countries tend to have democratic governments
Other Factors to Consider
1. Goals & Values:
- Stolberg et al (2004): Materialism negatively correlated with SWB
- Bodenhausen et al (2012): Materialist, consumer cues lead to:
- increased NA
- reduced social involvement
- greater competitiveness, selfishness
- Piffa et al (2012): looked at ethical behaviour. Wealthier folks:
- More likely to break the law during driving
- More likely to take things from others
- More likely to lie or cheat to gain advantage
- Moderated by greater approval of greed
- Wealth and money increase LS, but not happiness
SWB Across Cultures
- Differences between individualist and collectivist cultures
- We stress individual achievements, self-esteem, awards etc.
- In the East, they stress communal/collective achievements etc.
- I.e. example of trash being spilt in a class
- Western students took responsibility for cleaning up
- Easter students did not!
- Cultural differences in the definition of happiness
Individualist: personal goals, needs, personal agency, individual initiative and achievement Collectivist: social goals, needs and approval of others, cooperation, team play
SWB @ Collectivist Cultures
- Less likely to emphasize emotional happiness in SWB
- Relation between PA/NA ratio and overall SWB much weaker
- Pleasant emotions explicitly require a social component:
- More linked to interpersonal emotions than to personal emotions
- Asian-Americans, more than European-Americans, made happy by goals that please or are approved by others (Oishi & Sullivan, 2005)
--> Lu & Gilmour (2004): Chinese & US students: "what is happiness?"

- US Students: Emphasize enjoyment of present life, personal agency trumps social restrictions, pursuit of personal happiness cannot be compromised
- Chinese Students: Emphasize spiritual cultivation, transcendence of the present, underline importance of social obligations, role = contribution to wider community
Cognitive Effects of PA
- Alice Isen (Cornell)
- Barbara Fredrickson (UNC, Chapel Hill) <-- Isen's student
--> What does PA do?
- Preferentially cues positive memories
- Doesn't block affect to negative memories, only preferences positive memories to negative memories
- Promotes (especially in complex tasks):
- Flexibility, Innovation, Efficiency, Thoroughness
- complex tasks = Duncker candle task, Remote Associate test
Duncker Candle Task:
- Given: a candle, a box of tacks, and a pack of matches
- You have to make sure the candle is upright somewhere
- 15% solved in control; 70% solved in PA !
- Solution: box of thumbtacks attached to wall, and put candle inside, tack the box
Remote associates test:
- Present 3 words (i.e. mower, foreign, atomic)
- Q: What 1 word brings these words together (i.e. power)
- You get a set of these words
- Individuals with PA induced, are more likely to solve these problems
Broaden & Build Theory
- Barbara Fredrickson (UNC)
- NA prepares us for threat:
- Narrows perceptual focus
- Prepares specific responses
- PA broadens our thought-action repertoire:
- Leads to play, creativity, openness & exploration
- Broadening builds "enduring personal resources"
- Resources enhance health, survival, SWB
Positive emotions --> Novel thoughts, activities, relationships --> enduring personal resources (social support, skills, knowledge) --> enhanced health, survival, fulfillment -> positive emotions
[Full Circlular loop-da-loop]
Broadening & Undoing
- Heightened creativity in mania
- Mania: heightened positive emotionality (everything good = better)

- Mania: those feelings lead to destructive behaviour;
- hypomania:no negative impact
- Literature suggests that manics are more creative
- Induced PA = global processing bias
- A tendency to see the big picture
- To see the context in which things happen
- PA reverses the effects of NA
Brain Mechanisms?
Increased dopamine in parts of brain?
- Associated with reward pathways
- Prefrontal areas - anterior cingulate cortex:
- Creative problem-solving
- Openness to information, exploration
- Integration of ideas
- Focus on negative info when necessary
- Keep multiple perspectives in mind:
- Cooperativeness
- Social responsibility
- Improved negotiation skills
- Generosity to self, others
Positive Affect & Health
- Ostir et al (2000): 2 year prospective of elderly (65+) Mexican-Americans
- Higher PA at start = reduced changes of mortality over 2 years
- Still true after controlling for NA, medical condition, BMI, smoking, etc.
- Self-reported PA = good predictor of mortality
- Levy et al (2002): 23 year prospective study of elderly (~63)
- Above mean self-perceptions of aging = 7.5 years longer life
- Still true after controlling for age, sex, functional health status
- Attitude was good predictor of increase in longevity
- 7 studies find higher SWB = lower mortality rate
SWB predicts:
- Fewer heart attacks
- better survival from heart disease
- Lower incidence of strokes
Higher SWB = less smoking, drinking
- Pressman & Cohen (2005): meta analysis of PA & Health
- High trait PA = fewer colds after virus exposure
- High PA = higher levels of immunoglobin A
*Literature = limited, results not unequivocal*
PA & Other positive Outcomes
1. Work
- Roberts et al (2003): high PA at age 18 associated with more prestigious jobs at

age 26
- High PA = Higher incomes, though small correlation
- Wright & Staw (1999): More positive job assessments from supervisors
2. Relationships
- Lucas et al (2003): higher probability of marriage, more satisfaction with marriage
- More positive perception of interaction partners
- More collaborative conflict resolution; more interest in friendship; social life.
Factors of Happiness
- 50% = Genetics
- 10% = circumstances
- ~40% = Activities & practices (THINGS WE DO, HAVE CONTROL OVER)
- Increasing Subjective Well-being
1. Pursue Significant life goals
2. Be Active (physically)
3. Be social
4. Do good
5. Find positive meaning - have gratitude for your blessings, imagine your best self
6. Be open

Positive Traits, Values & Attitudes
Self-Esteem in personality
1. Maslow:
- Highest of the D-motives
- Leads to growth choices
2. Rogers
- Positive regard, positive self-regard
- Relates to authenticity, true self
3. Bandura & Michel
- Self-efficacy, personal constructs
History of Self-Esteem Construct
1. William James:
- Introduced concept in 1890 text
2. Since James:
- 23,000 articles, chapters, books
3. Rodewalt & Tregakis (2003):
- One of top 3 covariates in personality, social psychology research:
- Gender, negative affect, Self-esteem
Clinical Interest in Low Self-Esteem
- Feature associated with 24 DSM disorders
- Many unpleasant outcomes:
- Anxiety; social anxiety
- Sadness & depression

- Anger & hostility
- Shame, guilt, embarrassment
- Loneliness
- NA
- Neuroticism
Defining Self-Esteem
- State versus trait Self-esteem:
- State = moment-to-moment variations
- Trait = long-term average trait
- Self-esteem as an attitude:
- Objective, cognitive evaluation of the self
- Self-esteem as an emotion:
- Affection for, or liking of, the self
- Self-esteem as self/ideal match:
- James: ratio of successes to pretensions
- Rogerian: self vs ideal self
- Low discrepancy = high self-esteem
- Self-esteem as competence:
- History of successes and failures
- Relates to self-efficacy
- Irrational attempts to avoid failure:
- Low risk-taking
- Self-handicapping
- Self-esteem as worthiness:
- Affection for, or liking of, the self
- Irrationally high
- Conceitedness, arrogance
- Narcissism
Development of Self-Esteem
- High in young children (egocentrism?)
- Drops in middle childhood (cognitive development enables more realistic comparison)
- Large drop in early adolescence (puberty, school changes?)
- Rises from late adolescence through early adulthood
- High, stable, until decline later in life
Domains of Competence
--Early Childhood:
- Cognitive competence
- Physical competence
- Physical appearance
- Peer acceptance
- Behavioural conduct
-- Middle to Late Childhood:
- Scholastic competence
- Athletic competence

