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POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY:Criticisms of ‘Traditional’ Psychology, Optimism

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LESSON 23
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
The field of Positive Psychology has originated from Humanistic Psychology. It may generally be defined as
the scientific study of human happiness. The history of psychology as a science shows that the field has
been primarily dedicated to addressing mental illness rather than mental wellness. Its research programs and
application models have dealt mainly with how people are wrong rather than how they are right. The need
to correct this bias was anticipated in psychological writings as early as those of the American psychologist
and philosopher William James. In his 1902 book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, James argues that
happiness is a chief concern of human life and those who pursue it should be regarded as "healthy-minded."
Several humanistic psychologists--such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Erich Fromm--developed
successful theories and practices that involved human happiness despite there being a lack of solid empirical
evidence behind their work. However, it is the pioneering research of Martin Seligman, Ed Diener, Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, Christopher Peterson, Don Clifton, and many others that promises to put the study of
human happiness onto a firms scientific foundation and add some positivity to the predominantly negative
discipline of psychology.
Positive psychology is a new and rapidly expanding field focused on the empirical study of human
flourishing. One of its central missions is the development of an operationalzed classification of the
strengths and virtues that constitute character. The aim is to foster the identification, measurement, and
cultivation of these strengths and virtues.
It may be considered as the scientific pursuit of optimal human functioning and the building of a field
focusing on human strength and virtue. It builds on the bench science and research methods that shed light
on the "dark side" of human functioning, and it opens the door to understanding prevention and health
promotion. Dr. Seligman (1998) noted:
"We have discovered that there is a set of human strengths that are the most likely buffers against mental
illness: courage, optimism, interpersonal skill, work ethic, hope, honesty and perseverance. Much of the task
of prevention will be to create a science of human strength whose mission will be to foster these virtues in
young people."
Criticisms of `Traditional' Psychology
The following is a list of some of the main criticisms Seligman and others advance against traditional,
empirical psychology:
·  Traditional psychology has an underlying negative bias whereby it assumes that human beings are
largely motivated by negative emotions such as jealousy or by self-serving ends. For example,
according to such a view, Princess Diana did not campaign against land mines because she wanted
to end human suffering but because she was narcissistic or motivated by rage against the
Royal Family.
·  Psychologists have operated within a disease model and have therefore spent time researching
everything which could go wrong with the human brain and personality. This means they have
spent little time defining positive human traits such as altruism or kindness. Largely as a result of
psychologists' bias, people in western society as a whole have lost the capacity to think in terms of
virtue or good character.
·  Psychologists have spent much more time studying negative emotions such as anger or depression
rather than positive emotions such as happiness or joy.
·  Psychology's emphasis on the negative side of life means it is, in Seligman's terminology, `half-
baked' as it does not adequately look at the whole range of human experience.
·  Psychology has focused on identifying and fixing weaknesses rather than identifying and building
on people's strengths.
·  Traditional psychology renders individuals passive victims of things which happen to them in life.
It does not tend to see them as being masters of their own fate or in control of their emotions.
Positive Psychology has the following characteristics:
·  It is interested in what has been termed `the science of optimal human functioning'.
·  It wants to learn what works from studying human success rather than human failure or
weaknesses.
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It focuses attention on positive subjective experiences such as happiness and well-being as well as
positive human characteristics such as strengths and virtues.
·  It is not just interested in individuals but in how group structures such as organisations, families or
cultures can induce positive emotion and encourage the use of strengths.
Positive Psychology concerns with:
1. Optimism
2. Hope
3. Emotional Intelligence
4. Self Efficacy
5. Subjective Well-being (SWB)
Optimism
Optimism is the extent to which a person sees life in positive or negative terms. A popular expression used
to convey this idea concerns the glass half filled with water. A person with a lot of optimism will tend to see
it as half full, whereas a person with les optimism (a pessimist) will often see it as half empty. Optimism is
also related to positive and negative affectivity. In general, optimistic people tend to handle stress better.
