Category:

Global Policies

Three Keynotes from CAPP Conference: Economics, Education, and Social Change

by Bridget Grenville-Cleave April 26, 2009

Earlier this month, Timothy So reviewed some of the keynote presentations from CAPP’s 2nd Applied Positive Psychology Conference, held at the University of Warwick, UK. The conference theme was Creating flourishing communities: the smallest thing to make the biggest difference. This review article features three further keynote presentations which each painted a picture of positive social change inspired by individual action.

Well-Being and Behavioral Economics
David Willetts, MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Innovations, Skills and Universities, UK

David Willetts

The focus of MP David Willetts’ opening address was the importance of behavioral economics to modern society, and in particular to the creation of public policy around strengthening communities. Referring to both the 2008 UNICEF findings on the quality of childhood in the UK (pdf here), as well as the 2009 “Good Childhood” report from the Children’s Society, Willetts blamed the lower well-being of British children on eroding social trust and weakening relationships between adults and children, both of which are having a negative effect irrespective of level of income.

In Willetts’ view, since parents no longer trust other adults with their children, and don’t believe public spaces are safe, children from poorer families have had to retreat indoors to live largely screen-based lives. According to Piaget, children’s cognitive and social development is derived from experiencing the world in 3D, and from being able to take risks and make their own decisions. So kids from wealthy families hardly fare any better; affluence means they have the opportunity to participate in many organized extra-curriculum activities, but these are mostly supervised by their parents. Willetts argued that there has been a dramatic change in the nature of childhood over the past 2-3 decades, which is having a negative impact on children’s well-being. This, he stated, could be addressed through the redesign of public spaces, the reinstatement of jobs like community policemen and park-keepers, and also through creating more local residents and community associations, which would encourage parents and non-parents to interact.

In terms of the transition to adulthood, Willetts suggested that this path was hard enough to navigate in the boom years, and is becoming increasingly more difficult in a recession. In the 10 years from 1997 to 2007, youth unemployment in the UK rose, as did the number of young adults not in education, employment or training. And UK figures are worse than the OECD average -why is this? In his view, it’s because no firm frameworks exist to help non-academic children find their way in life. If they haven’t received careers guidance at school, or if their parents cannot provide them with the support and information they need, they’ll find it exceedingly difficult to make their way in the world, and to make the transition to adulthood successfully.

As for well-being, Willetts made two points. Firstly, in his opinion, income inequality is less important than most people think because it’s relativity and proximity which matter. People compare themselves to people like them, their friends and neighbors, and not the people on the Sunday Times Rich List. Secondly, it is possible to improve the well-being of individuals and communities through good public policy. Change erodes trust, so if we can find ways to encourage stability or at the very least continuity in public institutions, the social cohesion, co-operation and trust which are essential for well-being will flourish.

Half-Life – Education for Well-being

Anthony Seldon

Anthony Seldon, Master, Wellington College, UK

In his keynote, Anthony Seldon presented his recipe for ‘living a whole life’. The session started with a five-minute stillness exercise, to create the necessary space for thinking and doing ones best. He then asked delegates to take a piece of paper, and on one side of the page to write what they think education should be for, and on the other to write what they think education actually is. He posed two crucial questions:

1) Is there a discrepancy between the two columns? If so, why?

2) If there is a discrepancy, what are you going to do about it?

The word “education” means “to lead out,” but what is being lead out, he asked, and by whom? In his view, Higher Education and employers are self-serving, their demands incompatible with the needs of students – neither are concerned with developing the whole person.

According to Seldon, this can be partly blamed on education reforms. The imposition of the National Curriculum and Standard Assessments Tests has taken trust away from schools, teachers and heads. It is wrong, he said, that schools and heads are valued purely by exam results: although these are important, there needs to be balance. He argued that the creation of national league tables in the UK has not led to better education: teachers now teach to a syllabus and they teach to the test. Creativity and spontaneity in teaching have all but gone. There is no space in the curriculum in which to explore and value students as whole people.

The Well-being Curriculum at Wellington is an antidote to living a half-life. Based on positive psychology and the Penn Resiliency Program, it combines pastoral care, physical exercise and Personal, Health and Social Education with yoga and meditation. And it’s not just for the pupils, but for the teachers, support staff, parents and school governors. This curriculum is based on four sets of paired aptitudes, influenced by the work of educator Kurt Hahn:

Personal and social
Creative and physical
Moral and spiritual
Linguistic and logical

The thrust of the Wellington Well-being Curriculum is fourfold:

To enable pupils to be in control of their lives, and thus to be happier
To build their relationship with the environment
To build their relationship with others
To build their relationship with themselves

According to Seldon, the question is not ‘How intelligent is the child?’, but ‘How is the child intelligent?’ Only by asking this question, he said, can we hope to create the whole person.

Positive Psychology as a Force for Social Change
Robert Biswas-Diener, Debasish Sen Sharma, and Alex Linley

Slums in Calcutta

Robert Biswas-Diener began the presentation by introducing the story of the community work that CAPP’s Strengths Project has started in Shiriti, a slum in Kolkata (population 150,000), India’s third biggest city after Mumbai and Delhi. According to Biswas-Diener , the focus of positive psychology so far has been at the individual level, with research and interventions aimed at increasing the individual’s well-being. He argued that there aren’t sufficient group-level interventions, such as Appreciative Inquiry: Seligman et al’s “Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions” report (pdf here courtesy of authentichappiness.org) misses out on group or community-level well-being. This emphasis on the individual’s well-being has come about because we’ve focused on happiness as the outcome measure, says Biswas-Diener, whereas what is really needed is more public policy well-being indicators such as NEF’s National Accounts of Well-being, as well as greater environmental awareness (using measures such as NEF’s Happy Planet Index), a focus on strengths-based organizations (e.g. businesses and schools), and to address global poverty.

Debasish Sen Sharma continued this strong social change theme with the screening of a ten-minute film about the CAPP Strengths Project in the slum community of Shiriti. CAPP has introduced the concept of playing to your strengths to the people who live there; building on their strong social cohesion to create a new project using sewing machines (provided by CAPP) to enable the women to play a fuller role in the local economy.

Alex Linley concluded the presentation with a powerful call to action – for everyone in the room to commit to making a change in their community – not a grand gesture which may never be realized, but a small action which might build into something much greater, and which will help to change society for the better.

Summary

The CAPP conference was unique in that it focused specifically on the application of positive psychology to create flourishing communities. Delegates ranged from experienced academics and practitioners to students and curious employers attracted by the range of practical workshops, papers and poster presentations, on subjects as diverse as using positive psychology to create constructive workplace conversations to its role in funambulism, Buddhism, and building resilience, self-efficacy and self-esteem in deprived communities. In summary, it was an energizing, thought-provoking and inspiring three days, and I would like to thank CAPP, in particular Reena Govindji and Des O’Dowd, for organizing such an extraordinary conference.

References:

Seligman, M., Steen, T., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410-421. (pdf HERE courtesy of www.authentichappiness.org)

Images:
David Willetts courtesy of Policy Exchange – Flickr: Rt Hon David Willetts MP
Anthony Seldon from Wikimedia
StrengthsProject Photo: CAPP

April 26, 2009 2 comments

All Business Conferences Global Policies Positive Feelings Strengths

Three Lessons for Creating Flourishing: Highlights of the 2nd Applied Positive Psychology Conference

by Timothy T.C. So April 14, 2009

written by Timothy T.C. So

At the beginning of April, the three-day 2nd Applied Positive Psychology Conference was held at the University of Warwick organized by CAPP. Many of the greatest scholars, thinkers and practitioners in the field were brought together to exchange their views and offer ideas on how to apply the wisdom of positive psychology in our community at the biannual conference. In this review article, I highlight three lessons which inspired me the most from three different perspectives – individual, organizational, and community – to help create flourishing:

Individual Perspective – Barbara Fredrickson

It was a real pleasure to attend Fredrickson’s keynote while I was waiting to get from my friend her new publication in 2009 – Positivity. As a real scholar and scientist, Fredrickson presented her latest evidence and research findings as featured in her book.If you still hold the myth that positive psychology is solely about joy and happiness, Fredrickson would have surprised you by starting her presentation with the bright side of negative emotions: “although negative emotions weight people down and make us feel lifeless and stuck, they’re still valuable” to make sure we understand that positive and negative emotions should work together in order for the boat to sail smoothly.

Andre Gide (French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature) once said:

“Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.”

No matter who you are, you must at least once have experienced joy and happiness. We all know how it feels. The problem we are facing however, is that we don’t know how to broaden, open up, and embrace our joy. Fredrickson’s Broaden-and-Build theory will help. “Positivity broadens our minds and expands our range of vision,” said Fredrickson. Under the broaden effect, negative emotions could be undone, while innovation and much-needed mental space can be created. Positivity also builds lasting resources for our life, according to Fredrickson. It lets us become stronger, wiser, more resilient and more socially integrated. The findings and arguments are not simply poetic, but from investigations on the experiences of thousands of people either by herself or other scientists around the world. (For example, you may refer to Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005 or Fredrickson, 2009). I sincerely recommend readers of PPND to purchase her new book, Positivity, for further reading (review forthcoming on PPND).

Organizational Perspective – Karen Stefanyszyn, Aviva

Karen Stefanyszyn, head of Organizational Development in Aviva (former Norwich Union, UK’s biggest insurer), probably demonstrated one of the best applications of positive psychology in workplace. Collaborating with CAPP, Aviva embarked a strength-based journey, which applies a strength-based approach to recruitment and development – enabling people to work to their strengths, be happier as a result and perform at a higher level. Starting from recruitment advertising, Aviva holds the principle of recognizing and valuing individuals’ distinguished strengths. Thus, Aviva is recruiting people who “are made for the job” rather than people who “are able to do the job.”

From Stefanyszyn’s keynote, it is not difficult to notice a paradigm shift from “competency” to “strengths” as a central tenet of Aviva’s new approach. “A key component in helping people be at their best at Aviva is strengths-based psychology and the importance of focusing on people’s strengths, which help develop a high-performance culture,” said Stefanyszyn. The secret is simple: moving from lamenting what employees didn’t do well to harnessing the uniqueness of people, valuing them for who they are and celebrating what they do best; from expecting people to change for their position, to matching people’s strengths with different roles.

Comparing to the traditional competency-based approach at workplace, adopting the strength-based approach in Aviva resulted in a reduction in pre-job training time by 50%, as well as 60% more case work when employee started working in the business. As what Stefanyszyn revealed, “people in Aviva are able to proudly say ‘I am somebody in Aviva; who I am and what I bring truly matters.'”

Community Perspective – Nic Marks

With the appealing title “The Power of Well-being: measuring what matters & transforming policy,” Marks didn’t disappoint the audiences with his great presentation. As a founder of the Centre for Well-being in New Economics Foundation, Marks first defined what he thinks about well-being: “The quality of people’s experience of their lives,” with an inspiring model of the well-being dynamic. This dynamic, according to Nic, can help us better develop our potential, work productively and creatively, build strong and positive relationships with others, and contribute to our community.