- Physical appearance
- Peer acceptance
- Behavioural conduct
-- Adolescence:
- Scholastic competence
- Job competence
- Athletic competence
- Physical appearance
- Peer acceptance
- Conduct/Morality
-- University years:
- Scholastic competence
- Intellectual ability
- Creativity
- Job competence
- Athletic competence
- Sense of humour
- Physical appearance
- Peer acceptance
- Morality
-- early thru Middle Adulthood:
- Intelligence
- Job Competence
- Athletic competence
- Physical appearance
- Sociability
- Morality
- Sense of Humour
- Nurturance
- Household
- Management/adequacy as a provider
-- Late adulthood:
- Cognitive abilities
- Job competence
- Physical appearance
- Relationships
- Morality
- Nurturance
- Leisure activities
- Health status/morality
- Household management/adequacy as a provider
Gender & Self-Esteem
- Females:
- Self-esteem more dependent on social acceptance or rejection than males
- Much more dependent on "Worthiness"
- Experience significant drop in self-esteem in adolescence - especially for

appearance
- Because of our cultural standards of femininity, female bodies move further away from the standard version
- Gap in Self-esteem between males & females is dropping, as female self-esteem is rising to higher levels
- Males
- Much more dependent on "Competence" than females
- For males - body shape becomes more "male-like" over time
- What you can do
- Self-esteem more related to independence, lack of emotion, personal uninvolvement Values & Self-esteem
- Social Values:
- What does society value?
- Socioeconomic status Values:
- Different values at different SES levels
- Education versus specific job skills
- At High SES, more emphasis on education vs specific job skills
- Manual vs intellectual prowess
- Strength versus understanding
- Personal Values
- Bandura & Mischel's personal constructs
- Parental values
- Personal skills & interests
Competence & Worthiness Model x-axis: Competence (-10 --> +10) y-axis: Worthiness (-10 --> +10)
Low competence, low worthiness = low S-E --> classical low S-E
Low competence, high worthiness = worthiness based S-E --> Narcissism
Low worthiness, high competence = competence based S-E --> Antisocial
High worthiness, high competence = high S-E --> authentic S-E
Low competence, some worthiness = Approval centred S.E
Low worthiness, some competence = achievement centred S.E
Low worthiness, low competence = negativistic low S.E
Some worthiness, some competence = Medium S.E
Functions of Authentic Self-Esteem
1. Self-maintenance:
- Buffer against stress and anxiety
- Stresses are less burdensome to these people
2. Growth or enhancement:
- Related to happiness

- Improved job performance, problem-solving
- Associated with:
- Extraversion
- Relationship satisfaction
- Better academic performance
- Worthiness-based SE promoted in education (i.e. many graduations)
- Higher ethical, moral standards
3. Stable
- Balanced over time (Possible exception of classical S-E)
4. Consistent
- Across conscious (explicit) and non-conscious (implicit) levels
5. True
- Does not require constant validation of worthiness or competence
6. Secure
- Allows individual to recognize faults and shortcomings as well as strengths
Sources of Self-Esteem
1. Parents
- Genetics - heritability: ~35%
- Parental support, involvement
- Attitude of both parents is important to S.E
- Mother's attention = more affect on sense of worthiness
- Parental acceptance, warmth
- Parenting style
- Parental examples - modeling
2. Birth order:
- Higher for first- or only born children
Development of Self-Esteem
- Childhood precursors of self-esteem:
- Being valued by others - Rogers' UPR
- Middle childhood & Adolescence:
- Ages 7-11 crucial for S-E development
- Many sources of evaluation from others
- will give them a measure of self-worthiness (bullying, acceptance etc)
- Many tests of competence
- Intellectual, academic, social, athletic
- Academic = competence based S.E
- Barriers to positive S-E development
- Early negative parenting experiences
- SES deprivation (poverty, homelessness, etc…)(epigenetic consequences)
- Competence-situation mismatch (context can be mismatched)
- Internal-external values conflict (Things valued by you are not by others/VV)
S-E Defining Moments
Stage 1: Choice Point
- Worthy alternative = higher level of competence

- Less worthy alternative = current competence
- Related to historical S-E issue
Stage 2: Choice & conflict
- Awareness of choice, and of significance of issues
Stage 3: Struggling & action
- Most difficult part of process
- Deeper struggle = higher probability of worthy choice
- Rapid decision = worse choice, the more you wrestle, the more likely you are to make the more difficult growth choice
Stage 4:
On positive choice: release, relaxation, pleasure
On negative choice: relief, tension, displeasure
Stage 5:
On positive choice: Meaning and affirmation
On negative choice: Meaning and disaffirmation
Stage 6:
On positive choice: S-E in positive direction
On negative choice: S-E unchanged or negative
Harter's Self-Esteem Program
Step 1: Assessment
- How is individual functioning in important domains?
- What are individual's weaknesses and strengths?
- Who are important, helpful others in individual's life?
Step 2: Tailoring Interventions
Cognitive interventions:
- Develop skills in areas where person doing poorly
- Reduce value of areas where person doing poorly
- Increase value of areas where person doing well
- More realistic self-image: attributional processes
Social interventions:
- Help person see that support is available
- Encourage others to be more supportive (family members, relatives etc..)
- Find new sources of social support
Mruk's Self-Esteem Program
Week 1: Focusing Phase
- Introduction to S-E; journalling
- take Multidimensional self-esteem inventory (MSEI)

- General Self-esteem
- Global S-E
- Identity integration
- Defensiveness
- Competence:
- Competence; personal power
- Self-control; body functioning
- Worthiness:
- Lovability; likability
- Moral self-approval
- Body appearance
Week 2: Awareness Phase
- Increases awareness of S-E and its types
- ID strengths, weaknesses from MSEI
- ID personal source of S-E:
- Personal achievements or successes
- Evidence of influence or power
- Acceptance or being valued
- Virtue or acting on beliefs ('doing the right thing')
- List 2 personal experiences from each category
- Track manifestations of these categories in coming week
Week 3: Enhancing worthiness
- Identify their habitual ways of maintaining low SE
- Identify 10 of your positive qualities or attributes
- Identifying mistakes in thinking or perceiving:
- Emotional reasoning: letting feelings overrule rational thoughts
- Filtering: focusing on negatives, ignoring positive in situation
- Negative labelling: using negative labels to describe self, or other
- overgeneralizing: extending negative significance of event
- Personalizing: sensitivity about event makes it more painful than necessary
- Implementing restructuring:
- Choose situation that reduced S-E, note all feelings & rank intensity
- Name all errors from list above
- correct each thought & re-evaluate feelings
Week 4: enhancing competence
- Review and share journals
- Enhance competence through problem-solving:
- Recognize & understand problem
- Decide on a goal
- ID possible solutions, choose best solution
- Make detailed plan for solution
Week 5: Managing S-E
- Review & share journals

- Note that S-E must be continually managed
- Develop S-E action plan for 1 issue:
- what are sources of support?
- what are skills required?

Self-Efficacy
Bandura (1977)
"An efficacy expectation is the conviction that one can successfully execute the behaviour that one can successfully execute the behaviour required to produce the outcomes" Sherer Self-Efficacy Scale (SES)
- 23 items, 5-point Likert Scale
1. General Self-Efficacy (17 items)
2. Social Self-Efficacy (6 items)
Where does Self-Efficacy Come from?
1. Performance experiences:
- Successful or unsuccessful attempts to control our environment
2. Vicarious experiences:
- Seeing others succeed or fail in controlling their environments - if they are like us
3. Imagined experiences:
- Imagining successful control of our environment
4. Verbal persuasion:
- what others tell us about our abilities & competence
5. Emotional states:
- Positive states lead to higher feelings of self-efficacy
Why is S-E important?
1. Psychological adjustment:
- Associated with higher S-E, more effort, risk-taking
- If you BELIEVE in something, you will do it
2. Physical health:
- Enhances adoption of healthy behaviours
- End unhealthy behaviours
- Crucial to successful change and maintenance of change:
- Exercise, diet, stress management
- Compliance with medical regimens
- Positive influence on the immune system
- Reduces blood pressure, cardiac reactivity
- Reduces stress hormone level
3. Academic Performance:
- Associated with higher performance at every level
4. Self-regulation:
- Influences the goal we set
- Influences choice of goal-directed activities

