Historically and culturally, Positive Psychology took a giant leap forward this summer with two complementary international conferences held in China on Positive Behavioral Science and Positive Education. These events aimed at promoting mental health, happiness, …

The Positive Neuroscience Project has announced the recipients of the 2010 Templeton Positive Neuroscience Awards, $2.9 million given to 15 new research projects at the intersection of neuroscience and positive psychology. Read on to learn about the winning projects that explore a range of topics including how the brain enables humans to flourish, the biological bases of altruism, and the effects of positive interventions on the brain.

We often think of forgiveness as something that we do on behalf of others. That’s called interpersonal forgiveness. Unlike gratitude, however, which makes the giver and receiver feel good, forgiveness is more of a one-way …

Last month, in Part 1 of a Journey to Self-Regulation, the focus was on the influence of character on behavior, how people develop habits that help them control their urges. However, there is another interesting way to look at self-regulation that addresses the power of the environment, regardless of how virtuous a person might be.

What highly competent and incompetent students share is this: both miscalibrate the perception of their own and of others’ performance. The difference is that competent students believe their peers have done only slightly better than they have, and so they work to apply success strategies. Incompetent students believe they have done significantly better than their peers and therefore do not work harder. How’s that for a counter-intuitive finding?

The 5th European Positive Psychology Conference took place this week in Copenhagen, Denmark on June 23-26 2010. This article covers addresses on June 25 by Professor Wilmar Schaufeli on employee engagement, by Professor Henrik Hans Knoop on well-being at society as well as individual levels, and Professor Willibald Ruch on humor and a related intervention.

This book is a splendid example of how psychologists can make valuable contributions to society. The author writes about work done on a phenomenon called stereotype threat, the tendency to expect, perceive, and be influenced by negative stereotypes about one’s social category, such as one’s age, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, profession, nationality, political affiliation, mental health status, and so on.

Would you send your child to a school whose schedule encouraged them to become socially inept, inattentive, overweight, depressed underachievers? Probably not. But these may be unintended side effects of the focus on increasing …

Celebrating Strengths in Schools is a program that introduces positive psychology to schools by weaving concepts into the existing curriculum rather than by introducing them in special units. Jenny Fox Eades has been running this …

Do you ever wish you were more creative? New research has shown that adults can be primed to become more creative simply by being asked to think like children.  There are many kinds of creativity, …