Apart from showing the interesting relationships between well-being and different sociodemographic variables including employment, martial status, income, social connectedness as well as GDP, Marks also showed us the computation of the Happy Planet Index (HPI) using consumption levels (resources used/economy footprint), life expectancy (long lives) and life satisfaction (happy), rather than national economic wealth measurements such as GDP. Costa Rica, with scores of 7.5 in life satisfaction, 78.2 in life expectation and 2.1 in consumption level, ranks third in the HPI. With similar scores in life satisfaction (7.4) and expectation (77.4), the U.S. ranks 150th in the HPI with a score of 9.5 in consumption level. Obviously, the key message delivered is that well-being does not have to be linked to high levels of consumption. In the current finical crisis, this may offer some insights to our society. For me, it is too apparent that we can live well within limitations in our environment and economy and increase our quality of life.

Conclusion

Following the key question being asked at the conference, “What’s the smallest thing you can do to make the biggest difference?” I intentionally structured this review article in the order from the individual to community. While the subject matter of psychology suggests that psychologists should be central to the human welfare agenda (The Psychologist), I am thinking if positive psychologist should start from individual and thus grasp a bigger vision – an organizational vision, a community vision, a national vision, a world vision – then we can dream of promoting the well-being of everyone. Lastly, I would like to send again a big gratitude to every one in CAPP who organized this fabulous conference.

Photos by: Benjamin Ellis, Redcatco

References:

Fredrickson, B., & Branigan, C. (2005). Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought-action repertoires. Cognition and Emotion, 19, 313-332.

Fredrickson, B. (2009). Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive. New York: Crown.

The Psychologist, vol 21, no 11.

April 14, 2009 2 comments

All Business Coaching Global Policies Positive Feelings

The Serious Business of Emotions at Work

by Bridget Grenville-Cleave March 26, 2009

written by Bridget Grenville-Cleave

“Positive psychology is for wimps.”
“Organizations won’t listen unless you talk hard business measures.”
“Business people aren’t interested in emotions and all that pink, fluffy stuff.“

I disagree. I’ve introduced Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory and discussed the power of positive (and negative) emotions at work with business people. And lived to tell the tale. Here’s a five-step version of that story that I use in coaching business people:

Discuss the BENEFIT of emotions. Use research and explain Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory briefly and stress the application to business. One thing that businesses are always looking for is the ability to “do more with less.” Using positive emotions at work is a way of doing just this – because positive emotions create extra psychological, social, physical and intellectual resources for relatively little outlay. You want resilient or creative employees who can solve problems and build good relationships with colleagues? Then try developing their positive emotions.
Discuss the BENEFIT of the theory applied to business. One great way of doing this is to use Fredrickson and Losada’s research into positive emotions and teams. See Marcial Losada’s article here for further information. Make sure you understand the butterfly model and can explain what it means; saying ‘it’s very complex’ or ‘I don’t understand mathematical modeling, but this is what you need to know…’ doesn’t cut it. If you leave it out, use some of the simple ratios to explain the science instead.
Help people ASSESS their experience. To get coaching clients to start thinking about their own experience of emotion at work, introduce them to Carr’s circumplex model of emotions. Better still, overlay the circumplex model with Loehr and Schwartz’s energy model (Fig. 1).
- Ask them to identify which quadrant they spend most of their working day in. Or what typically happens to move them from quadrant 1 to quadrants 3 or 4. Or how important it is to use the quadrant 2 to restore balance, reflect and learn.
- The conclusion many of my coaching clients reach is that they spend too long on the left hand side, especially in quadrant 3, and not enough time on the right hand side, especially quadrant 2. [Ask yourself how much time you devote to reflection and learning, for example – typically this is what gets squeezed out of our busy work schedules].
- Ask them what their typical coping strategies are, or what they do to change their emotional state – when in quadrant 4, do they overeat, smoke or binge drink, for example? When in quadrant 3, do they lose their temper, shout or act aggressively? There are countless questions you can put to your coaching client to get them to really think about how they use emotions at work, and how they sometimes let emotions get in the way of performance.
Ask about their EMOTIONAL TONE. Get your coaching client to start thinking about what they do which positively or negatively influences the emotional tone of the team they work in, or their organization as a whole. Ask what they can do, in the heat of the moment, to adopt a meta-position, from which to view and evaluate their emotions and behavior objectively.
Make things CONCRETE. This step is about making the work done in steps 3 and 4 more concrete. Usually I don’t ask coaching clients to complete it immediately after step 4, because they often like to take time to reflect, and possibly have a few days to observe their emotional selves ‘in action’ in the workplace. Remember, when you’re trying to change behavior, awareness is more than half the battle.

The Emotions-at-Work Process

Here’s an outline of the process. Ask your coaching client to:

ASSESS

i) identify an emotion that they’ve felt at work recently. This can be positive or negative.

ii) describe what it was about the work that caused this emotion.

iii) describe what it was about the work that caused the work to cause the emotion (this is where it gets to sound a bit like that nursery rhyme ‘The house that Jack built’!).

iv) explain the immediate and long-term consequences of their emotion or causes of the emotion.

CHANGE

v) explain what they could do to enhance or decrease the emotion or the causes of the emotion (depending whether positive or negative). What constructive coping strategies could they adopt?

vi) explain what they could do to change the work which causes the emotions (either to enhance or decrease the emotion).

vii) create new goals based on (v) and (vi).

Having done this exercise, they’ll be far more aware of their emotions at work, as well as have more constructive strategies for dealing with negative emotions, or maximizing positive ones. Personally, I don’t think emotions, positive or negative, need to be kept in the closet at work, in fact, there are advantages to putting them under the microscope like this. But you need to take the heat out of the discussion, and give business people the opportunity to explore their emotions dispassionately, setting goals which will enhance their performance. This exercise is just one of many ways to do this.

Providing you show real benefits, that pink and fluffy subject of emotions can be transformed into serious business.

References:

Carr, A. (2004). Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness and Human Strengths. Hove. Routledge.

Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56, 218-226.

Fredrickson B. L. & Losada M. F. (2005). Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing. American Psychologist, 60, 678-686.

Harris, C., Daniels, K. & Briner, R. (2002) Using cognitive mapping for psychosocial risk assessment. Risk management: An International Journal, 7-20.

Loehr, J. & Schwartz, T. (2003). The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal. New York: Free Press.

Watson, D. & Tellegen, A. (1985). Toward a consensual structure of mood. Psychological Bulletin, 98 (2), 219-35.

Images:
1. Ende
2. Scriptingnews
3. Aloshbennett

March 26, 2009 11 comments

All Business Conferences Global Policies Health

Psychologically Healthy Workplace Conference Part III

by Kathryn Britton March 25, 2009

written by Kathryn Britton

Morteza Farajian

March 2: Day 3 of the Psychologically Healthy Workplace ConferenceThis the final of a three-part conference series. Part I and Part II covered the earlier days. For this part, Morteza Farajian is again my co-author and Clara Cheung took all the pictures.

On this day, we were all torn between concern about the heavy snow fall, which threatened to close the airports, and staying to hear the final presentations on inclusive diversity and establishing health practices in the work place.

The Business Case: Why Diversity and Inclusion are Good for Business

Eric Peterson

Eric Peterson, Diversity & Inclusion Manager Society for Human Resource Management, categorically stated that a diverse and inclusive workforce outperforms a homogeneous one. He described the history of inclusive diversity — behaviors and laws which have evolved from those motivated by enforced compliance to those based on values, to those based on a clear business case. He explained the importance of attracting talent in the current economic downturn, to a reverse Mt. Everest climb. Climbers tend to celebrate when they reach the top, forgetting that 80% of the accidents happen on the way back down. Similarly, long-term economic survival will depend on how companies manage the upturn, not just how well they survive the downturn. “If you don’t want talent, your competitors will take it off your hands gladly.”

Diversity is a very broad issue that goes way beyond gender, nationality, and ethnicity. Older managers who argue, “I’m not going to give people awards for showing up,” have big problems when they are dealing with Generation Y employees who grew up on soccer teams where everyone got an award.

He presented 5 ways that inclusive diversity helps the bottom line:

Greater adaptability and flexibility in a rapidly changing marketplace.
Attracting and retaining the best talent. McKinsey shows this to be the most important management challenge facing executives over the next 5 years.
Reducing costs associated with turnover, absenteeism, and low productivity. Each year over 2 million people voluntarily leave organizations because of perceived unfairness or a sense they can’t succeed there.
Return on investment, in terms of greater sales, profits, and market share — especially when customer acquisition and improved service may be the most compelling and least leveraged business case of them all. “Your customer set will look like your sales force.”
To Minimize and mitigate legal risks.

Volvo and Pepsico are are examples of companies that generated a solid profit by taking advantage of diversity. Volvo established a team of women engineers to design a car that would appeal to women. Several of their design elements became competitive advantages in later Volvo models. PepsiCo had a contest for groups to design new products tied to their backgrounds. A Latin American group created guacamole chips that have brought in more than $20 million.

Healthy Employees, Profitable Bottom Lines

Rebecca Kelly

Rebecca Kelly demonstrated that employer health programs can enhance business objectives. She illustrated successful programs based on her experience engaging more than 80% of the University of Alabama employees in Wellbama programs. These programs take many forms, from getting rid of cafeteria trays (which reduces portion sizes) to working with health coaches and instituting well body awards. She presented the following mnemonic for success factors:

E for Employees care about a program when you care about them.
N for Night shift employees work too
G for Get to know your employees. A high visibility program is more likely to work.
A for Ambassadors/team leaders are essential. They bring stories of success and high touch.
G for Group participation is effective. For example, in one weight loss program, they weigh the whole team rather than individuals. Where an individual has a 30% probability of continuing a healthy practice, a group of three has a 70% probability.
E for Enjoy. This is a wonderful opportunity to have fun. She was so vivacious that it was easy to picture having fun around her.

They’ve started the Strive for Five program – Eat, Drink, Think, Move, Lose – which helps people remember the daily need to consume 5 glasses of water, eat five vegetables or fruits, think about 5 positive messages, exercise 5 days a week for 30 minutes, and maintain current healthy weight or lose 5 Ibs every two months.

She described establishment of wellness programs as taking money that is already being spent on health insurance premiums and absenteeism and spending it better.

——————-

All three conference summaries: Part I, Part II, and Part III. Thank you for joining us for our review of this conference.

March 25, 2009 0 comment

All Business Global Policies Strengths

Strengths-Based Leadership: An Interview with Author Tom Rath – Part 2

by Margaret Greenberg March 14, 2009

written by Margaret Greenberg

Tom Rath

Barry Conchie

Following is Part Two of an interview I conducted last month with best-selling author Tom Rath on his latest book, Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow with Barry Conchie. (Part I here). I learned that the 34 themes of talent outlined in StrengthsFinders 2.0 are now sorted into four domains of leadership strength: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking. Rath and Conchie bring these leadership strengths to life by interviewing four highly successful organizational leaders who each lead from a very different domain.

Margaret: To illustrate the four leadership domains (Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking) you interviewed four highly successful organizational leaders. Can you tell our readers more about that?

Wendy Kopp

Tom: They’re people that I have admired for a long time and they were just night and day different in the way they interacted with people and built their organizations. From the minute I sat down with Wendy Kopp (Founder and CEO of Teach for America) she oozed the Achiever theme. She guided me through how she methodically worked on her to-do list from day, to week, to month, to year until she had built that organization essentially from scratch. Within 12 months of writing her thesis she was on the front page of the New York Times, recruited 500 teachers in California, and raised over $2.5 million. I’m still blown away by that.