- Influences effort & persistence toward goals
- Particularly true for problem-solving
5. Psychotherapy:
- A goal of most programs (improvement in self-efficacy); Via ::
::: Performance; imagined; vicarious experiences
::: Verbal persuasion
::: Psychological, emotional states
- ("You can do this"/ "You are able to do this")
Self-Efficacy in Psychotherapy
- one major goal is raising S-E
- Need experiences to increase sense of efficacy:
- Performance experiences: Feedback re success & failure
- Verbal persuasion: credible others convince us
- Vicarious experience: Seeing similar others succeed
- Imagined experience: imagining success
- Body & emotional states: Feel more efficacious when relaxed & calm:
- Relaxation training
- Biofeedback - training people to have a specific mental state and letting them see it on a computer monitor - so they respond accordingly
- Hypnosis - self-hypnosis is very useful
- Meditation
- Medication
Enhancing the Impact of Success
- Seeing competence as incremental
- competence is not a fixed skill
- You can learn to be better at any skill you are thinking about
- A lot of people think that academic skills are fixed; determined
- They are absolutely changeable
- On average your IQ as a uni student goes up every year (115 --> 130)
- Intelligence = intellectual skills that can be learned (same with memory capacity)
- Competence in any realm can be had
- Changing Causal attributions:
- Internal rather than external
- Encouraging minor distortions:
- Enhancing perception of control
- Encouraging perception of competence of others
Optimism
--> Learned optimism (Seligman et al)
- Optimism as attributional style
- "attribution style" --> the reasons you give for the things that happen
- Initially did research on learned hopelessness (led to depression)
- Differences in ATTRIBUTION
--> Goal expectancy (Carver & Scheier)
- Optimism as outcome expectancies, after Bandura

- Expecting positive outcomes as a result of one's behaviour
- Differences in EXPECTATION
Learned helplessness
- experience of inescapable aversive events
- Fail to avoid or escape when it is possible
- Basis of Depression
Learned Optimism
- Based on model of causal attribution
- 3 dimensions of causal attribution:
- internal vs external causes
- stable vs unstable causes
- Global vs specific causes
Pessimistic Attributions
I. Internal Causes:
- Something about me personally; "I didn't know the material well enough"
2. Stable causes:
- Something that does not change; "cause I'm not good at academic work"
3. Global causes:
- Related to a wide range of situations; "I'm not very intelligent"
Optimistic Attributions
I. External causes:
- Not me, but the outside world; "the test questions were poorly worded"
II. Unstable causes:
- Something that can and does change or vary; "I've done better on other tests"
III. Specific causes:
- Related to this situation only; "I do better in other courses"
Assessing Attributions
--> Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ)
--> Extended ASQ (E-ASQ)
- 24 hypothetical life events
- Half about achievement, half about affiliation
- Half are good: "You become very rich; a friend compliments you"
- Half are bad: "You have been unsuccessful in getting a job"
- Choose one cause and rate it attributionally
- is it global, local, stable, unstable, internal, external
- Rate it and get a score
--> Content Analysis of Verbal explanations (CAVE)
- Rate verbal explanations along 3 dimensions
- Politicians - What a politician give as a reason for something he/she said
- Sports figures - can do the same thing
- One particular case of this:

- 1985 Mets & Cardinals
- Mets: optimistic attributions for losses
- "Opponents hit well tonight"
- Cards: pessimistic attributions for loses
- "we can't hit"
- 1986: Mets win world series; cards collapse
Antecedents of Optimism
1. Genetics
- MZ style more correlated (0.48) than DZ style (0.00)
- No direct influence of genes
2. Home
- Stable, supportive home = optimistic style as adults
- No relation between parent's, child's style
- Parents of optimistic child attributed child's failure to external factors
3. School
- Parental pessimistic style = child work below
- Potential at school
- Teacher praise of stable traits = more pessimism
Revised Optimistic Attributions
- Stable versus unstable causes
- Global versus specific/local causes
- First two are important; commonly studied
- Internal versus external causes:
- Correlates less consistently than other two
- More difficult to assess reliably
- Does it directly affect expectations?
- Not clearly if it directly affects our future outcomes/expectations
- Confounds self-blame and self-efficacy
- You could be looking at self-efficacy or self-blame
- You can have high OR low self-efficacy and hold yourself responsible
- Is it that they are blaming themselves or that they have low levels of skill?
Associates of Optimism
- Better academic performance
- Superior athletic performance
- More productive work records
- Greater satisfaction in relationships
- Better coping with stressors
- Less vulnerability to depression
- Better physical health (suggests, not necessarily confirmed yet)
Goal Expectancy
--> Optimism:
- Tendency to believe good things are more likely to happen
- Behaviour-outcome expectancies

--> Life orientation test-revised (LOT-R): (by Shire)
- 10 statements on 5-point likert scale from:
"strongly agree" to "strongly disagree"
- 6 test statements, 4 filler items
LOT-R (6 questions to judge optimism)
- In uncertain times I usually expect the best.
- If something can go wrong for me it will.
- I'm always optimistic about my future.
- I hardly ever expect things to go my way.
- I rarely expect good things happening to me.
- Overall, I expect more good things than bad to happen to me.
Optimism & Coping Strategies
--> Optimists: Approach-oriented, problem-focused coping.
- Information seeking
- Active coping & planning
- Positive reframing
- Use of humour
- Acceptance
Pessimism & Coping Strategies
--> Pessimists: Withdrawal-oriented, emotion-focused coping.
- Thought suppression
- Giving up
- Self-distraction
- Focus on distress (rumination)
- Rumination: just continuously dwelling on the depths of some emotions
- Overt denial
Associates of LOT-R Optimism
- Starting university (aspinwall & Taylor, 1992)
- Work performance (long, 1993)
- Enduring missile attack (zeidner & hammer, 1992)
- Caring for cancer patients (Given et al, 1993)
- Bone marrow transplants (curbow et al, 1993)
- Coping with cancer (carver et al, 1993)
- Coping with AIDS
- Post-partum depression
--> Sheier et al (1989): Coronary bypass surgery
- Questionnaires day before, week after, 6 months after
- Before surgery: optimists report:
- Less hostility
- Less depression
- 1 week after surgery: optimists report:
- more happiness & relief
- more satisfaction with medical care

- More satisfaction with emotional support
- 6 months and 5 years later: optimists report:
- higher quality of life
Comparisons & Contrasts
LOT-R, ASQ/CAVE: measuring the same thing?
ASQ: How would you understand the reasons behind the past events?
LOT-R: What do you expect from the future?
Both measure:
- Good mood
- Active coping
- low depression
- Achievement
- Good health
- Both rarely been studied together, but in the few studies that have - they are highly intercorrelated - Reality of expectations not measured - do circumstances cause positive outcomes?
- Pessimism associated with risky behaviour - does that cause negative outcomes?
= Maybe your scenario/environment determines how you behave in the world
- Either: environment shapes your optimism/pessimism or vice-versa
Realism in Optimism
Optimistic bias realistic
- Bias only when events controllable
- Bias reduced if performance verifiable
- Biased beliefs not too distant from reality
Optimistic Beliefs:
- Don't get too far out of line (bounded)
- Are strategic:
- Help people meet their goals
- Used selectively, not indiscriminately
- Are adjusted to match the situation (selective/responsive)
--> Aspinwall & Brunhart (1996)
- Optimists/pessimists processing of information regarding health practices
Optimists:
- pay more attention to negative information
- Remember more negative information
- More elaborative processing of negative information
- More attention to most useful information
Is positive affect responsible?
- Pay more attention to negative information
High positive affect:
- More sensitive to important features of the task
- More risks when stakes unimportant
- Less risk when stakes real and significant
- More processing of negative info about self
- In general, they are more interested in what is happening outside (information etc)