They will be able to see the positive characteristics of the situation and recognize that things may eventually
improve. In contrast, les optimistic people may focus more on the negative characteristics of the situation
and expect things to get worse, not better.
It may be defined as an outlook on life such that one maintains a view of the world as a positive place. It is
the opposite of pessimism. Optimists generally believe that people and events are inherently good, so that
most situations work out in the end for the best.
Martin Seligman, in researching this area, criticizes academics for focusing too much on causes for
pessimism and not enough on optimism. He points out that in the last three decades of the 20th century
journals published 46,000 psychological papers on depression and only 400 on joy.
Optimism has been shown to be correlated with better immune systems in healthy people who have been
subjected to stress.
Optimism also has its drawbacks, for example, in organizations optimistic managers may become distracted
from making necessary action plans to attain goals.
Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, describe positive psychology as: Well being, content,
satisfaction, capacity for love, courage, sensibility, forgiveness, responsibility, tolerance and work ethic.
A useful definition of optimism was offered by anthropologist Lionel Tiger (1979): "a mood or attitude
associated with an expectation about the social or material future--one which the evaluator regards as
socially desirable, to his/her advantage or pleasure". An important implication of this definition, one drawn
out by Tiger, is that there can be no single or objective optimism, at least as characterized by its content,
because what is considered optimism depends on what the individual regards as desirable. Optimism is
predicated on evaluation--on given affects and emotions, as it were.
Contemporary approaches usually treat optimism as a cognitive characteristic--a goal, an expectation, or a
causal attribution--which is sensible so long as we remember that the belief in question concerns future
occurrences about which individuals have strong feelings. Optimism is not simply cold cognition, and if we
forget the emotional flavor that pervades optimism, we can make little sense of the fact that optimism is
both motivated and motivating. Indeed, people may well need to feel optimistic about matters.
Along these lines, we can ask whether people can be generically optimistic, that is, hopeful without specific
expectations. Although at odds with conventional definitions, the possibility of free-floating optimism
deserves scrutiny. Some people readily describe themselves as optimistic yet fail to endorse expectations
consistent with this view. This phenomenon may merely be a style of self-presentation, but it may
additionally reflect the emotional and motivational aspects of optimism without any of the cognitive
aspects. Perhaps extraversion is related to this cognitively shorn version of optimism.
Dimensions of Optimism
o  Earlier, optimism was considered to be only an illusion which was not a part of human nature. It was
only a way to avoid the realistic view of things. With the development of the science of Positive
Psychology, optimism was considered as an imperative part of healthy human psychology. Discussions
of optimism take two forms. In the first, it is posited to be an inherent part of human nature, to be
either praised or decried. Early approaches to optimism as human nature were decidedly negative.
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Writers as diverse as Sophocles and Nietzsche argued that optimism prolongs human suffering: It is
better to face the hard facts of reality. This negative view of positive thinking lies at the heart of Freud's
influential writings on the subject. Freud proposed that optimism is part of human nature but only as a
derivative of the conflict between instincts and socialization. He thought some individuals--Freud
mentioned the educated and in particular neurologists--did not need the illusion of optimism. Similar
statements were offered by the entire gamut of influential psychologists and psychiatrists from the
1930s through the 1960s: Allport, Erikson, Fromm, Maslow, Menninger, and Rogers, among many
others (see Snyder, 1988, and Taylor, 1989, for thorough reviews).