And Brad Anderson (CEO of Best Buy) is a very different guy. He’s a big-picture thinker. He’s all about ‘Where are we going to be in 10 years?’ and, ‘What do we need for the future?’

But the interview that was really striking for me was Mervyn Davies (Chairman of Standard Chartered Bank). When you think of a chairman of a large global bank in the UK you don’t think of a guy that leads with relationships. He talked about how the well-being of 70,000 families is depending on the company. I interviewed some of his direct reports and they described how Mervyn was there for them when they had a real personal challenge. To build a global bank like that and do it all through a pretty heavy relationship orientation was really neat to see.

Margaret: Did you find any common strengths among leaders?

Tom: No. That’s been one of the big takeaways for me. We don’t see much of any consistency when we look at the most successful leaders. I’ve yet to see two that have a very similar profile in terms of their top 5 strengths. In the general US database we see more themes of Learner, Relator, and Achiever, but not necessarily among leaders.

Margaret: One question I am frequently asked by leaders I work with is how can we get employees to think beyond their department, beyond their function, and collaborate more with other areas in order to better execute and get the work done? How would you answer that question?

Tom: It might sound somewhat elementary, but just do some basic things to ensure people are talking. I know this doesn’t happen anywhere near as much as it should, but just sit down, ideally face-to-face, and get to know the people that you’re going to be interfacing with on a regular basis. Spend a little bit of time talking about their strengths so they know what they each can contribute is important. I’m amazed at how often teams are formed, and that just doesn’t take place at all. Companies should see the value in doing that, if for no other reason than for the sake of speed. For example, I have four or five close relationships here at work. I can communicate something to them, or they can communicate to me, in 10 or 15 seconds versus 10 or 15 minutes if I didn’t have that close relationship.

Margaret: Now that you’ve sorted the 34 themes of talent into the four leadership domains it would be interesting to look at a team’s make-up and see if they have any of the Relationship Building strengths. Maybe that plays into how collaborative people will be?

Tom: It’s a great point. A lot of the top leadership teams we’ve worked with have been most thin in the area of Relationship Building. I know that I thought about that a lot a couple of years ago with my own team. I have someone on my team who is ten times better than I ever will be at keeping us cohesive and building relationships. So I said to her explicitly ‘I may be the one managing the team, but I know you’re better at doing this’. And today she’s done so much to help us build a better environment with even a broader group of people.

Margaret: Now that you’ve published Strengths Based Leadership, what are you working on?

Tom: We’re doing a lot of work trying to connect how engaged employees are on the job and when people have a chance to use their strengths, how that relates to outcomes that are more about one’s own physical health. We have a few experiments underway where we’ve been looking at when people become more engaged in their jobs, what happens to their total cholesterol levels, the tri-glyceride in their bloodstream, and their cortisol or stress hormone levels. As much as productivity, profitability, customer scores, and turnover are important to organizations, and I’d call those hard or concrete metrics for companies, I think that our physical health is one means to look at pretty concrete outcomes for individuals.

Margaret: And for the company it would translate into healthcare costs which continue to be one of the largest expenses for most companies.

Tom: I think that’s a big part of it. We’re trying to figure out exactly how much of the variance of healthcare costs that individual engagement accounts for. A lot of good companies like Standard Chartered, who I mentioned earlier, they’ll get to the point where they care about it for all the right reasons and the rest of the companies will get there for no other reason than they’ll see the reduction in healthcare costs. The more we dive into the research we’re collecting, it might turn out that a person’s manager is a better predictor of their overall health than the quality of their physician.

Margaret: Many people are surprised when I tell them that your grandfather, Donald Clifton, wrote Now, Discover Your Strengths. What do you think your grandfather would have to say about your latest book?

Tom: Right before he passed away he sent an e-mail summarizing some of his best thoughts on the topic of leadership. He typed a long note describing some of his key findings and that note was probably the best outline and skeleton that served to guide us as we were working on this book. He had done so much research over the years and had a lot of good thoughts that just never quite made it to publication in his lifetime. I’m sure he’d be glad to see the continuation of some of that work and how much we’ve been able to help more people benefit from his work.

Author’s Personal Note: Tom and I were classmates in the inaugural class of the University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) back in 2006. Part I of this interview is here.

Editor’s note: Both parts of this interview are included in the Leadership chapter of the Positive Psychology News book, Character Strengths Matter.

References:

Rath, T. & Conchie, B. (2009). Strengths-Based Leadership. New York: Gallup Press.

Tom has also written other important books for people interested in strengths and love:

Rath, T. (2004). How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life New York: Gallup Press.

Rath, T. (2007). StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths. New York: Gallup Press.

Images:

Teach for America, publicradio.org

March 14, 2009 6 comments

All Conferences Global Policies Health Parenting & Schools

Applying the Science of Positive Psychology to Improve Society: Afternoon 1

by Kathryn Britton January 30, 2009

written by Kathryn Britton

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? The morning sessions had covered the foundations of positive psychology. The afternoon sessions covered applications. The sessions on physical health, education, and mentoring are described in this article along with a review of Mind and Evolution by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The final article in this series will cover the afternoon sessions on organizational life, and business along with end-of-day panel with afternoon presenters where participants were asked to give their parting shots. Videotapes of the conference are also available.

Shelley Taylor presented How Positive Psychosocial Resources Enhance Health and Well-being. Psychosocial resources have been tied to lower biological responses to stress. She reviewed several studies that showed connections such as psychosocial resources leading to greater pre-frontal cortex activity leading to lower amygdala activity leading to lower cortisol levels. She posed the question, Can psychosocial resources be learned? Her answer involved engineering one’s social environment to be low in stress and high in social support, which can turn off the expression of genes involved in negative responses to stress. She pointed to Sonja Lyubomirsky’s book, The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want for ways to engineer one’s social environment, and suggested getting help for example through cognitive behavioral therapy if needed.

Hans Henrik Knoop‘s presentation, Positive-Psychology-Inspired Teaching in Public Schools, opened with the comment that everybody tends to lose energy in schools — teachers as well as students. So what can positive psychology offer? He started by discussing complexity, the state between total order and chaos where creativity is high. Schools need both stability and aspiration for wonder. Nature is full of complexity — fractals where zooming in does not reduce complexity — while human endeavors rarely have that property. Architects had asked him how to create a perfect classroom. He responded, Make it a place where people want to hang out — a place with variety, color, interest. He showed the figure below: Knoop model
He also talked about finding the right balance between the demands of learning and the desire to learn. The demands of learning represented in the curriculum come from politics and the economy, and provide meaning to education: Your learning matters. However they can squelch the desire to learn, especially when delivered with the protestant work ethic: It has to hurt if it’s going to work. Effective teachers combine knowledge of their disciplines with relationship and leadership skills and find a balance between pedagogical differentiation through individual strengths and pedagogical integration. He talked about Plan B, TV show on Danish television, where 9 8th graders who couldn’t read learned how. Like Bandura’s serial dramas, this show had high viewer ratings. I didn’t catch what impact it has had on viewer behavior.

Jeanne Nakamura‘s talk was called Contexts of Positive Development in Adulthood. Positive psychology today is unified by focuses on the positive and on human agency and is headed toward increasing attention to context — good schools, happy families, positive relationships at work. She is interested in the diversity of developmental psychology and how positive conditions can lead to both negative and positive outcomes, as can negative conditions. She talked about this in terms of the impact of mentors on professional development. Young scientists described positive mentors as inspiring, “Pushed me to the limit,” “Helped me get started.” Negative mentors undercut their work, screamed at them, or told them “It doesn’t matter what you do, you won’t impress me.” Outcomes varied as shown below:

Nakamura also talked about the Good Work interview study with a focus on how mentors create contexts for development consisting of the dyadic relationship, a social network, and a meme pool reflecting specialized knowledge and the mentor’s values. The young professional also has a major role — to select a mentor, select some of the mentor’s memes, observe, emulate, synthesize multiple influences, handle negative conditions, and initiate informal encounters. She concluded that we need to be thinking about “the positive” in a more differentiated way.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi gave the last presentation of the day called Mind and Evolution. He described various points of human evolution in terms of gains and what we were liberated from:

2 million years BCE: Learning, liberation from genetically determined behavior
1 MY BCE: Shared experience, knowledge mediated by tools, memes shaping behavior, liberation from limitations of our own experience
50,000 BCE: Language, expanded transmission of memes, liberation from terror of death
10,000 BCE: Urban revolution, information shared across occupations and ethnic cultures, liberation from tribal determinism, start of individuality
5000 BCE: Encoded information, memes codified in writing, proto-science, liberation from limits of memory, start of idea of progress
1400 BCE: Appearance of great religions all over the world, bridges to supreme power, start of belief in human primacy
1900 CE: Apogee of belief in human primacy, liberation from restraints leading to sense of hubris and entitlement
1900-2000 CE: 2 senseless world wars, irrational ideologies, liberation from self-serving illusions of superiority leading to nihilism and despair. Optimistic view: We’d outgrown superiority.

His dream for positive psychology – Instead of pursuing our own needs and those of our ethnic or religious groups, we’ll start looking at needs of the whole system. Positive psychology can build on memes of the past — e.g., the Buddhist 8-fold path, mindfulness, and savoring. They knew things that people had forgotten.

References

Hooker, C., Nakamura, J. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2003). The group as mentor: Social capital and the systems model of creativity. In P. B. Paulus & B. A. Nijstad, Bernard A., Group Creativity: Innovation through Collaboration, pp. 225-244. New York: Oxford University Press.

Knoop, H. H. (2008). Wise creativity and creative wisdom. In A. Craft, H. Gardner, & G. Claxton, Creativity, Wisdom, and Trusteeship: Exploring the Role of Education, (pp. 119-132). Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Corwin Press.

Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., author of The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want. New York: Penguin Books.

Nakamura, J. (2007). Practicing Responsibility. In H. Gardner, Responsibility at Work: How Leading Professionals Act (or Don’t Act) Responsibly, pp. 285-310. San Francisco, CA, US: Jossey-Bass.

Nakamura J., Shernoff, D., & Hooker, C. (2009). Good Mentoring: Fostering Excellent Practice in Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Taylor, S. E. (2006). Bridging social psychology: Benefits of transdisciplinary approaches. In P. Van Lange, Bridging Social Psychology: Benefits of Transdisciplinary Approaches, pp. 313-317. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Taylor, S. E., Burklund, L. J., Eisenberger, N. I., Lehman, B. J., Hilmert, C. J. & Lieberman, M. D. (2008). Neural bases of moderation of cortisol stress responses by psychosocial resources. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(1), 197-211.

Taylor, S. E., Way, B. M., Welch, W. T., Hilmert, C. J. , Lehman, B. J. & Eisenberger, N. I. (2006). Early Family Environment, Current Adversity, the Serotonin Transporter Promoter Polymorphism, and Depressive Symptomatology. Biological Psychiatry, 60(7), 671-676.