Attribution Retraining
--> Cognitive restructuring for kids:
- Swap pessimistic for optimistic attributions
- Modeling or social reward (praise)
- If the praise is specific/changeable and not global, then it has a positive affect
- Since the person has control over it, it makes them more optimistic
- New attributions may be fragile:
- May be as unrealistic as old attributions
- Pessimistic attributions = unrealistic
- Could train people to be overly optimistic, also = unrealistic
- Evidence may suggest attributions incorrect
Penn Resiliency Program (PRP)
- In-school group CBT program for middle-school students. Designed to prevent high school depression.
--> Cognitive restructuring:
- Skits, stories, role-playing illustrate concepts
- How we feel = how we think about situations
- They stress this. How we react to something is how the event went.
- Our interpretation is what the reality is
- Learn optimistic attribution style
- Shown cartoons with negative attributions
- Rewrite them to be positive
- Pessimism rife: New attributions more realistic
- Evaluate beliefs like a 'detective'
- Taught to think about the evidence for the negative attributions they make
- "What is it that supports my belief that i am unintelligent?"
--> Skill acquisition:
- Problem solving - Assertiveness
- Emotional-control
- Negotiation
- Relaxation
- Countering procrastination
Study on PRP - check handbook for more referencing

Optimism in psychotherapy
- Dichotomization: Success or failure
- Tendency to dichotomize for depressed people
- Have to appreciate partial successes
- Overgeneralization: one event = life in general
- Tendency to take one event and generalize
- Selective abstraction: focus on negative
- Focus on only negative aspects
- Disqualifying the positive
- Disregarding positive compliments, results etc
- Mind reading & fortune telling
- Its easier to predict failure with mind-reading and fortune telling
- Maximizing, minimizing

- Minimizing impact of positive things, & maximizing negative things
- Optimists go the other way
- Emotional reasoning: feelings = reality
- Feelings aren't necessarily reality
- Can't judge something solely on how you feel
- 'Should' statements: to control behaviour
- judging yourself
- Global labelling: "I'm a failure"
- Not local, but global
- Personalization: I am responsible.
- interpreting things in a personal way
Hope
- Agency: "sense of successful use of energy in the pursuit of goals in one's past, present and future" (Self-efficacy)
- Pathways: "Perceived capability of imagining ways to reach a given goal, including the formation of subgoals along the way" (Goal expectancy)
Trait Hope Scale
- 12 Items answered on 8-point Likert Scale
- 4 Agency items:
"I energetically pursue my goals"
"My past experiences prepare me well for the future"
"I've been pretty successful in life"
" I meet the goals I set for myself"
- 4 Pathways items:
"I can think of many ways to get out of a jam"
"There are lots of ways around any problem"
"I can think of many ways to get the things in life that are important to me"
"When others get discouraged, I know I can find a way to solve the problem"
- 4 distractor items:
"I feel tired most of the time"
"I am easily downed in an argument"
" I worry about my health"
"I usually find myself worrying about something"
Scores correlate positively with:
- LOT-R optimism scores
- Goal expectancy
- Self-esteem
Scores correlate negatively with:
- Depression
- Hopelessness

Antecedents of Hope
- No genetic contribution
- Learned cognitive set; taught by caregivers
- Attachment to caregivers crucial for hope
- Childhood trauma diminishes hope
--> Pathways learning:
- Cause-and-effect understanding from caregivers
- Begins earlier than agency thinking
--> Agency learning:
- Begins around 12 months
- Comes from insight into self as causal force
Associates of Hope
--> Psychological adjustment in children:
- Self worth (r= ~0.40)
- Perceived scholastic competence (r= ~0.45)
- Perceived social acceptance (r= ~0.35)
- Perceived athletic ability (r= ~0.30)
- Perceived physical appearance (r= ~0.25)
- Optimistic explanatory style (ASQ)
--> Psychological adjustment in adults:
- Positive affect (r= ~0.60)
- Negative affect (r= ~ -0.50)
- Self worth (r= ~0.50)
- Confidence, inspiration, energy in university
- better coping with stress
- More adaptive MMPI scores among psychiatric inpatients
--> Academic achievement:
- Achievement test scores in grade school
- GPA for high school students
- Grades in uni intro psych course
- Graduation, dropout rate in university students
- overall GPA for uni students
--> Athletic achievement:
- Curry et al (1997): performance of Division I female track athletes; rated athletic ability as controlled (56% of variance)
- No improvement with confidence, self-esteem, mood
--> Physical Health:
- More information seeking (cancer patients)
- More engagement in preventive measures (cancer patients et al)
- better adjustment, coping with illness (arthritis, major burns, spinal cord injuries, blindness, fibromyalgia)
- Snyder et al (2001): higher cold pressor pain tolerance
- 115 sec vs 60 sec tolerance
- less pain, more strategies for dealing with pain, more use of strategies
- Compliance with medical regiment (children, asthma inhaler)
- Persistence in drug treatment program

- Lower levels of nurse burnout in high stress jobs
--> Problem-solving:
- Associated with active, problem-focused coping after LOT optimism controlled

Meaningfulness
Baumeister: Four needs for meaning; "four patterns of motivation that guide how people try to make sense of their lives"
1. Purpose: Connection of present to future events.
Goals: Desired objective future states:
- Getting a Uni degree
- Getting married and having children
Fulfillments: desired subjective future states:
- Living happily ever after
- Going to heaven (for religious people)
2. Sense of efficacy: control over events, actions
3. Self-worth: Intrinsic personal value
4. Values: Moral, ethical grounds for action
--> Robak & Griffin (2000): Purpose, sense of coherence, predict positive functioning
--> Baumeister (1991): Anomie (a lack of purpose), alienation associated with psychological distress and pathology
- Argues that purpose, sense of efficacy & self-worth are easy to establish
- there is no strongly culturally agreed upon set of values
--> Wong & Fry (1998): Strong sense of meaning associated with life satisfaction & happiness; lack of meaning = depression, disengagement
Where do we find meaning?
- 3 research studies, same conclusions
1. Ebersole
--> life work
--> relationships
--> Religious beliefs
--> service
2. Emmons
--> Achievement
--> Intimacy
--> Religion/Spirituality
--> Service.
3. Wong
--> Achievement
--> Relationship
--> religion
--> Self-transcendence
Goals & Needs (Emmons)
1. Achievement/Power:

- be the best when with a group of people
- get others to see my point of view
2. Intimacy/relationships:
- help my friend
- accept others as they are
3. Religion/spirituality:
- deeper relationship with god
- Tune into deeper meaning with god
4. Self-transcendence/generativity:
- be useful to society
- Be a good role model for siblings
Goals & SWB
Greater SWB predicted by:
- Intimacy
- Religion
- self-transcendence
- Greater positive affect
- Marital satisfaction
- Overall life satisfaction
Lower SWB predicted by:
- achievement/power
- Higher levels of NA
Intrinsic & extrinsic goals
1.Kasser & Ryan (1996) - looking at US students & their various goals
- Higher levels of SWB for intrinsic goals
- Extrinsic goals (money, success, attractiveness):
- Negatively related to vitality, self-actualization
- Positively related to depression, anxiety, etc.
- Wanting things is a source of psychological stress
2. Ryan et al (1999) - replicated it with Russian students
- Exactly the same results
- Negatively related to self-actualization, self-esteem & life satisfaction
- Attaining extrinsic goals does not affect SWB
- Attaining intrinsic goals improves SWB
3. Kasser & Sheldon (2000):
- Activating anxiety:
- Increases estimates of future income
- Increases estimates of spending on possessions
- Does low emotional well-being drive materialism? Possibly
- Overall: Beyond basic level, no increase in SWB with increases to income (~70,000

dollars a year)
- Happiness is an outcome of worthwhile activities that do not have happiness as their primary focus
- Happiness is a byproduct, its not a goal
Making Meaning
1. Global Meaning-Making:
- Establishing basic values and long-term beliefs
2. Situation-specific Meaning-Making:
- Finding meaning in a situation that is congruent with L-T beliefs & values
- Benefit finding:
- Seeing the silver lining in adversity
- Attribution-finding:
- Making sense of adversity. Why did it happen?
Meaningfulness not = happiness
- Eg. Terrorists
- Can have meaningfulness without happiness
- Cannot have happiness without meaningfulness
Other benefits:
--> Establishes personal identity, self-worth
--> Meaning most important in misfortune
- Davis et al (1988): coping with death of family member aided by meaning making:
- Making sense of the loss
- Finding something positive in the experience
- For 12 months, making sense predicted less distress
- For 18 months, finding positive predicted less distress
Health & Meaning Making
--> James Pennebaker & colleagues: looked at writing about traumatic events & illness, and its subsequent affects in physical & psychological functioning
Results in:
- improving immune system functioning
- Reduces illness & physician visits
- Improves liver enzyme functioning
--> Bower et al (1998): dealing with loss of partner due to AIDS in HIV-positives (gay individuals who had the disease themselves)
As a result of meaning-making: -->
- Slower HIV progression
--> Easterling et al (1999): Writing about traumatic event
- Higher negative, lower positive affect initially
- Higher positive, lower negative affect weeks later
Meaning and psychotherapy
- There are some therapies that focus of making meaning out of things.
- All the therapies work for someone

