Kathryn Britton

Day 3 of the Psychologically Healthy Workplace Conference included discussions of the business value and success factors for both inclusive diversity and wellness programs. […]

Highlights from Day 2 of the Psychologically Healthy Workplace Conference included presentations by Chris Peterson and Nansook Park, as well as from several of the organizations that won the awards. Award winners demonstrate that creating positive workplace is not only possible, but also lines up with company values and contributes to the bottom line. […]

David Ballard opened the Psychologically Healthy Workplace Conference with the statement, “Creating a psychologically healthy workplace means more than just remediating problems. It is about promoting good health, enhancing performance, and creating a work environment where both employees and the organization can thrive.”

One of my fellow workers came to work, but spent his time reading the paper, making private phone calls, or hanging out in the break room. Nobody spoke to him about his performance. Withholding negative feedback does nobody a favor. He needed effective feedback and a chance to change.

The character strength, Love and be Loved does not appear frequently in books about organizational behavior. However I did find a concept that may be a good proxy for it: Trust. Michael Pratt and Kurt Davis describe a commitment-based model of trust with three parts: positive elements, negative elements, and the bonds between positive and negative elements.

This is the third article about the conference at Claremont Graduate University on January 24, 2009 around the two questions, What works in positive social sciences? How can we influence social change for the betterment of society? This article summarizes the afternoon sessions on organizational life and business and concludes the series with the end-of-day panel where afternoon presenters were asked to give their parting shots.

This is the second article about the conference at Claremont Graduate University on January 24, 2009 around the two questions, What works in positive social sciences? How can we influence social change for the betterment of society? This article covers the afternoon sessions on physical health, education, and mentoring, along with a review of Mind and Evolution by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. […]

Last Saturday, 24 January 2009, Claremont Graduate University hosted a conference titled Applying the Science of Positive Psychology to Improve Society. The moderator, Stewart Donaldson, posed two questions: What works in positive social sciences? How can we influence social change for the betterment of society? This article covers the morning sessions on the foundations of positive psychology.

There are many articles in PPND about how to change— from my first PPND article two years ago about how to keep a New Year’s Resolution to Sherri’s article two days ago about changing yourself on the way to changing others. But how do we decide what to change? This article explores the question in terms of leverage, context changes, perceived efficacy, and social support […]

What helps in times of adversity? First, we can build better personal strategies for dealing with trouble if we understand how to calm our bodies. Second, we can keep our minds from being totally filled with thoughts of the adversity. Third, we be aware of our ordinary assets.

I’ve seen a vast increase in the breadth and complexity of social integration in my lifetime. In his book, Nonzero, Robert Wright traces this integration to ongoing evolution of non-zero-sumness leading to greater interdependence and greater social complexity. He discusses technologies that pull us together and common threats that push us together.

I have been privileged this week to speak to the Affordable Housing Conference of the Neighborhood Preservation Coalition of New York State. They invited me to lead a workshop on managing energy, helping people avoid burnout for themselves and for their staffs.

It is intensely gratifying and enjoyable to become deeply absorbed in an activity, whether it be playing tennis, writing, playing the piano, programming, climbing mountains, keeping house, painting, gardening, speaking to crowds, tracking down the sources of problems, or reading. These are only some of the activities that can lead to flow, […]

Motivation makes a tremendous difference to performance and satisfaction. We want to be more motivated to do the things we know we ought to do, like exercise. We want our…

During working years, life satisfaction can be affected by the level of meaning people find in their work. People put more energy into jobs that they believe contribute positively to…

Keltner and Haidt characterize awe as an experience of vastness and accommodation. Vastness is not hard to understand. We feel it when we look at the stars, when we see…

Social contagion is a term for moods spreading from person to person. We are physically constructed to make this possible. Daniel Goleman in Social Intelligence (2007) writes about mirror neurons…