January 30, 2009 0 comment

All Conferences Global Policies Money Positive Feelings Strengths

Applying the Science of Positive Psychology to Improve Society: Morning

by Kathryn Britton January 30, 2009

written by Kathryn Britton

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, Dean and Professor of Psychology at Claremont Graduate University, opened the day with a history of the event. While the original plans were to get 50 to 100 people together, early signs of interest prompted CGU to reserve a 625-person auditorium. The auditorium became completely sold out, and CGU additionally organized a webcast with 150 participants. Participants were from USA, New Zealand, Estonia, Finland, Mexico, China, UK, Scotland, Australia, and other countries. Donaldson posed two questions: What works in positive social sciences? How can we influence social change for the betterment of society?

This article reports on the events of the morning, foundations of positive psychology. The afternoon summaries cover applications — first related to schools, health, and mentoring and then related to business and organizational life. Videotapes of the conference are also available.

Martin Seligman gave a brief prerecorded address discussing the past, present, and future of positive psychology, including his vision of positive physical health, positive neuroscience, positive social sciences such as economics and political science, and positive education.

Connie Rath presented the Clifton Strengths Prize to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in honor of his persistent study of flow, especially its application to adolescent education.
Ed Diener presented Happiness and Complete Wealth: Implications for Public Policy. He discussed well-being as a societal goal and why we need measures of well-being to shape public policy in addition to existing economic measures. Societies attend to what is measured. He showed the Robert Kennedy quotation about what the GDP does and does not measure — you can hear Bobby Kennedy giving that speech here. There is a two-way relationship between well-being and public policies that affect the environment, health, and work. For example, people make better decisions in green spaces, and reducing air pollution makes life satisfaction measures go up. He cited progress in his talks with various organizations about measuring well-being — the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Union, the US Center for Disease Control, Stats Canada, and the UN, which may adopt some of the Gallup measures. Here are some of his answers to the most common questions asked by skeptics, especially economists:

Why measure well-being? Because well-being measures include everybody — those who like mud wrestling as well as those who go to the ballet. Because well-being is beneficial to the effective functioning of societies. World spots with very low well-being measures tend to become trouble spots. Because life satisfaction is more highly correlated to life expectancy than either GDP per capita or Health expenditures. Because high levels of well-being lead to prosocial behaviors — volunteering, pro-peace attitudes, and cooperative attitudes.
Isn’t well-being just an individual matter? Well-being levels differ between societies. For example, 94% of the Danes are above 97% of the Togoese in well-being measures.
What contributes to well-being differences of societies? He cited the Gallup World Poll, which has interviewed over 300,000 people in 140 countries. In addition to material differences, differences in well-being are associated with social differences (whether people can count on others, perceptions of corruption, and frequency of assaults) and psychological differences (whether people feel free and have opportunities to learn and use talents).

Barbara Fredrickson’s talk was titled Using Positive Emotions to Enhance Human Flourishing. She reviewed research supporting her Broaden and Build and Undoing Theories. She commented that flourishing goes way beyond happiness — flourishing people add value to the world and bounce back more readily when faced with difficulties. She commented that changing emotional habits takes as much effort for prolonged periods as losing weight. Positivity transforms us, but it is not a matter of forcing ourselves to be positive by denying negative thoughts. Sincerity matters. She closed with an injunction to be open, appreciative, curious, kind, and real.

Nansook Park and Chris Peterson, who conducted a dialogue about Why Character Matters started with the celebration that Obama’s inaugural speech mentioned virtue and character strengths in practically every sentence. Character is personality morally evaluated. Their main points were that character strengths are

Plural and structured. Some strengths are more likely to co-occur than others, as shown in their circumplex model (published in A Positive Psychology Primer, p. 158).
Have a developmental trajectory across a life span. For example, gratitude shows up less frequently in very small children than it does in adults.
Are distributed sensibly across both geographies and occupations. In Richard Florida’s hot spots, curiosity, love of learning, appreciation of beauty, and creativity are higher than average, while gratitude, modesty, and perseverance are lower than average. Different occupations show different strength patterns.
Have important consequences: Love, hope, zest, gratitude, and curiosity are associated with well-being. Perseverance, love, and gratitude are associated with academic achievement. Teacher effectiveness is associated with zest, humor, and social intelligence. Resnick and Rosenheck have found that taking the VIA was effective intervention in a VA hospital recovery program. They also cited a study in Vermont looking for reduction of health care costs after teaching people the language of strengths
Are genetic but not entirely so. There is positive but modest convergence between strengths of parents and children, slightly higher for parents and children of the same gender
Are created or revealed by challenge. Strengths that are elevated in trauma survivors tend to be religiousness, gratitude, kindness, hope, and bravery
Can be taught.

CGU Morning Panel

Finally, here are some of the highlights of the panel session where the morning speakers answered questions from both audiences:

Critics refer to positive psychology as a short-lived fad, that it is nothing new. How do you answer that?
- Various speakers referenced the research behind positive psychology — that it is not just old opinions but also research that tests the ideas. Some people are convinced by the weight of the data.
- Diener commented that we need to listen to the criticisms and especially not make positive psychology a club of people who revolve around the same ideas. We need to remember the work by people in other fields.
- Park commented that 10 years ago, she couldn’t interest her university in letting her teach positive psychology. Now they beg her to teach it. She also commented on Maslow’s differentiation between Safety Science and Growth Science. People participating in a Growth Science have to be willing to be proved wrong and correct their courses. There is also a danger that practitioners may get ahead of the science and lock into things that cannot be replicated.
What happens for people who aren’t drawn to positive emotions? Fredrickson commented that there is a wide range of positive and negative emotions — they should look for the ones that resonate with them.
What are the next frontiers?
- Fredrickson: We are just beginning to understand how positive states affect physical states.
- Diener: We need to explore more subtle directions, for example what are the impacts of different mixes of strengths in groups. Is there an optimal level of well-being in different jobs?
- Park: We need to look at the outcomes with respect to different combinations of strengths, and we need to learn from the field what works.
What obstacles and criticisms have you faced?
- Peterson: Colleagues used to find this work fluffy, but we’re changing that one study at a time.
- Fredrickson: When one advocates for positive emotion, people hear an unintended attack on negative emotions. Also concerned about importance of sincerity, since we are all socialized to show insincere positive emotions. We need tests for the sincerity of feelings.
- Park: Frequency of the question, What about weaknesses? Weaknesses are important, but working on strengths first tends to spill over and improve ways of dealing with weaknesses.

For on-the-spot coverage by Senia Maymin, check out the log of her twitter tweets during the day.

References:

Diener, E. & Biswas-Diener, R. (2008). Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. Wiley-Blackwell.

Fredrickson, B. (2009). Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive. New York: Crown Books.

Peterson, C., Park, N., & Sweeney, P. (2008). Group well-being: Morale from a positive psychology perspective. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 57(Suppl 1), 19-36.

Peterson, C., Park, N., Pole, N., D’Andrea, W., & Seligman, M. (2008). Strengths of character and posttraumatic growth. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 21(2), 214-217.

Peterson, C., (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Peterson, C. & Park, N. (2006). Character strengths in organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27(8), 1149-1154.

Peterson, C., Ruch, W., Beerman, U., Park, N. & Seligman, M. (2007). Strengths of character, orientations to happiness, and life satisfaction. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2(3), 149-156

Peterson, C. & Seligman, M. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Resnick, S. & Rosenheck, R. (2006). Recovery and positive psychology: Parallel themes and potential synergies. Psychiatric Services, 57(1), 120-122.

January 30, 2009 4 comments

All Global Policies Health Mindfulness Pathway 3 "Meaning"Savoring / In-the-Moment Spirituality

Invitation to Collaborate in a Wellbeing Study

by Editor K.H.B. January 27, 2009

written by Editor K.H.B.

Interested in contributing to a broad study of wellbeing over time? The Wellbeing Study team is seeking collaborators who are willing to promote the study in their own countries or with specific populations in return for access to interesting data.

Many studies of wellbeing are limited to a small number of questions, a specific angle, a small population, or a snapshot in time, and fail to control for the positive and negative events that people experience.

The Wellbeing Study will look at wellbeing with a broad range of measures in order to learn more about the positive aspects of human nature and how these change over time. Currently the measures include:

Common positive psychology assessments such as
- Scales of Psychological Wellbeing
- Satisfaction with Life Scale (Temporal Version)
- Subjective Happiness Scale
- Adult Hope Scale
- Gratitude Survey
- Orientations to Happiness Scale
- Happiness Measures
Specific attribute measures, such as
- Strengths Use Scale
- Savouring Beliefs and Ways of Savouring Scales
- Curiosity and Exploration Inventory-Revised
- Grit Scale
- Meaning in Life Questionnaire

The study designers are also looking for a broad population of participants, both the general public and specific populations such spinal patients, the elderly, Maori, lawyers, teachers, or members of particular organizations.

The study begins in March 2009, has nine assessment points three months apart, and ends in March 2011. Each participant will participate in five consecutive assessments. For example, if a participant starts on March 1st, 2009, he or she will also complete the study in June 2009, September 2009, December 2009, and March 2010. The assessment battery takes about 25 minutes. Participants are provided with a report of their scores after the fifth assessment and are entered into draws for Amazon.com vouchers.

To expand the breadth of populations studied, the study organizers are looking for researchers who are interested in collaborating with them. They can provide easy means and methods for promoting the study in other countries or specific populations. Collaborators will be joining an international team of researchers and will have access to intriguing data. In order to involve as many collaborators as possible, the organizers have worked to take down barriers to participation — design, implementation, funding, etc. It may also be possible to introduce various opt-in positive interventions and further assessments after the third assessment point.

So far this study has largely been developed from New Zealand by academics from the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, Victoria, Massey, and Canterbury universities, but collaboration has already been established with the Open University of the United Kingdom and George Mason University of the United States.

Contact the study leader, Aaron Jarden to find out how to get involved. Aaron is a lecturer in psychology at the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand and president of the New Zealand Association of Positive Psychology.

January 27, 2009 1 comment

All Global Policies In-the-News Motivation

Great Expectations of Change

by Derrick Carpenter January 22, 2009

written by Derrick Carpenter

A Promise of Change

With an eye on our January theme of change and this week’s inaugural address of America’s new President—a man who campaigned on the promise of change—I feel it is necessary to offer a positive psychology perspective on the way in which we handle our expectations for change. As the United States ushers in a new political leader, many people across the world have high hopes for change, whether that be in an improved state of the world economy, substantial progress towards global peace, or a greater sense of purpose to get them out of bed tomorrow morning. Whatever the desired change may be, many people are wondering whether their high expectations can possibly be met.

Affective forecasting research suggests that our expectations related to emotional outcomes (i.e. changes that make us happier) are often too lofty. Paul Eastwick of Northwestern University and his colleagues have found that people overestimate their emotional reaction to a breakup with a romantic partner. Although they assume they will be unable to get out of bed, to eat, or to survive the day, when faced with the reality of a breakup, most people are able to continue on with life, albeit less happily. Eastwick and his team attribute this effect to an initial intensity bias, a tendency to exaggerate how strong our emotions will feel immediately following a change.