--> Quality of Life therapy: revisiting goals, standards, and priorities to boost life happiness and satisfaction (Frisch, 1998)
--> Meaning-Centered Counseling: Wong (1998)
- Creates/develops individual sense of 'meaning of life'
--> Goal-focused group psychotherapy (Klausner et al, 1998)
-- > Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy
- Father of meaning therapy
- Went to concentration camps from nazi germany
- Logotherapy = mostly applies to individuals who lack a sense of meaning
Frankl: "self-actualization is not man's ultimate destination. If made an end in itself, it contradicts the self-trascendent quality of human existence."
- Humanists emphasize importance of 'meaningless'

Gratitude
Def: "An acute, intense, and relatively brief reaction to being the recipient of a benefit from another" (relatively unexpected)
- In forgiveness, you might need to forgive yourself
- In gratitude, you don't ever need to be grateful to yourself
-- can study both forgiveness & gratitude on a physiological, emotional way
BOTH can be seen as:
- A personality trait
- A moral virtue
- A habit
- a way of life
-- Grateful person is:
- Motivated to prosocial behaviour
- energized to sustain prosocial behaviour
- Inhibited from destructive interpersonal behaviour
Functions of gratitude:
1. Moral barometer:
- alerts people to receiving prosocial behaviour from others
2. Moral motivator:
- Stimulates us to behave prosaically towards others, as they have towards us
3. Moral reinforcer:
- Reinforce us to prosocial behaviour towards others
Gratitude as Affective Trait
- More frequent experiences of gratitude
- More intense gratitude for event
- Respond to more situations with gratitude
- Generalize gratitude to more people for given event
--- We look at trait gratitude

Measuring gratitude
Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6)
- 6 questions
- Max score: 42, minimum: 6
-- McCullough et al (2002)
- GQ-6 scores associations
Match with:
1. External observer ratings of gratitude
2. Positive affect
3. Well-being
(not sure which way round it is)
4. Prosocial behaviour
5. Religiousness, spirituality
6. Low envy
7. Low materialism
8. Extraversion
9. Agreeableness
10. Low neuoroticism
Gratitude, Resentment, Appreciation test (GRAT)
Factor analysis reveals that 3 items are being tapped in the GRAT:
1. Abundance (A)
2. Simple appreciation (SA)
3. Appreciation of others (AO)
- Items rated on a 9-point likert scale
GRAT factors:
Abundance (17 items)
Simple appreciation (14 items)
Appreciation of others (13 items)
GRAT sees gratitude as:
- Acknowledging importance of experiencing and expressing gratitude
- Lack of resentment with respect to benefits received
- Appreciation for contribution of others to benefits received
- Appreciation of frequent simple pleasures rather than extravagant, infrequent pleasures GRAT Sample Items
- examples provided on slides
Grat Correlations
Positively correlated with satisfaction with life scale (SWLS): r= 0.5-0.6
Negatively correlated with Beck depression inventory: r= -0.34 - -0.56

Effects of Gratitude
1. Relationships:
- Gordon et al :: if appreciated by partner, then more appreciative of partner; more responsive to partner's needs, more committed to relationship
- Its reciprocal
- Leads you to be more sensitive, appreciative
- Has an increasingly positive affect
- Gordon et al (2011) :: gratitude and marital satisfaction in 50 L-T couples:
- Both felt and expressed gratitude positively
- Related to marital satisfaction
- Feels gratitude predicted spouse's satisfaction
- Expressed gratitude did NOT predict spouse's satisfaction
- EXPRESSION does not matter so much…
- Kubacka et al (2011): 4-year longitudinal study of gratitude and relationship maintenance in married couples:
- Gratitude towards partner based on partner's relationship maintenance behaviours - Gratitude motivates partner's relationship maintenance behaviors
- Algoe et al (2010): gratitude and indebtedness in cohabiting couples:
- Thoughtful benefits motivated both gratitude and indebtedness
- Gratitude predicted increased relationship connection and satisfaction on following day
Prosocial Behavior:
- Grant & Gino (2010): written expressions of gratitude motivate prosocial behaviour in helpers: - Expression of gratitude motivate helper to be prosocial toward grateful beneficiary, and to others
- Those who received the expression of gratitude for helping behaviour were more likely to once again help the beneficiary again (because he said thank you)
- Work with the norm of reciprocity
- Effects mediated by feelings of social worth, not by affect or sense of self-efficacy
Froh, Bono & Emmons (2010): Longitudinal study of 700 adolescents gratitude and social integration:
- T1 gratitude predicted T2 prosocial behaviour and T3 social integration, mediated by life satisfaction
- Gratitude & prosocial behaviour serially enhanced each other; upward spiral toward more emotional, social well-being
Effects of Gratitude
Personal Health:
- Kendler et al (2003): in 2600 twins, thankfulness associated with reduced risk of internalizing, externalizing disorders
- Wood et al (2009): gratitude associated with better sleep quality, duration, lower daytime dysfunction

- Relationship mediated by more positive, fewer negative pre-sleep thoughts
- All relationship independent of personality traits, social desirability
- Kahlo (2010): positive relationship between GRAT & multiple dimensions of wellness in 160 uni students
- Toepfer (2012): writing letters of gratitude increased happiness, LS and reduced depressive symptoms
- Ruini (2012): 67 breast cancer patients, compared those expressing high vs low levels of gratitude (GQ-6), split in the middle of the scale (27 high, 40 low)
- Gratitude positively related to all aspect of post-traumatic growth, and to positive well being
- Gratitude negatively related to anxiety, depression, hostility-irritability
Vernon et al (2009): Coping and PTSD symptoms in 182 university women with traumatic history.
How were they recovering from it?
- Post-trauma gratitude negatively related to PTSD symptom severity
Gratitude & Well-being
- SWLS correlated positively with gratitude & optimism
- Gratitude & forgiveness // well-being in psychotherapy outpatients
- Writing about gratitude associated with higher levels of several measures of wellbeing in experimental study (STATE gratitude)
Other studies predict:
- HK teachers (school system is highly pressured)
- high level of stress and burnout
- Gratitude negatively associate to burnout
- Gratitude negatively related to athlete burnout
Gratitude mediates between personality & well-being
- Gratitude fully mediated relationship between agreeableness & SWB;
- Partially mediated relationship between SWB & extraversion
- Gratitude explained significant variance in psychological well-being, after controlling for facets of Big 5
- GRAT explain significant variance in LS, controlling for big 5 personality factors
How does gratitude improve well-being?
1. Facilitates coping with stress
- Providing useful coping skills
- Seeking social support
- Positive reframing: focus on benefits, others; less focus on losses
- Active, approach-oriented problem-solving
2. Reduces negative comparisons
-With others better off than oneself
- With better possible life outcomes than one had
3. Reduces materialistic strivings
- Gratitude mediates relationship between materialism and well-being
- Grateful people less materialistic