Matters began to change in the 1960s and 1970s in light of research evidence showing that most people
are not strictly realistic or accurate in how they think. Cognitive psychologists documented an array of
shortcuts that people take as they process information. Margaret Matlin and David Stang (1978)
surveyed hundreds of studies showing that language, memory, and thought are selectively positive. For
example, people use more positive words than negative words, whether speaking or writing. In free
recall, people produce positive memories sooner than negative ones. Most people evaluate themselves
positively, and in particular more positively than they evaluate others. Apparently, in our minds, we are
all children of Lake Wobegon, all of whom are above average.
o  Another dimension of optimism stems for learned helplessness which is the tendency to consider one
helpless against different things. One third humans do not become helpless, so they are optimists.
o  Pessimistic make internal (their own fault), stable (permanent) and global (will undermine everything
they do) attributions
o  Optimists make external (not my) unstable (temporary) specific (situational) attributions'
o  Optimism may vary in different people. At the same time optimism as human nature was being
discussed in positive terms by theorists like Lazarus, Beck, Taylor, and Tiger, other psychologists who
were interested in individual differences began to address optimism as a characteristic people possess to
varying degrees. These two approaches are compatible. Our human nature provides a baseline
optimism, of which individuals show more versus less: "In dealing with natural systems the shortest
analytical distance between two points is a normal curve". Our experiences influence the degree to
which we are optimistic or pessimistic.
o  Social learning/modeling can create optimism
Optimism in Workplace
Optimism in Workplace is a Motive and a Motivator
·  Optimists
o  Work harder
o  Persevere
o  Are healthy
o  Have high morale
o  Have high levels of aspiration
o  Better sales people
They suffer less anxiety and depression. Pessimists tend to see bad events as inevitable, as some permanent
reflection of the environment or themselves. Optimists, on the other hand, tend to see bad situations as
temporary and specific -- something they can address. They can take responsibility for their own poor
behavior. They will not, however, blame themselves as a whole. Pessimists, in fact, can be more "realistic"
about their flaws. Optimists function effectively with even a slightly enhanced view of themselves. Not
arrogance or delusion, just a polished reality.
Optimism also helps the healthy population deal with stressors. A study of first-year law students, for
instance, found optimists with a higher level of self-acceptance and more confidence about their
achievements. They started school with the same level of immunity as the pessimists. By the end of the year,
however, the optimists had higher levels of helper T cells and natural killer-cell cytotoxicity-- that is, an
ability to kill cancer cells.
Various optimism scales have been developed to measure the level of optimism in people.
REFERENCES
·  Mejia, Gomez. Balkin, David & Cardy, Rober. (2006). Managing Human Resources (Fourth Edition).
India: Dorling Kidersley Pvt. Ltd., licensee of Pearson Education in South Asia.
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Luthans, Fred. (2005). Organizational Behaviour (Tenth Edition). United States: McGraw Hill Irwin.
·
Positive psychology readings: http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/publications.htm
·
Argyle, Michael (2001). The Psychology of Happiness. Routledge: http://www.answers.com/topic/michael-
argyle-psychologist
·
Gilbert, Daniel (2006). Stumbling on Happiness. Knopf.: http://www.answers.com/topic/daniel-gilbert-
psychologist
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Haidt, Jonathan (2005). The Happiness Hypothesis. Basic Books.
·
Peterson, Christopher and Seligman, Martin (2004). Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and
Classification. Oxford University Press.