Harvard’s Daniel Gilbert finds that we also overestimate how long our emotional reactions to events will last. Studies by Gilbert and researchers at the Universities of Texas and Virginia find this duration neglect in response to rejection by a prospective employer and the defeat of one’s preferred candidate in an election. We tend not to be upset for as long as we expected. These are good rules of thumb to keep in mind whenever we have high hopes for change.

The Limitations of External Change

I believe that some of these findings are a result of our inability to accurately assess the effect of external changes on our internal condition. External changes refer to changes beyond the self. If your favorite sports team loses the big game or you find yourself rejected for a new position at work, you will expect to be devastated, but what you feel as you survive the disappointment will be more manageable than you imagined because the change was external, related to your environment and circumstances, but not to your character or identity.

Writing from the chilly Northeast as I daydream about sunny beaches, I am reminded of what the UC San Diego Rady School of Managment’s David Schkade and Princeton’s Daniel Kahneman found about expectations for well-being based on location. Study participants predicted that individuals living in Southern California are happier than those living in the Midwest, but the actual happiness data is the same. Anyone who has spent a morning scraping ice of her windshield has been jealous of bikini-clad beach dwellers. But moving to sunny California won’t make you significantly happier than you are now. Unless, that is, you leverage your newfound advantages.

Leveraging External Change

If we know that a new political administration or a move to a tropical location won’t live up to our expectations, should we all just become cynical about change and accept the mediocre status quo? Absolutely not! We know that expecting change can have great positive outcomes and positive psychology is grounded by the fundamental ability of humans to create change in their lives. The problem comes when we place too much of the responsibility for expected change in the hands of an external agent like California. However, if we leverage the external changes to help us initiate internal change—taking personal responsibility for the outcome—we can come much closer to meeting our expectations.

Imagine a grumpy lawyer named Susan who, after scraping the ice off her windshield one cold morning in Chicago, decides in a fit of frustration to transfer to her firm’s San Diego office in the hope of a better life. It should be obvious—now that we’re experts in affective forecasting—that a grump from Chicago who moves to San Diego will simply be a grump with a better suntan. But what if Susan uses the move to reinvigorate herself and begins taking up more outdoor activities like jogging and tennis. Perhaps she joins some local recreational teams, and makes wonderful friends. Susan could have made similar changes while in Chicago (perhaps substituting bowling for tennis), but the move to California inspired her to take advantage of her new surroundings. External changes can mean big differences when we use the shift as a source of inspiration and momentum for internal transformation. Then our expectations of change can be transformed into tremendous opportunities.

Taking Personal Responsibility

Let’s not kid ourselves. This is hard work. Grumpy Susan won’t make many friends unless she is committed to changing her attitude as well. But the hard work of internal change is where the real payoffs begin. President Obama stated in his Inaugural Address on Tuesday: “What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility—a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.”

The President understands that he can only do so much and that the greatest change will be experienced by those who help create it. Those who idly sit back waiting for change should expect disappointment.

Draw your inspiration from your expectations for the external changes around you and use that to leverage your personal power for internal change. “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Mahatma Ghandi’s often-quoted suggestion reads so simply that it can be easily overlooked. Go back and read it again.

Acknowledgements: My humble gratitude to Alison Wood and Jason Zellner for their help with this month’s contribution.

Images: All images from David Niblack.

References

Eastwick, P. W., Finkel, E. J., Krishnamurti, T., & Loewenstein, G. (2007). Mispredicting distress following romantic breakup: Revealing the time course of the affective forecasting error. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. doi: 101016/j.jesp.2007.07.001

Gilbert, D. T., Wilson, D. W., Pinel, E. C., Blumberg, S. J., & Wheatley, T. P. (1998). Immune neglect: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(3), 617-638.

Schkade, D. A., & Kahneman, D. (1998). Does Living in California Make People Happy? A focusing illusion in judgments of life satisfaction. Psychological Science, 9(5), 340-347.

January 22, 2009 7 comments

All Business Global Policies Health Parenting & Schools Sports

Positive Psychology in Perspective – A Future View from the UK

by Bridget Grenville-Cleave November 26, 2008

written by Bridget Grenville-Cleave

Forgive my shorter than normal posting; I know that regular readers of Positive Psychology News Daily are used to having far more substantial material to get their teeth into than this particular piece appears to deliver – but all will become clear in a moment.

There’s less than six weeks to go before the 1^st Cohort finishes the first-ever European MSc in Applied Positive Psychology at the University of East London, UK, under the inspirational leadership of Dr Ilona Boniwell. It’s been an interesting journey. And yes, I say that with typical British understatement. At the start, in February 07, I expected that the “destination” would reveal itself at some point along the way, and that as a result I would have the option of mapping out (no pun intended) my second, or possibly third, career; this, I now realize, was a tad naive.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Here we are, with the final dissertation deadline in sight, and I’m still questioning: What did I do all this for? And where am I going with it? Perhaps this is a normal reaction to being neck-deep in statistics and interview transcriptions, grappling with the finer points of SPSS and Quantitative Analysis. And yes, I do regret opting to do mixed methods research…[I feel like a miner, down in the dark, chipping away at the rock face, not knowing whether what I find will be valuable, hoping it will be worth hauling all that way back to surface…This particular research project has literally taken over my life for the past year. But that’s another story…]. In short, perhaps my current unease with the “meaning and purpose” of Positive Psychology is pretty normal for this stage in the game. Maybe some of you Penn MAPP graduates can reassure me!

So it was with huge relief that I stumbled over this gargantuan (12Mb/317 pages) , multi-disciplinary report “Mental Capital and Well-Being: Making the most of ourselves in the 21^st century” from the Government Office for Science, London, published October 22 2008. Quite how anything this substantial managed to slip under our radar is anyone’s guess. Well, no, actually, it’s quite likely that on that particular day last month you were bailing out the banks, trying to ward off a global recession and focussed 24/7 on the presidential election instead…and I was only waist-deep in statistics…

The Future for Positive Psychology

I’m not going to try to review this report (it does that pretty well itself in the Executive Summary, a mere 52 pages), other than to say it’s truly comprehensive, referencing all aspects of psychological well-being, not just from cradle to grave, or individual v societal v environmental, but it also includes the basic biological building blocks, nutrition, sleep and exercise, which seem to be given only a token mention in most Positive Psychology material I’ve read. The key message of Mental Capital and Well-Being is stated as follows:

“…if we are to prosper and thrive in our changing society and in an increasingly interconnected and competitive world, both our mental and material resources will be vital. Encouraging and enabling everyone to realise their potential throughout their lives will be crucial for our future prosperity and wellbeing”.

Of particular importance for students, practitioners and policy-makers alike, I think, are the Systems Maps, which include illustrations of

i) Mental capital through life

ii) Conceptual overview of mental health

iii) Well-being at work

These are the first systems views of psychological well-being that I have seen. They capture so much insight on just one page each – I’m going to enlarge them and stick them on my office wall. And if you turn to Appendix B (pp283-288) you’ll find three pretty scary ‘Future Scenarios’, which outline the challenges for mental capital and well-being that we might be grappling with in 2020…

Turning Negatives into Positives

Don’t be put off by the fact that this report is a British perspective; although the work on which the report is based references many recent or current political initiatives in the UK, over 400 leading experts and stakeholders from countries across the world were involved in the project, so I would suggest that the vast majority of the theory behind the work is relevant to other countries too.

So I’d encourage you to stop whatever else you’re currently doing, and take a quick look now. It may help put things in perspective (the Systems Maps did for me), and potentially may provide you with your Positive Psychology ‘destination’, whatever that might be.

And now, feeling much more motivated, I’ll get back to those stats…

References:

Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project (2008), Final Project Report. The Government Office for Science, London.

Images:

1) Everything is changing courtesy of amanky

2) kodame (home)

3) Everything men know courtesy of dailyinvention

November 26, 2008 4 comments

All Awe Communication Global Policies Love Pathway 3 "Meaning"_3 Positive Organizations

My Country, Darwin, and My Mom: Meaningful Human Connection

by Derrick Carpenter November 25, 2008

written by Derrick Carpenter

Is That Me, Excited about My Country?

On the night of the presidential election, I lounged and chatted on a cozy couch with friends in a Philadelphia apartment near the University of Pennsylvania as the state-by-state results were reported. We pondered the implications of the Harold Zullow and Martin Seligman study that linked winning presidential elections to optimism. Within moments of the official announcement of Barack Obama’s victory, the street outside – a main campus artery – was overcome by a crowd of supporters. There were hundreds of people joyfully and peacefully making their way down the middle of the road. We immediately gave up watching the television and stood by the window to take in the spectacle. “Where were they all going, and from where did they all come?” we pondered. We had no idea, but just watching them, hugging as they went, and listening to the buzz of energy audible through the closed window sent chills down my spine.

An hour or so later, I had to feed the meter where my car was parked, so I headed to street level, curious to get closer to the action. The crowds had thinned a bit, but as I walked down the sidewalk, two young men whom I assume were local college students, ran down the street carrying a huge American flag over their heads. It was the kind of sight one would expect to see at an animated World Cup match featuring fan-favorite South American super-teams, not here in the United States and never for something so dull as an election. The best part was that they did not seem to be celebrating a victory over something or someone, but rather an unadulterated pride in their country. They smiled unabashedly to everyone they passed, and I noticed another young woman watching them, who then looked at me and smiled. I felt a sudden rush of feeling connected and warm to everyone around me. These flag-bearing students were creating a wave of positive emotions that spread quickly among the nearby pedestrians. It is an image I will never forget.

I want to be clear: this was not an Obama thing, and this was not a McCain thing. This was a human thing. And it is a phenomenon that should be of great interest to positive psychology. Although one can assume most of the people experiencing joy that night had voted on the Democratic ticket earlier that day, the experience I had on the streets of Philadelphia had very little to do with party platforms and candidate preferences. There was simply an air of happiness and it spread like wildfire among people, and did so intensely. Barbara Frederickson recently wrote an op-ed relating the post-election emotional highs to her Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotions, but I think there was more involved that night than positive emotions. There was a profound sense of human connection. But what does positive psychology have to say about such moments of subjectively meaningful human connection?

What is the Human Connection?

In Authentic Happiness, Martin Seligman originally divided positive psychology into the study of three distinct domains: positive emotion, engagement or flow, and meaning. He defines the third domain, meaning, as a connection to something larger than the self, which encompasses many types of self-transcendence but certainly includes moments of deep human connection. In an attempt to describe the overly social tendencies of humans, Jonathan Haidt in The Happiness Hypothesis likens human groups in our evolutionary history to hives, where strong interpersonal bonds and commitment to other people allowed us to survive trying adversity. In fact, there exists an entire sub-theory of evolution known as multi-level selection theory that claims human evolution operated not only on the traditional Darwinian level of individual fitness but also on the level of group fitness. According to these theorists, human groups that possessed traits allowing them to work and bond together more than others would outlast groups lacking those traits (see David Sloan Wilson’s Evolution for Everyone).