4. Improves self-esteem
5. Enhances accessibility of positive emotions
- Grateful people have positive memory bias
- Gratitude promotes closure of unpleasant open memories
6. Builds social resources
- Forms new relationships; broadens thought-action repertoires
- Strengthens existing relationships: more desirable friends & partners
Gratitude Outcomes
--> Emmons & McCullough (2003):
- Grateful listers more optimistic about future, in better health,
- Spent more time exercising, more PA than hassles, events or comparison listers
--> Watkins (2003)
- More PA in conditions in which Ps think about, write about gratitude, or write letters to giver than in control condition
--> Chan (2010):
- Gratitude intervention in HK chinese teachers raises PA, LS, especially for teachers in initially low in reported gratitude
--> carson et al (2010):
- mental health outpatients who kept monthly gratitude diary reported improved LS, higher social feelings, greater gratitude
--> Froh & Emmons (2008):
- Early adolescents in gratitude condition reported more gratitude, optimism etc with school experience at 3-week follow-up
- These are kids who are at a risk of dropping out of school
--> Froh et al (2009)
- Children, adolescents who delivered letters of gratitude reported more PA than events lispers a 2-month follow-up

Forgiveness
- Black man raped young white woman
- Full story
- She identified him with absolute certainty
- she memorized him when the rape was taking place
- 10 years later DNA testing revealed he wasn't responsible
- later he forgave her
- Wrote a book called: "Picking Cotton"
- Became friends
Defining Forgiveness
- forgiveness as a response:
- Feelings, cognitions, behaviours, become less negative, more prosocial
- Forgiveness as personal disposition:
- Tendencey to forgive others across range of situations

- Forgiveness as characteristic of social units
Forgiveness is not:
- condoning
- excusing
- pardoning
- reconciliation
- forgetting or denying
Unforgiveness as a Stress Reaction
1. It feels stressful
2. It creates similar physiological states:
- BP, HR, EMG similar to anger in imagined unforgiveness
- Anger reduces PFC activity, increases limbic activity
- trait forgiveness associated with reduced levels of stress
- Hormonal control
3. It creates similar moods and mental states
Model
Challenge or threat
Cognitive processing
Coping strategies
Dealt with by emotion replacement:
- Empathy
- Sympathy
- Compassion
Measuring Forgiveness
1. Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS):
- 18 items, 7-point likert scale, both self and other and situation - forgiveness
"It is really hard for me to accept myself once i have messed up"
3 kinds:
- Self
- Other
- Situation
2. Transgressions-related interpersonal motivations inventory (TRIMS)
- rates revenge and avoidance (unforgiveness)
4. Enright Forgiveness Inventory (EFI): 60 items in 3, 20-item subscales.
- Affect subscale: "I feel ______ toward him or her".
- Behavior subscale: "Regarding him, I do or would _______ "
- Cognition subscale: "I think he or she is ________"

Developing Forgiveness:
Enright et al (1989): Related to Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning stage 1: Punishment & obedience
- in this stage, moral actions are determined by consequences only
Stage 2: instrumental relativist
- whether the actions satisfy the needs of that individual
- Morality is defined by the pleasure the person enjoys from it
- most of the world is here
- Restitutional forgiveness: forgiveness only appropriate after restitution made
Stage 3: interpersonal concordance
- Individual judges morality on what people expect/want
- More socially determined
- Expectational forgiveness: because society expects it from us
Stage 4: Law and order
- Lawful forgiveness: forgiveness when religion demands it
- Religious law used to determine forgiveness
Stage 5: Social contract
- Forgiveness when it restores harmony or good relations in society
- Principles that are true for the whole of society
Stage 6: interpersonal concordance
- forgive unconditionally because it promotes a true sense of love
Personality & forgiveness
- Forgivers less depressed, anxious, hostile
- Forgivers les ruminative
- Forgivers less narcissistic
- Forgivers less hostile, angry, exploitative, and more empathic
Social factors and forgiveness
- Seriousness of offense
- Intentionality of offender
- Presence or absence of apology
- Reduce negative affect toward offender, increasing empathy
- perhaps help separate offender from offence
- Until 2009, if you apologized for anything, it would mean taking guilty responsibility of the crime
- until 2009, apology = indication of guilt
Forgiveness, Health & Well-being
- State forgiveness (Weakly) related to:
- lower negative affect
- Fewer psychological symptoms
- Friedman et al (1986): Type A given CBT for hostility vs standard cardiology treatment:
(type A personality = outgoing, vivacious, very present)
(at risk of High BP, etc)

- CBT showed lower hostility
- Greater reduction in heart problems
- Patients indicate forgiveness key to improvement
- Witvliet et al (2001): students imagine forgiving or unforgiving responses to real-life offences. - Students had to pick transgression
- Forgivers have lower BP, HR, GSR,
- Forgivers have less NA
- Forgivers have higher levels of perceived control
Robert Enright's Model of Interpersonal Forgiveness
1. Uncovering phase:
- Examining psychological defenses
- Confronting anger
- Admitting shame or embarrassment
- Awareness of the cathexis - energy expenditure
- Awareness of rumination
- Insight re comparison with perpetrator
- Realization of permanent adverse change in self
- Insight into altered 'just world' view --> more cynicism
2. Decision phase:
- change of heart; old resolutions strategies not working
- Willingness to consider forgiveness as an option
- Commitment to forgive the offender
3. Work phase:
- Reframing: seeing the offender in context
- Empathy toward the offender
- Awareness of emerging compassion toward offender
- Acceptance, absorption of the pain
4. Deepening phase:
- Finding meaning in suffering and forgiveness
- Realization that self need forgiveness in past
- Insight that one is not alone
- Realization of possible new life purpose due to injury
- Awareness of decreased NA
- Awareness of emerging PA
- Awareness of internal emotional release
Worthington's REACH Model
Recall: transgression in supportive environment
- Stop avoiding consideration of transgression
Empathize: with the transgressor

- Imagine, write offender's thoughts, reasons
Altruistic: gift of forgiveness
- Instill humility; remember own transgressions
- Recall own release through forgiveness
Commit: to emotional forgiveness experienced
- make internal emotional forgiveness public
- write certificate, letter, of forgiveness
Hold: onto forgiveness despite doubts
- Recalling hurt not same as unforgiveness
- Don't attempt conscious block of emotions
- Emotion, anger management techniques
Successful Forgiveness Interventions
1- Multiple methods to reduce unforgiveness
2. Commitment to forgiveness (public - harder to back away)
3. Empathy or positive emotions toward other
Results:
- Promoting altruistic attitude
- Generalizing to increase forgiveness

Readings: Chapter 3, Chapter 8 (page 175-200), Chapter 11
- Menninger's "sublime expressions of the life instinct": Hope, faith & love
- Sumerians & Egyptians drew distinctions between hysteria & melancholy @ 2600 BC
- Confucian teachings @ 500BC addressed a set of virtues:
- Jen (humanity or benevolence)
- Li (observance of rituals)
- Xin (Truth)
- Yi (Justice)
- Zhi (wisdom)
Measure 1: Gallup's Clifton Strengthsfinder
- Clifton's analysis of success was on the question of:
"What would happen if we studied what is right with people?"
- He thought talents could be studied
- Defined talent as: "naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behaviour tat can be productively applied"
- Saw strengths as extensions of talent
- Saw success to be extensions of personal talents, intelligence
- Designed interview questions based on identifying these talents
- Interviews were useful in predicting positive outcomes and then administered to 2 million + people for the purposes of personal enrichment & employee selection
There are 34 CS themes!

