Image Maps: A Guide to Information on Positive Psychology

Senia Maymin is the founder and editor-in-chief of PositivePsychologyNews.com. She was the series editor for the Positive Psychology News book series that recently published the first book, Resilience: How to Navigate Life's Curves. (Bio, Articles)

As you have been reading articles on Positive Psychology News Daily (PPND), you may have been thinking, “How do these positive psychology concepts fit together?”

Introducing… the Image Maps. Image maps are figures with live links to articles on positive psychology subjects. These image maps can help people get a mental structure for storing information about positive psychology, and the attached articles form a reader’s guide for learning about the subject.

These image maps are the brainchild of PPND Associate Editor Kathryn Britton (bio, articles). Kathryn says, “I think the structure is like a hat rack – it’s a way to hang things that you learn onto something you already know.” We have an overview of how these visual image maps relate to positive psychology models – in short, it’s one way of organizing content. You saw the Positive Emotions Image Map before, and today we introduce the Top-Level Image Map (click on image below):

And linked from the Top-Level Image Map are the:

• Positive Emotions Image Map (A new version with additional links and updated articles)
• Organizations Image Map with links to articles on positive psychology in different kinds of organizations
• Positive Actions Image Map (still static, a work-in-progress)
• Positive Relationships article
• Meaning and the Meaningful Life article
• Accomplishments article
• Positive Psychology Models article (From the central box)

What We Would Like to Learn from You

We’d like your advice, your ideas, your suggestions. These image maps are a work-in-progress. In all of these image maps, we are not wed to any of the content. The largest message that Kathryn Britton asked me to convey is “Please throw suggestions, not rocks.” We are very comfortable thinking about these as iterations – iterations that have absorbed our thoughts heavily – but still iterations that can be swayed and adjusted and improved in the future.

In short, we would love your thoughts and suggestions on these. You can access all of them from the Top-Level Image Map.

A huge thanks to Kathryn Britton for her work on these and for her iterations in making these more readable, simpler, more concise.

What You Will Find in Each Image Map

Each article connected to the image maps include a summary of the topic, a list of related PPND articles, and references, mostly books that are accessible from Amazon links (we just became an Amazon associate). Furthermore, you can get to the instructions from any image map, you can go back and forward between image maps, you can find major contributors to the research (we are looking to document even more contributors). We make no promises about being complete, so please submit other articles — either by PPND authors or others — that you think should be added to any category.

Our thanks to those people who commented on the first image map: Jeff Dustin, George Vaillant, Lorraine Kennedy, Jodie Benveniste, Irene, David J. Pollay, Pat MacKinnon, Stuart Coupe, Todd Kashdan, and Dave Shearon.
Here is a link to the Top-Level Image Map . Happy clicking and reading.