As an example, let’s consider two primal human tribes living on nearby plains in northern Africa. We’ll call them the Jabi and the Kulu. The Jabi tribe has consistently developed individuals with extraordinary hunting expertise by taking young boys out to hunt for long excursions at an early age. The Kulu tribe, on the other hand, spends less time training their boys to hunt but devotes more time to building community bonds of love, affection, and loyalty. The Jabi consists of more evolutionarily-advantaged individuals, who typically outlast less skilled individuals like the Kulu in traditional evolutionary models. Imagine, however, that the plains undergo a serious drought and the safety of each tribe is jeopardized by a sudden fire. Each tribe has one member who had been out retrieving water by the river and returns to find his tribesman encircled by flames. These tribesman have an opportunity to put their lives at serious risk to rescue all the others. The Kulu tribesman, having developed stronger bonds for his clan, is more likely to take the risk and rescue his tribe, even if it means risking his own life. Modern humans evolved from tribes that increasingly resembled the Kulu.

Emotions Synchronized and a Greater Community

In our evolutionary history, many mechanisms have supported the development of strong group bonding. McGill professor Daniel Levitin recently published a book about the evolutionary importance of music and dance in shaping the social human brain, in which he describes how inclusive and participatory music was in our developmental history. Ancient tribes training for battle against rivals created bonds similar to those of modern-day militaries. Describing his emotions during synchronized marching drills with hundreds of other recruits in the US Army’s basic training, William McNeill states:

“A sense of pervasive well-being is what I recall; more specifically, a strange sense of personal enlargement; a sort of swelling out, becoming bigger than life, thanks to participation in collective ritual” (p. 2, 1995).

Artistic expression, storytelling, and even religion—according to some theorists—all developed to encourage the strength of hive emotion bonds between people.

In modern society, we’ve come a long way from our tribal ancestors. Segways. iPhones. DVR. We can only imagine what’s next. But for all the ways that technology and our futuristic mores are connecting us with others, we’re also becoming a society of individuals. We can pass hundreds of people on our way to work and acknowledge none of them. We praise those who rise above the pack to achieve greatness, even if it is lonely at the top. And we often focus much more on our slight individual differences than our vast interpersonal commonalities. We have to go out of our way to connect with others and find meaning. The tragic events of September 11th brought us together for a while as we mourned together, but it was short-lived and the negative tone was far from ideal. It’s one of the reasons people volunteer for many months to partake in a political campaign in which they believe. The feeling of being a part of a greater community, of something larger than oneself, is irresistible. We thirst for it. It’s part of our very nature.

Sharing

Amidst the economy, the wars, and the environment, I believe the continual growth of meaningful human connections is one of the biggest challenges we currently face. And don’t expect it to be resolved in Washington. This is a grassroots campaign that will take place on your sidewalk, one genuine smile at a time.

A few days after the election, I called my mom. In addition to our typical talking points (Yes, mom, I’ll be driving home for Thanksgiving. Yes, I’ll watch out for all the crazy folks on the road…), we discussed the implications of an Obama-run White House and the significance that this election will have in history. She had her share of stories of friends from election night and the following morning. Some stories revolved around disappointment, but many followed the uplifting theme of human connection. I began to describe to her the flag bearers I saw in Philadelphia the previous night and the feelings that it evoked in me, and I began to cry. Because not only had I experienced a great moment of human connection the night before, but by sharing the story I was creating another one at that very instant with my mom, who I knew understood. For a moment we snapped out of our traditional mother-son roles and became complete equals, recognizing each other’s hopes and vulnerabilities, and sharing our emotional selves freely. I had never been prouder to be both an American and a son. It was human connection at its greatest.

References

Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). What good are positive emotions? Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 300-319.

Haidt, J. (2006). The happiness hypothesis: Finding modern truth in ancient wisdom. New York: Basic Books.

Levitin, D. J. (2008). The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature. New York: Dutton.

McNeill, W. H. (1995). Keeping together in time: Dance and drill in human history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Authentic happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment. New York: Free Press.

Wilson, D. S. (2007). Evolution for everyone: How Darwin’s theory can change the way we think about our lives. New York: Delacorte Press.

Zullow, H., & Seligman, M. E. P. (1990). Pessimistic rumination predicts defeat of presidential candidates, 1900 to 1984. Psychological Inquiry, 1, 52-61.

Images: Philadelphia street 1, Philadelphia street 2, flag, multi-level selection theory, tribe, human connection

November 25, 2008 6 comments

All Book Review Global Policies Pathway 3 "Meaning"

Nonzero: Reflections on Social Complexity

by Kathryn Britton November 7, 2008

written by Kathryn Britton

I started first grade in a segregated whites-only school in North Carolina. By the time I was in high school, schools were integrated. We welcomed an exchange student from Argentina. During the first part of my working years, I had colleagues with green cards from Russia, Hong Kong, India, and Taiwan. Towards the end of my information technology career, I worked with teams in Germany, Poland, Japan, China and Australia. It was difficult to schedule phone meetings. In my work now, I have close email and Skype relationships with people in Australia, Mexico, Canada, England, Switzerland, Malaysia, Denmark, and China.

Robert Wright

As my short sketch illustrates, 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. Non-zero-sum is a term from game theory that means having overlapping interests as opposed to the competing interests of zero-sum games. A tennis match is a zero-sum game where only one side can win. In a non-zero-sum game, either both win (positive game) or both lose (negative game).

Wright attributes greater social integration to technologies that pull us together and to common threats that push us together.

Meal on the table We are pulled together as we create technologies that produce energy, including the food that fuels our bodies, more reliably but require many people to conduct. These technologies started simple – for example the Shoshone rabbit nets that brought otherwise independent hunters together periodically to trap a major food source. Nowadays they are very complex, involving world-wide networks of producers, middle-men, processors, and consumers who never meet each other. How many people were involved in the production, packaging, transport, and merchandizing of the food we ate last night?

“New technologies arise that permit or encourage new, richer forms of non-zero-sum interactions; then (for intelligible reasons grounded ultimately in human nature) social structures evolve that realize this rich potential – that convert non-zero-sum situations to positive sums. Thus does social complexity grow in scope and depth” (p. 5-6).

Wright describes some factors that lead to social integration – including the need to spread risks, divide up labor efficiently, manage our use of scarce resources such as water, and avoid overexploiting fish populations and arable land (p. 338).

International Marketplace The two main problems that have to be solved to form such a web are communication and trust. We have seen vast changes in the communication reach of ordinary people in my lifetime. We used to write letters to a few people we knew well. Now I communicate routinely with people all over the world, including people I’ve never met who read my blog. The need for trust has led to governing structures that have become increasingly interconnected.

We are pushed together by the need to deal with common threats. Over history these threats have often been warfare, invasion, and piracy. Threats are related to our economic interconnection. Wright argues that “disruptions in trade spurred the evolution of governance” (p. 121). He claims that war contains the seeds of its own demise, quoting Herbert Spencer, “From war has been gained all that it had to give…” (p. 238). I believe that we face common threats now – for example global warming – that will take global cooperation to address effectively.

Moral Animal

When I first started working for IBM, a lack of effective external competition led to internal competition – giving multiple groups the same problem to solve – to push people in the groups together. Over time, plenty of external competition appeared, and then internal competition became wasteful and destructive to our common interests. I believe we are reaching a similar point where we need to get beyond internal competition among humans to turn our collective attention to the threats that face us all.

Let me end by saying humbly that Robert Wright’s arguments are far more interesting, colorful, and complex than I can capture here. Greed and lust for power are not ignored, and in fact play a role in the evolution of social complexity. Yet there is such a hopeful message about the test we are now facing to our moral imagination.

“So how will we do on this test? Judging by history, the current turbulence will eventually yield to an era of relative stability, an era when global political, economic, and social structures have largely tamed the new form of chaos. The world will reach a new equilibrium, at a level of organization higher than any past equilibrium. And the period we are now entering will, in retrospect, look like the storm before the calm” (p. 9).

Will it? It depends on all of us. “All told, our menu of options is rich, ranging from self-annihilation to graceful adaptation” (p. 10).

References

Wright, R. (2000). Nonzero: The logic of human destiny. New York: Vintage Press.

Wright, R. (2006). Robert Wright on TED Talks. “We are going to have to see a major round of moral progress in the world.”

Clinton, W. (2001). Remarks on Nonzero. Speech as the Dayton Peace Accords Anniversary. I love this speech.

Lederach, J. P. (2005). The moral imagination: The art and soul of building peace. Oxford University Press.

Images

Food on the table – http://www.taiwanfun.com/pics/0807/taiwanfun/NONZERO001.jpg

Robert Wright – http://www.newamerica.net/people/robert_wright

Cover of Moral Imagination is from Amazon.com: Akmal MizshakaroI painted the image found on the cover of this book following the tragic events unleashed in New York and Washington D.C., on September 11, 2001.

November 7, 2008 2 comments

All Global Policies Hope In-the-News Pathway 3 "Meaning"Resilience Strengths _2 Positive Traits

Beware of Your Internal Lawyer!

by Marie-Josée Shaar October 24, 2008

written by Marie-Josée Shaar

Presidential Candidates As I am sure you have, I recently witnessed a heated argument between two neighbors who disagree over the Presidential campaign. Perhaps you found yourself in this very same situation? If your relations with people supporting the opposing view have been more difficult as of late, please pay attention!

The Confirmation Bias and Our Internal Lawyer

Studies of everyday reasoning show that people tend to make their decisions instinctively and then try to find evidence to support their point of view. We are typically much better at noticing and remembering information that supports our position rather than information that proves us wrong: that’s our confirmation bias. When our perception of the world is challenged, we are more likely to distort and reinterpret events so they fit our original perception than we are to reevaluate our position – that’s a process known as assimilation. If confronted with opposing views that are difficult to turn to our advantage, we are perturbed. In this case, to diminish the dissonance, cognitive science tells us that we quickly find loopholes in the other party’s argument. This is what Jonathan Haidt cleverly calls our “internal lawyer”: when we create the reasoning to support our views that already fits our emotional beliefs in our views.

Confirmation biases, assimilation, and internal lawyers are all processes that we use quite frequently. They are in action at work, at home, at our kids’ soccer game. They protect our self-esteem, but impair our judgment. They make us feel better, but do worse. The result? My neighbors’ disagreement.

Both Information-Seeking and Bonding

On another line of thought, I also attended this week the naturalization ceremony of a new American Citizen. After he swore allegiance to the country, a video was presented. The message was simple: we were all created equal, and we all have the right to freedom and to pursue happiness. It is through our individual contributions that we’ve built this country, and contributing starts with our neighbors and communities.

In this time of presidential elections and economic uncertainty, this was a neat reminder. As humans, we are information-seeking and bonding creatures. Information-seeking and bonding are both ubiquitous and fundamental. These dispositions are good news as they certainly contributed to much of the country’s and the world’s advancement. But of course, we have to use them.

I’d also like to remind us of the strength of wisdom. In the VIA Classification, strengths of wisdom and knowledge are paired together. VIA also associates wisdom with perspective, which “represents a superior level of knowledge, judgment, and allows the individual to address important and difficult questions.” In other words, it is through information-seeking that we can achieve wisdom.

So here’s where it all comes together: next time you strike a conversation with someone who supports “the other” presidential candidate, I’d like to suggest you put your internal lawyer away and pull on your natural tendencies as information seeker and bonder to achieve a wiser process. Listening to what your neighbor has to say rather than instinctively and defensively trying to prove your point is not only a more mature way to approach the discussion, but also a strategy more conducive to the country’s advancement. And in the end, that’s likely what we all want.