(individualization, input, intellection, learner, maximizer etc…)
- 1999 launch had 35 themes
- 2008 = CS 2.0
- Internally consistent, stable over long periods, test-retest correlations of 0.70 +
- available in 17 languages, accessible for individuals with disabilities
- not sensitive to change; should not be used for pre/post measure of growth
Measure 2: the Via Classification of Strengths
- Is a way to understand strength-based approach to diagnosis & treatment
- Generated to answer these 2 questions:
1. how can one define the concepts of strengths and higher potential
2. How can one tell that a positive youth development program has succeeded in meeting its goals
Character components =
1. virtues
2. character strengths
3. situational themes
- 24 strengths identified, organized under 6 sets of virtues
Virtues=
1. Wisdom & knowledge
2. Courage
3. Humanity
4. Justice
5. Temperance
6. Transcendence
- Measure of this system of virtues and strengths = values in action inventory of strengths (VIA-IS)
--> Factor analysis suggest 5 factors:
1. Strengths of restraint
2. Intellectual strengths
3. Interpersonal strengths
4. Emotional strengths
5. Theological strengths
- Online version gives you five strengths called "signature strengths"
- There is a VIA-Youth version as well
Measure 3: The Search Institute's 40 developmental assets
Developed in response to question of: "what protects children from today's problems?"
- Assets = commonsense, positive experiences & qualities
- 20 external assets: positive experiences that children/youth gain through interactions with people and institutions
- 20 internal assets: personal characteristics and behaviours that stimulate the positive development of young people
Has:
- 8 thriving indicators
- 5 developmental deficits
- 24 risk-taking behaviours

Comparing the 3 studies
- all 3 identify a person' primary strengths
- More studies on cultural equivalence must be conducted
- Its easier to criticize than it is to describe strengths
- People should take the time to discover their strengths, more so than their weaknesses
- A new or validated information about your personal strengths will give you a slight, temporary boost in positive emotions and confidence
The Case of Shane
- An example of a person
Positive Outcomes for All
--> Dimensions of Well-Being
- Pursuit of happiness = 1 aspect of positive psychology
- Subjective well-being: individual appraisals of their own lives capture the essence of well-being - Objective well-being approaches have been proposed by Ryff & Keyes
3 types of well-being
1. Psychological well-being:
- Self-acceptance
- Personal growth
- Purpose in life
- Environmental mastery
- Autonomy
- Positive relations with others
2. Social well-being:
- Social acceptance
- Social actualization
- Social contribution
- Social integration
3. Emotional well-being:
- Positive affect
- Negative affect
- Life satisfaction
- Happiness
(Keyes, 2009)
- High levels of well-being in all three fields (psychological, social & emotional) are described as flourishing
- Individuals with no mental illness but who have low levels of well-being are described as languishing

(Ong & Zautra, 2009)
- researchers must use techniques that explicate:
- Nomothetic (between person)
- Idiographic (within-person)
- Differences so as to avoid extra sources of error
Towards a better understanding of positive outcomes
Positive Outcomes & love
- Agape: spiritual love that reflects selflessness & altruism
- Romantic love: talked about, much celebrated
- Reslient romantic love, or sustained romantic love: Long-term relationships!
Positive outcomes & school, work, Play & civic contributions
Positive outcomes associated with:
- love
- school
- work
- play
- civic contributions
Chapter 8 (Page 175-200)
Optimism
- Learned Optimism
- Seligman's definition: The optimist uses adaptive causal attributions to explain negative experiences or events. Optimist makes external, variable, and specific attributions for failure-like events rather than the internal, stable and global attributions of the pessimist.
- The optimist explains bad things in such a manner:
1. Account for the role of other people and environments in producing bad outcomes
2. To interpret the bad event as not likely to happen again
3. To constrain the bad outcome to just one performance area and not others
Childhoods antecedents of learned optimism
- Some genetic component of explanatory style
- Learned optimism scores more highly correlated for MZ than DZ twins
- Environmental : safe, cohesive environments = better learned optimism
- Parents: externalize failures and internalize wins
- Television watching is another source of pessimism
- More television watching = more bullying at older ages
Neurobio of optimism & pessimism

- Pessimism & depression // abnormal limbic system functioning + dysfunctional lateral
PFC + Paralimbic system
- Depression = deficiencies in neurotransmitters
- Serotonergic cells located in dorsal raphia nucleus are reactive to perceived controls
- Control-induced release of serotonin in the amygdala
- Depression = associated with depleted endorphin secretion + defective immune functioning - Neurobio markers in the brain that are linked to perceived control & pessimism
Measuring Optimism:
1. Attributional style questionnaire (ASQ):
2. Childrens = CASQ
- Given a positive or negative life event, respondents are asked to indicate what they believe to be the causal explanations of those events on the dimensions of:
- internal/external
- stable/transient
- global/specific
3. Content analysis of verbal explanation (CAVE)
- to derive ratings of optimism from written/spoken words
- unobtrusive method
What does learned optimism predict?
1. Better academic performance
2. Superior athletic performance
3. More productive work records
4. Greater satisfaction in interpersonal relationships
5. More effective coping with life stressors
6. Less vulnerability to depression
7. Superior physical health
Optimism - Scheier & Carver
Defining Optimism as Expectancies of Reaching a Desired Goal
- Def: " optimism = the stable tendency to believe that good rather than bad things will happen" - do not define the role of personal efficacy in it
- designed the life orientation test (LOT) - positive/negative expectancies
- LOT // positively with expectancy for success
- LOT // negatively with hopelessness and depression
- LOT-R formed after criticisms of its overlap with neuroticism
- Higher scores of LOT-R result in:
1. Better recovery in coronary bypass surgery
2. Dealing more effectively with AIDS
3. Enduring cancer biopsies more easily

4. Better adjustment to pregnancy
5. Continuing in treatment for alcohol abuse
Optimism Predicts:
- The best in situations
- Starting college
- Performing in work situations
- Enduring a missile attack
- Caring for alzheimer's patients & cancer patients
- Undergoing coronary bypass surgeries and bone marrow transplants
- Coping with cancer and AIDS
- coping in general
- Suppression of immune system
- Decreasing negative thinking does not increase positive thinking
- Negative & positive cognitions are not correlated
Hope
- C.R Snyder: Hope = "a goal-directed thinking in which the person utilizes pathways thinking & agency thinking"
- Hoping = "approach-oriented OR preventative"
- Pathways thinking & personal self-talk statements really help as well
- High hopers: positive emotional sets & a sense of zest
- Low hopers: negative emotional sets and a sense of emotional flatness that stems from their histories of having failed in goal pursuits.
Childhood antecedents of Hope
Neurobio of Hope
- Goal-directed actions are guided by opposing control processes in the CNS
- These processes are regulated by behavioural inhibition system (BIS) & behavioural activation system (BAS)
- BIS is responsive to punishment, signals the organism to stop
- BAS is governed by rewards and sends the message to go forward
- Facilitation (BFS): drives incentive-seeking actions of organisms
- BFS includes dopamine pathways of the midbrain that connects to limbic system & the amygdala Measuring Hope
- Hope theory/scale
- Children's Hope Scale (CHS): 3 items reflect agency thinking & 3 reflect pathways thinking - State hope scale (SHS): a 6-item self-report scale that taps here-and-now goaldirected thinking
- SHS scores increase/decrease according to situational successes or failures in goaldirected activities

Hope predicts:
- Optimism, self-efficacy, self-esteem
- academics, sports, physical health, adjustment, psychotherapy

Putting Temporal Futures in Perspective
The Past:
@ western perspective: the past orientation can produce a very conservative, overly cautious approach to one's life
@ eastern perspective: paying attention to the past might ensure safe passage of traditions and ritual from generation to generation
Personal Mini-experiments:
- Zimbardo Time perspective Inventory: a scale to measure the degree to which each of the following 5 temporal orientations best describe you across situations:
1. Past-negative
2. Past-positive
3. Present-fatalistic
4. Present-hedonistic
5. Future
--> fit into the temporal orientation you live in
Cultural Caveats about Temporal Perspective
- Time as polychromic: many things are conceptualized as happening at once with people -> works for: American indians, latinos/latinas, african americans, asian americans
- Time as linear: sequential & monochromic
--> Works for: European american culture
Higher pessimism:
- @asian americans --> greater problem solving
- @caucasian americans --> Less problem solving
Strong predictors of agentic thinking:
- LS in European Americans
- Rational problem solving in Latinos
- Positive affect inAsian Americans
Chapter 11 - Empathy & Egotism
Can lead to : atriums, gratitude & forgiveness
Altruism
- Motivated by: personal egotism or pure empathic desire to benefit another person