FUTHER READING
·
Positive Psychology: An Introduction, Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000:
http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/ppintroarticle.pdf
·
Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions, Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson,
2005: http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/ppprogressarticle.pdf
·
What (and Why) Is Positive Psychology?, Gable and Haidt, 2005:
http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/articles/gable.haidt.what-is-positive-psychology.pdf
·
A Balanced Psychology and a Full Life, Seligman, Parks, & Steen, 2004:
http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/balancedpsychologyarticle.pdf
·
Positive Psychology in Clinical Practice, Duckworth, Steen, & Seligman, 2005:
http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/ppclinicalpractice.pdf
·
Positive Psychotherapy, Seligman, Rashid, & Parks, 2006:
http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/positivepsychotherapyarticle.pdf
·
Optimism: http://www.eqtoday.com/optimism/seligman.html
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Table of Contents:
  1. INTRODUCTION TO ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHLOGY:Hawthorne Effect
  2. METHODOLOGIES OF DATA COLLECTION:Observational method, Stability of Measures
  3. GLOBALIZATION:Aspects of Globalization, Industrial Globalization
  4. DEFINING THE CULTURE:Key Components of Culture, Individualism
  5. WHAT IS DIVERSITY?:Recruitment and Retention, Organizational approaches
  6. ETHICS:Sexual Harassment, Pay and Promotion Discrimination, Employee Privacy
  7. NATURE OF ORGANIZATIONS:Flat Organization, Neoclassical Organization Theory
  8. ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE:Academy Culture, Baseball Team Culture, Fortress Culture
  9. CHANGING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE:Move decisively, defuse resistance
  10. REWARD SYSTEMS: PAY, Methods of Pay, Individual incentive plan, New Pay Techniques
  11. REWARD SYSTEMS: RECOGNITION AND BENEFITS, Efficiency Wage Theory
  12. PERCEPTION:How They Work Together, Gestalt Laws of Grouping, Closure
  13. PERCEPTUAL DEFENCE:Cognitive Dissonance Theory, Stereotyping
  14. ATTRIBUTION:Locus of Control, Fundamental Attribution Error
  15. IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT:Impression Construction, Self-focused IM
  16. PERSONALITY:Classifying Personality Theories, Humanistic/Existential
  17. PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT:Standardized, Basic Categories of Measures
  18. ATTITUDE:Emotional, Informational, Behavioural,Positive and Negative Affectivity
  19. JOB SATISFACTION:The work, Pay, Measurement of Job Satisfaction
  20. MOTIVATION:Extrinsic motive, Theories of work motivation, Safety needs
  21. THEORIES OF MOTIVATION:Instrumentality, Stacy Adams’S Equity theory
  22. MOTIVATION ACROSS CULTURES:Meaning of Work, Role of Religion
  23. POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY:Criticisms of ‘Traditional’ Psychology, Optimism
  24. HOPE:Personality, Our goals, Satisfaction with important domains, Negative affect
  25. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE:EI IS Related To Emotions and Intelligence
  26. SELF EFFICACY:Motivation, Perseverance, Thoughts, Sources of Self-Efficacy
  27. COMMUNICATION:Historical Background, Informal-Formal, Interpersonal Communication
  28. COMMUNICATION (Part II):Downward Communication, Stereotyping Problems
  29. DECISION MAKING:History, Personal Rationality, Social Model, Conceptual
  30. PARTICIPATIVE DECISION MAKING TECHNIQUES:Expertise, Thinking skills
  31. JOB STRESS:Distress and Eustress, Burnout, General Adaptation Syndrome
  32. INDIVIDUAL STRESSORS:Role Ambiguity/ Role Conflict, Personal Control
  33. EFFECTS OF STRESS:Physical Effects, Behavioural Effects, Individual Strategies
  34. POWER AND POLITICS:Coercive Power, Legitimate Power, Referent Power
  35. POLITICS:Sources of Politics in Organizations, Final Word about Power
  36. GROUPS AND TEAMS:Why Groups Are Formed, Forming, Storming
  37. DYSFUNCTIONS OF GROUPS:Norm Violation, Group Think, Risky Shift
  38. JOB DESIGN:Job Rotation, Job Enlargement, Job Enrichment, Skill Variety
  39. JOB DESIGN:Engagement, Disengagement, Social Information Processing, Motivation
  40. LEARNING:Motor Learning, Verbal Learning, Behaviouristic Theories, Acquisition
  41. OBMOD:Applications of OBMOD, Correcting Group Dysfunctions
  42. LEADERSHIP PROCESS:Managers versus Leaders, Defining Leadership
  43. MODERN THEORIES OF LEADERSHIP PROCESS:Transformational Leaders
  44. GREAT LEADERS: STYLES, ACTIVITIES AND SKILLS:Globalization and Leadership
  45. GREAT LEADERS: STYLES, ACTIVITIES AND SKILLS:Planning, Staffing