All the best until next month!

Sources:

American Naturalization Ceremony – October 22, 2008, Philadelphia, PA.

Haidt, J. (2006). The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. New York: Basic Books.

Peterson, C. & Seligman, M. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Reivich, K, & Shattẻ, A. (2002). The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles. New York: Broadway Books.

Schulman, M. (2002). The Passion to Know, A Developmental Perspective. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of Positive Psychology (pp. 313-326). New York: Oxford University Press.

Images: Presidential Candidates

October 24, 2008 2 comments

All Conferences Global Policies In-the-News Positive Feelings

Happiness & Its Causes UK Review: Traveling to Happiness

by Timothy T.C. So October 18, 2008

written by Timothy T.C. So

“Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.”
Margaret Lee Runbeck (1905-1956).

Looking at the quote above, one of my favorite quotes on happiness, you may ask: “What, then, is the manner of traveling?”

Traveling to Happiness at the Happiness & Its Causes Conference

Following last year’s great success in Australia, the 2^nd Conference on Happiness & Its Causes was held in London, UK, October 9-10, 2008. The conference aimed to probe into the underlying causes of happiness and well-being for us as individuals, at our workplaces, and in our community as a whole. As suggested by the motto of the conference, Tools & Techniques for a Happier Life, the conference shed some light on how to travel there.

In the two-day conference, over 40 leading speakers, including psychologists, philosophers, scientists, economists, politicians, poets, monks, journalists, comedians, environmentalists, Chief Executives, broadcasters, and those in other fields gave their thoughts on the topic. Given the diverse background of the speakers, their varied perspectives went broader that what I find at academic and research-based conferences that I have attended previously.

Anita Anand revealed a tautology at the opening of the conference in saying that those things that are “pretty good” usually do not make the editorial cut and do not make most of the media’s headlines. Thus we have a daily dose of crime, terrorism, economic hardship, and bonkers politics. In a world that is misted by negativity, how can we strive for happiness?

Traveling through Science

In my favorite session – The Anatomy of Happiness – Dr. Stefan Klein responded scientifically to this question. In addition to explaining the brain’s “happiness system” using a biophysical approach, Dr. Klein also conveyed the message of the “individual as the primary agent of happiness,” and offered several powerful hints to change our brain to be happier:

Pursue cognitive strategies (include 1. Writing happiness dairies and 2. Controlling negative emotions
Be active
Physical exercise and sex
Sharpen the perception of the external world
Be curious, seek contrasts in life
Focus on interpersonal relationships

For more details, I would recommend you have a look at his book The Science of Happiness.

Traveling through the Material World

There was a panel discussion that had the same title as Andrew Simms’s new book: Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth. The panel debates the contradiction between material possession and our failure in achieving happiness, as well as its implications for the consumer society. Ann Pettifor, one of the panelists, said, “Money is not evil, but surely it’s not everything.” This got me thinking that living in developed countries, we have money that creates a new modern world with misery, boredom, stress, and dissatisfaction. Why is that the case? The great discussions on the panel reminded me of what A.C. Grayling once wrote: “Money and possessions do not yield more than temporary happiness, true wealth lies in such intangibles as health and love.”

Traveling across Cultures

As an Asian who is currently residing in a Western society, I am a big fan of the cross-cultural perspective on happiness and positive psychology. Professor David Matsumoto gave an amazing talk on Recognising Emotion in Others from a cross-cultural viewpoint. If we try to classify happiness into different types of enjoyable emotions, how many would you think there would be? Don’t be surprised as Prof. Matsumoto answers – 16! According to the book Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman, the 16 types of enjoyable emotions include sensory pleasures (visual pleasure, tactile pleasure, olfactory pleasure, auditory pleasure, gustatory pleasure), amusement, contentment, excitement, relief, wonder, ecstasy or bliss, gratitude, elevation, schadenfreude, fiero, and naches

Too many for you? Indeed, Matsumoto noted that some of these enjoyable emotions do not even have denotations in English, like fiero in Italian (refers to the intense enjoyable feelings that occur at the moment when one wins a sporting events or solves a difficult problem), naches in Yiddish (refers to the pleasant feelings we have when we revel in the accomplishments of our children), and schadenfreude in German (refers to the pleasure we feel for ourselves when we witness the misfortunes of others). I am so impressed by what he said that the emotion exists even when there is no such emotion “term” in some cultures. Regrettably, related research about Asian societies is limited. In order to unpack the mystery of happiness, researchers could probably learn much from cross-cultural angles.

Traveling through Mental Training

Last but not the least, I am happy to see Matthieu Richard in the conference. Richard’s book, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill in the Chinese version, is always my one of my most recommended books to Chinese audiences. Matthieu stressed “wisdom” and “mental training” in his talk, which is in his words how you can “familiarize yourself with a new vision of things, a new way to manage your thoughts, of perceiving people and experiencing the world.” By focusing on mental training, it is reasonable to believe that our self-transformation would have impact on people around us, and thus would gradually change the world to become happier.

More Traveling

There is definitely more wisdom to share from the conference, such as discussions by Professor Felicia Huppert and Tania Singer with Chris Smith on how scientists measure happiness, Professor Irving Kirschs research on the relationship of drugs, placebo and depression, Ven. Robina Courtin’s talk about what we can learn about happiness from prisons, and Dr. Stirling Moorey, the author of Why Good Things Happen to Good People on how Cognitive Behavior Therapy can be used to manage moods.

People may wonder why there is a convergence of interest from people in various settings about the exploration of happiness. This might reflect that there is still a lot for us to know about happiness. Perhaps the final message in this review would be: We Do Need a Happier Life and a Happy World! Contributions solely from positive psychology are not enough. With the involvement of people from such disciplines as philosophy, religion, health care, medicine, counseling, social work, management, policy, and business, we brainstorm, engage, and collaborate with one another, and eventually achieve our ultimate goal: traveling to the happy life.

Acknowledgment: I’d like to send my warmest gratitude to Professor Felicia Huppert here for kindly bringing me to a great conference with a guest pass so I didn’t miss this wonderful activity in such a short period after I returned to UK.

References

Ekman, P. (2007). Emotions Revealed, Second Edition: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life. New York: Holt Paperbacks.

Klein, S. (2006). The Science of Happiness: How Our Brains Make Us Happy-and What We Can Do to Get Happier. Da Capo Press.

Post S., & Neimark, J. (2007). Why Good Things Happen to Good People: How to Live a Longer, Healthier, Happier Life by the Simple Act of Giving. USA: Broadway books.

Ricard, M. (2007). Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill. Little, Brown & Co.

Simms, A. (2008). Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth?. Constable.

October 18, 2008 5 comments

All Global Policies Money Positive Feelings _1 Positive Experiences

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

by Bridget Grenville-Cleave August 26, 2008

written by Bridget Grenville-Cleave

By Bridget Grenville-Cleave

Over the past decade or so there have been many Positive Psychology articles exploring the relationship between money and happiness. Myers (2000), Diener and Oishi (2000), Blanchflower and Oswald (2004), and Layard (2005) amongst others have presented research which suggests that increasing wealth does not buy happiness (this graph illustrates this point for the USA). The argument, put simply, is that in the Western World economic well-being has increased significantly since the 1950s, but that during the same period of time, levels of happiness have stayed pretty much the same. Amongst the explanations put forward are the existence of the so-called hedonic treadmill and the happiness set-point, which mean that happiness only increases temporarily – eventually we return to our genetically predetermined base level.

Happiness is on the up…

The good news is that according to a new study by Inglehart, Foa, Peterson and Welzel (2008), happiness is actually increasing: in this longitudinal study between 1981 and 2007, happiness levels went up in 45 out of 52 countries. And contrary to what you might conclude from Myers’ graph (mentioned above), the US is one of those countries which shows an upward trend in happiness (p. 276). Several countries (e.g. India, Ireland, and Mexico) show steeply rising trends, and only four countries show downward trends (Austria, Belgium, the UK, and West Germany). So how do we explain the apparent inconsistency between Myers and Inglehart et al?

…says who?

In Inglehart et al’s study, data was taken from the World Values Survey, in which life satisfaction is assessed by asking people how satisfied they are with their life as a whole (using a scale that ranges from 1 (not at all satisfied) to 10 (very satisfied)) and happiness is assessed by asking how happy they are using four categories (very happy, rather happy, not very happy and not at all happy). The researchers then constructed their own Subjective Well-Being Index (SWB = life satisfaction – 2.5 x happiness). Using this measure, they conclude that since the 1980s (the date from which they have consistent country-level data) happiness is increasing in the vast majority of the countries they studied.

Myers, on the other hand, doesn’t use life satisfaction data at all: instead his graph is based on happiness data in the General Social Survey, which asks “taken all together, how would you say things are these days–would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” As a result, he reports that the number of Americans who describe themselves as being “very happy” has declined from 35% to 33% between 1957 and 1998 (p. 61). But if you look at the GSS data on happiness for the years 1972 (the earliest data I could access) and 2006, those saying they are “very happy” increased by 2.7%, those who said they are “pretty happy” increased by 2.9% and those who said they are “not too happy” declined by 5.5%… The trend from the early 1970s onwards, then, seems to be that happiness is increasing. So perhaps both Myers and Inglehart et al are correct in the conclusions they draw from their data, even though they appear to be contradictory… No wonder statistics is such a popular subject with politicians!

Statistics aside, what is particularly important about Inglehart et al’s paper is that they draw a very clear distinction between life satisfaction and happiness. They link economic prosperity to life satisfaction and SWB, but not to happiness. Interestingly, these researchers suggest that even though happiness and life satisfaction tend to rise and fall together, they can move in different directions (p. 272-3), which explains why some ex-communist Eastern European countries saw happiness increase, but life satisfaction decrease, during their transition to democracy in the 80s and 90s. Thus the linkage between happiness, life satisfaction, and wealth is not as straightforward as we might at first think.

Free Choice Increases Happiness?

Happiness has risen, they suggest, due to increasing democratization over the past 25 years, which means that people increasingly feel they have free choice (e.g. freedom of speech, to travel and in politics) and control over their lives. Significantly, according to their research, free choice was the only variable which showed a statistically significant association with change in SWB, regardless of whether the SWB Index, happiness, or life satisfaction was the dependent variable. In fact “by itself, free choice explained 30% of the change over time in SWB” (p. 270).

Free choice and control over one’s life are linked to economic security, of course, but they are about much more than that. Social tolerance of diverse lifestyles (e.g. of sexuality, gender equality, other ethnic groups, religious expression, self expression and so on) is a vital component in increasing personal happiness, because it broadens the range of choices available. Whilst economic growth may ultimately be an important factor in increasing well-being, social tolerance seems to be much more so (see chart below); as a result we now have some evidence that it is possible to increase happiness at a country level.

So what does applied positive psychology tell us about developing social tolerance? Well, unsurprisingly given the recency of these conclusions, according to my search of PsycARTICLES and PsycINFO at the moment, not a lot, which means there may be a great opportunity for someone out there to make a major contribution to this field. Any takers?

References

Blanchflower, D. & Oswald, A. (2004, July). Well-being over time in Britain and the USA. Journal of Public Economics, 88(7/8), 1359.