- Volunteerism helps
--> Egotism Motive
- Prevailing viewpoint since the renaissance
- I do it because it helps me
--> Forms of egotism-motivated altruism
Receive:
- Public praise
- Material rewards or honors
- Might just feel good to help someone
- Or it helps us escape a form of guilt
Egotistical actions involving altruism take the three forms:
1. Helping person gets public praise or even a monetary reward
2. Helping person avoids social or personal punishments for failing to help
3. Helping person may lessen his/her personal distress at seeing another's trauma
--> Empathy Motive
- empathy: "emotional response to the perceived plight of another person"
- Batson: altruism is empathic - there is egotistical in some situations
- Empathy-altruism hypothesis:
- instances in which egotism does not appear to explain such helping behaviours
- Individuals higher in empathy still help those in need
- Pure altruism arising from human empathy = viable motive for helping
--> genetic & neural foundations of empathy
- Prefrontal & parietal cortices are essential for empathy
- Empathy requires the capacity to form internal simulations of another's bodily or mental states
- Damage in the PFC leads to impairments in appraising the emotions of other people
- "mirror neurones"- react identically when an animal performs an action or witnesses another animal performing the same action
Cultivating Altruism
Egotism-based approaches to enhancing altruistic actions
- Volunteer-based work
- Doing something to improve your self-esteem
Empathy-based approaches to enhancing altruistic actions
- INteracting more with people who need help
- working with people who especially want to see themselves as different from others
Values-based approaches to enhancing altruistic actions
- Volunteering is important to self-esteem
- Social values & norms
- Collectivism= a form of altruism or prosocial behaviour that affects an entire community

Measuring Altruism
1. Self-report altruism scale
2. Prosocial Behaviour Questionnaire
- Used by teachers to report prosocial behaviour
3. Helping attitude scale
- measure that taps beliefs, feelings, and behaviours related to helping
Gratitude
Definition:
- Kindness, generousness, gifts, the beauty of giving and receiving"
- Gratitude emerges upon recognizing that one has obtained a positive outcome from another individual who behaved in a way that was :
1. Costly to him or her
2. Valuable to the recipient
3. Intentionally rendered
- Gratitude taps into the propensity to appreciate and savour everyday events and experiences - Gratitude should be greater when the giving person's actions are judged praiseworthy and when they deviate positively from that which was expected
- Benefit finding: coming through a major medical crisis and discover benefits in that experience - Aristotle: did not like gratitude, so it unfavourably
- Magnanimous people view gratitude as demeaning and reflective of needless indebtedness to others
- Cultivating gratitude
Keep a gratitude journal, helps with:
1. More exercise
2. Optimism about the upcoming week
3. Feeling better about their lives
In a test, gratitude folk were more:
1. optimistic
2. energetic
3. more connected to other people
4. more likely to have restful sleep
- Japanese meditation form = Naikan
- encourages a person's sense of gratitude
- Questions:
1. what did i receive?
2. What did i give?
3. What troubles & difficulties did I cause to others?
- times of strife may lead to emphasis of different priorities and might offer opportunities to build on positive traits like gratitude

- emmons
--> Gratefulness is NOT synonymous with lack of motivation and greater complacency in life" --> Gratitude was never linked to passivity
--> Gratitude is an active and affirming process
Measuring Gratitude
- List what you are grateful for
- Write stories of gratefulness and code them
--> it is a common response in older women who were living in poverty
--> kidney recipients frequently cited their gratitude towards their donors
--> Laird et al: 3-item thanksgiving self-report subscale where people respond to the items on the list called Multidimensional Prayer Inventory - worded in terms of religious prayer, higher scores // higher religious practices
Test: Gratitude, resentment & appreciation test (GRAT)
3 factors: resentment, simple appreciation & social appreciation
Test: GQ-6
- 6 item questionnaire
- Respondents endorse each item on a 7-point likert scale
- High gratitude on the GQ-6 // positively with positive emotions, vitality, optimism, hope
Psychophysiological underpinnings of Gratitude
Appreciation:
- produces a more coherent pattern of heart rhythms
- calming pattern of heartbeats per minute
- synchrony between alpha brain wave activity and heartbeats
- synchrony of heartbeat and EEG was higher in the left hemisphere
Forgiveness:
I. Thompson: Forgiveness is a freeing from negative attachment to the source
II. McCullough: Forgiveness is an increase in prosocial motivation toward another that there is :
1. less desire to avoid the transgressing person & to harm or seek revenge toward that individual 2. Increased desire to act positively toward the transgressing person
III. Enright: Forgiving person needs to develop a benevolent stand toward the transgressing person
- Forgiveness cannot be extended to situations that must be direct only at people
IV. Tangney: Giving up of negative emotions is the crux of the forgiving process
Individual & Group conceptualizations of Forgiveness
- Its how you conceptualize forgiveness that matters
- Forgiveness can be interpersonal or interpersonal

- Forgiveness plays a role in some cultures more than in other cultures (east vs west)
Forgiving another person
- Snyder study has 3 steps to doing this:
1. promote a nondistorted, realistic appraisal of the relationship of 2 people
2. Facilitate a release from the bond of ruminative, negative affect held toward the violating partner
3. Help the victimized partner lessen his or her desire to punish the transgressing partner - Forgiveness // stages of recovery from psychological trauma
1. Impact stage
2. Recovery stage
3. Impact stage
4. meaning stage
Forgiveness model of Everett Worthington of Virginia Commonwealth University
- Model of helping partners through REACH:
- Recall the hurt and the nature of the injury caused
- Promote empathy in both partners
- Altruistically give the gift of forgiveness between partners
- Commit verbally to forgive the partner,
- Hold onto the forgiveness for each other
Forgiving oneself
- To remove guilt, one has to confess or apologize
- Its hard to deal with guilt because it cuts through more situations thatn the singlesituational focus of guilt
- Self-forgiveness = difficult
Forgiveness of a Situation
- Enright: forgiveness is only to people
- CAN be for a situation
Measuring Forgiveness
1. Heartland forgiveness scale (HFS) - 18 traits of forgiveness
- 3 types of forgiveness: self, other or situation
2. Transgression-related interpersonal motivations inventory (TRIM)
I. the motive to avoid contact with the transgressing person
II. motive to seek revenge against the transgressor
- TRIM = transgression-specific index of forgiveness.
3. Enright:
--> Enright-forgiveness inventory (EVI)
- assesses respondent's thoughts about a most recent interpersonal transgression

--> Willingness to forgive scale (WTF)
-valid estimate of the degree to which a person is willing to use forgiveness as a problem-solving coping strategy
4. Tangney:
Multidimensional Forgiveness inventory (MFI)
- 72 items, tap 9 subscales
Evolutionary & Neurobiological basis of forgiveness
- Forgiveness = break in violence of humans
- Lower the overall level of hostility
- has an adaptive evolutionary advantage to preserve the social structure
- Forgiveness = good sense of self
Sense of self = frontal, parietal and temporal lobes
- Injury to the self is registered via sensorimotor input, which is mediated by the limbic system, sympathetic nervous system & hypothalamus
- Initiation of the reconciliation process by the person transgressed against involves actuation of the temporal, parietal & frontal lobes
- Outward direction of the forgiveness occurs through the limbic system and is associated with positive emotions

Social Implications:
Of Empathy/egotism & altruism
- Act unconsciously/consciously to mute our sense of empathy toward other people
- Need to enhance empathy to address large-scale problems like AIDS
- Within multicultural and cross-cultural interactions
- Getting to fully understand another person
Of empathy/egotism & gratitude:
- to the point where we can understand and take the perspective of another person, it is more likely that we will express our sense of gratitude for the other person's actions
Of empathy/egotism & forgiveness:
- Empathy is a precursor to forgiving another person
- Ripple effects of altruism, gratitude and forgiveness

Altruism,gratitude,forgiveness --> Reciprocity to source person --> Empathy/egotism --> altruism, gratitude, forgiveness -- >increased likelihood of moral behaviour