Grenville-Cleave - Introducing Positive Psychology: A Practical Guide

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.

Aldous Huxley

Positive psychology is the scientific study of optimal human functioning and what makes life worth living. In other words, it is the psychology of the characteristics, conditions and processes which lead to flourishing. Researching what goes right for individuals, communities and organizations is every bit as important to us as understanding what goes wrong. Although when positive psychology was originally launched over a decade ago, it distanced itself from other branches of psychology, there is no doubt that it has its roots in the work of William James in the late 19th century, and humanistic psychology in the mid-20th century, as well as in the work of ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato. The main difference is that, as a science, it focuses on discovering the empirical evidence for thriving. But its not science for its own sake its the applications that were interested in. How can we use empirical research to improve our own well-being?

Its fair to say that some of the research topics which now fall under the umbrella of positive psychology are not new and some even pre-date it. Topics such as optimism, motivation and emotional intelligence had been studied for many years before positive psychology came along. But there are many other areas of optimal functioning which were under-researched, and about which we knew very little, such as gratitude, hope and curiosity. The vast majority of psychology studies carried out over the past 40+ years have focused on the negative sides of life, such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and post-traumatic stress disorder. Positive psychology redresses this imbalance by focusing on the human traits and circumstances which lead to thriving. Although some of the research evidence may seem like common sense, there is a great deal which is new, surprising and even counter-intuitive.

Positive psychology originates from the University of Pennsylvania in the USA, where there is now a Positive Psychology Center (see the Resources section at the back of the book for details). The founders are psychology professors Martin Seligman, who is well-known for his pioneering work on learned helplessness and later on learned optimism, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Cheek-sent-me-high-ee), best known for his work Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (see Chapter 5 for more on flow). The positive psychology movement began around 1998, when Seligman chose it as the theme for his inaugural address as President of the American Psychological Association. Since then, thousands of new research articles and books on the subject have been written, several new academic journals published (for example, the