Diener, E. & Oishi, S. (2000). Money and happiness: Income and subjective well-being across nations. In E.Diener & E.M. Suh, Culture and Subjective Well-Being (Well Being and Quality of Life), (pp. 185-218). Cambridge, MA, US: The MIT Press.

Inglehart, R., Foa, R., Peterson, C. & Welzel, C. (2008). Development, freedom, and rising happiness: A global perspective (1981-2007). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(4), 264-285.

Layard, R. (2005). Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. New York: Penguin.

Myers, D. (2000). The funds, friends and faith of happy people. American Psychologist, 55(1), 56-67

Images

1. thisduck, 2. mac steve, 3. s_k_s.

August 26, 2008 47 comments

All Conferences Global Policies

4th ECPP (Part 3/3): Quotes from the Conference

by Elaine O'Brien July 17, 2008

written by Elaine O'Brien

Selected quotations from The 4th European Conference of Positive Psychology (ECPP) on July 1-4, 2008, in Rijeka, Croatia:

Ray Fowler at the IPPA Executive Board Meeting said, “Put kids into exercise programs and they learn to read. Exercise raises children’s cognitive and emotional potential.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talked about helping people connect. He said, “It’s not just how you feel; Action is more important than the feeling. What are the ways we can positively impact society?”
When asked about how to actually make life better, Csikszentmihalyi talked about Civic Ventures – an organization focused on recognizing retirees over the age of 65 years who start new careers and ultimately help the world. Civic Ventures offers older adults a reward for their applied experience in a new setting.

John Wang spoke about how those Physical Education teachers who are autonomous (as opposed to controlling) help students enjoy physical education.

Rijeka Croatia

Carol Craig spoke of how in the UK children spend 5.5 hours on screens per day. She talked about the importance of exercise and diet as a Positive Intervention.

Igor Srdoc of Slovenia talked about “live it learning” for at-risk kids and adolescents. He and his cohort work to develop teamwork and psycho-social well-being through positive interventions including outdoor recreation like camping trips.

Todd Kashdan spoke about being in the present moment and mindfulness. He said, “Everything that involves a grateful moment involves mindfulness.” And he said, “The science is the foundation that makes us unique in figuring out how to create and sustain health and well-being.”

Ilona Boniwell stated, “Positive psychology is a discipline in the making.”

Nic Marks spoke about the dominant language being economics, and about the challenges of globalization and the 21st century. He queried, “What should human life be like in the 21st century?” and “How can policy be impacted to help people have a quality of living?” He spoke about how 50% of the world lives on less than $2.00 per day!

Image: Rijeka Croatia Photo by Danijel Durkovic on Unsplash

July 17, 2008 0 comment

All Global Policies In-the-News Pathway 3 "Meaning"_1 Positive Experiences

4th ECPP (Part 2/3): Three Distinct Lessons I’ve learnt

by Timothy T.C. So July 16, 2008

written by Timothy T.C. So

A couple of weeks ago, at the 4th European Conference of Positive Psychology conference in Croatia, I presented a study on the impact of Job Design and Team Structure on employee well-being which I conducted with Michael West last year. In the last article, I wrote about the main questions at this conference that matter to the positive psychology community, and here I share something more personal about the three distinct lessons that I learned at the event.

July 16, 2008 1 comment

All Business Global Policies Health Parenting & Schools Pathway 3 "Meaning"_3 Positive Organizations

4th ECPP (Part 1/3): Croatia Delivers Fabulous Conference

by Timothy T.C. So July 15, 2008

written by Timothy T.C. So

(Special thanks to Elaine O’Brien for her contribution to this article)

The city of Opatija, Croatia is a seaside gem with beautiful landscapes, architecture, and design. The breathtaking sceneries are enchanting, yet something more captivating happened in the city two weeks ago – The 4th European Conference of Positive Psychology (ECPP) on July 1-4.

Comparing the present meeting to the 2nd ECPP four years ago, the attendees could see the rapid expansion of the positive psychology community: the number of paper presentations has increased from 63 to 140; Symposia from 5 to 12; Workshops from 1 to 7; and Round tables from 2 to 5. More than 300 speakers came from over 30 countries, including Asia and Africa.

What Matters?
What are the main questions that matter to our community?

Our society matters: The first Keynote speaker, Ed Diener, enlarged positive psychology to a wider world view by examining the importance of the well-being of societies as well as individuals. Using the Gallup World Poll data, Ed Diener talked about how national accounts of well-being can simultaneously help policy makers create better societies and positive psychologist confirm their results. “What are the ways we can positively impact society?” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi addressed this question in his Keynote session about the role of flow in positive psychology through linking up flow – the major component that helps create an engaged life – to the society including the workplace, education, and the urban environment. Nic Marks, in his paper presentation “Hard to be hopeful about Planet Earth,” also stressed how positive psychology can contribute to the economy, as well as the challenges of globalization in the 21st century. When we are living on a planet in which 50% of the world lives on less than ₤1.00 per day, how can positive psychologists help policy to be implemented and help improve people’s quality of living?

Culture matters: On the first evening, I was honored to spent some time speaking with Antonella Delle Fave, Chair of the European Network for Positive Psychology, about the importance of culture on positive psychology. She gave an example about how different the interpretations of words such as “joy” and “happiness” are to Americans and to the Japanese. She also compared the Chinese traditions in healing the body to the Western way, which is “too much pharmacology.” This is not just about differences in wordings, but in concepts and perceptions of the way human beings, as cultural animals, achieve happiness, satisfaction, and meaning in life. Delle Fave presented empirical studies in various countries (mainly Europe and South Africa) at a round table, and offered great insights on cross-cultural-level eudemonic happiness based on data. Here, I would also like to urge more cross-cultural studies on positive psychology, especially from Asian scholars.

History and the Future BOTH Matter: Two round table discussions provided us wisdom about what we can learn from the past and do for our future. One of them focused on the lessons from Abraham Maslow for the positive psychology of our days. Dmitry Leontiev from Moscow State University, highlighted what we can learn from historian scholars, their philosophies, and their theoretical concepts in order to make better sense of the tasks and challenges in the 21st century.
Another round table – “The future of positive psychology” – was more a discussion of how positive psychology makes a better future, according to the speeches made by speakers like Todd Kashdan, Dmitry Leontiev, and Nic Marks. Nic queried, “What should human life be like in the 21st century?” We can tell from the speakers’ diverse viewpoints that there are indeed many challenges we will face, but more importantly there are also many opportunities ahead, flourishing both in academia and in practice for positive psychology.
In Carol Craig’s symposium session, she addressed the questions by using empirical research. In her studies, when we face a challenge like the fact that children in the UK spend more than 5.5 hours on screens per day, should we start considering the opportunity of promoting exercise and diet using Positive Interventions?

The entire conference is promoting one clear message: positive psychology is flourishing in Europe and the goal now is to help connect different people. These interdisciplinary connections with education, medicine, sociology, economics, anthropology, health and well-being direct us to a Better Future.

Part 2 Tomorrow.

Image 1., Night view of Opatija
Image 2., Ed elucidating the importance of societal characteristics for subjective well-being
Image 3., One of a series of studies about the role of culture in positive psychology
Image 4., Attendants are involved discussing how we can learn from history to do for now

July 15, 2008 2 comments

All Global Policies Gratitude Love Money Pathway 3 "Meaning"_1 Positive Experiences

“Money Can’t Buy You Friends….”

by Bridget Grenville-Cleave July 3, 2008

written by Bridget Grenville-Cleave

“…but it can get you a better class of enemy” (Spike Milligan, 1918-2002).

The argument about whether or not money makes you happy rumbles on (see these PPND articles about Money and Happiness by Sherri Fisher, A Rich Man’s World by Bridget Grenville-Cleave, and Positive Psychology and Social Entrepreneurship by Giselle Nicholson). On Monday, the UK’s Guardian newspaper reported that Professor Richard Layard, Labour peer and eminent economist turned Happiness Tsar, got his wake-up call when he realized that over a certain point (quoted as being $20,000 per year), money does not make you very much happier. Of course we now know that the argument is a bit more complicated than that.

As North, Holahan, Moos and Cronkite (2008) point out, very little longitudinal research has been carried out on the relationship between income and well-being, and what has been done has rarely exceeded 1-2 years (Easterlin, 2004). In addition, we have to take into account the connection between happiness and values. Oishi et al (1999) showed that extrinsic values (e.g., power) or intrinsic values (e.g., benevolence or self-direction) were not associated with lower and higher well-being per se; what mattered was whether one’s activities were value-congruent. This suggests that pursuit of wealth, social status, and prestige can bring happiness, provided one’s values are aligned.

If we take the view that it’s OK for each individual to decide what makes him/her happy, and if his/her values are right in that “self-enhancement” space (Peterson, 2006, p. 182-3), are we’re saying that s/he should be allowed to pursue wealth and status goals come what may? Are all routes to subjective well-being OK? If not, who decides? And how can we advocate positive psychology principles to others, yet in our own lives continue to look for fame and fortune?

A partial answer may come from the New Economics Foundation: at our MAPP class last week we were fortunate to have Nic Marks talk to us about happiness and sustainable development. He presented NEF’s One Planet Living model, which sheds some light on the previous dilemma. In short, all routes to happiness are not OK; we have to take into account the effect of our lifestyle on other people and on the planet in general (see articles here, here, and here by Giselle Nicholson).

So back to the original North et al (2008) study of 274 married adults across a ten-year period. This showed that family social support (as measured by cohesion, expressiveness and absence of conflict) is substantially associated with happiness even after controlling for income, and that change in family social support is positively related to change in happiness, whereas change in family income is not.

The research suggests that focusing on improving your family relationships is more likely to increase your happiness than focusing on earning more money. But how many of you would give up the chance to earn $1,000 working on the weekend in favor of spending the same time with your family? It requires a lot of self-discipline to do this. Instead of justifying working on the lines of “we could spend that money on buying a new [insert name of latest consumer good here]”, you’d need to spend that time with your family mindfully, and not regret the lost opportunity all weekend.

Some simple but effective activities to improve family social support, suggested by Frisch (2006) include:

The Favor Bank – building up a metaphorical bank account of positive emotions by doing small favors for the people we care about
Making Conversation – a simple skill of pro-actively engaging in conversation, finding out what’s going on in our partner’s or children’s lives
Night on the Town – committing to spending one night each week or month with partner to re-affirm loving feelings
Take a Letter 1 – writing an uncensored letter to the person you’re in conflict with, sharing your inner-most thoughts and feelings. NB You never share the contents of this one with anyone else, it’s entirely personal
Take a Letter 2 – writing a letter with the aim of helping the relationship grow and flourish, rather than to hurt the other person. Openly acknowledge your feelings and make a request for how you want behavior to change (be specific), but do so in a considerate manner.

References:

Easterlin, R.A. (2004).The economics of happiness. Daedelus, 133, 26-33.

Frisch, M. B. (2006) Quality of Life Therapy: Applying a Life Satisfaction Approach to Positive Psychology and Cognitive Therapy. New Jersey: Wiley & Sons.

North, R.J., Holahan, C. J., Moos, R.H. & Cronkite, R.C. (2008). Family predictors of happiness: a 10-year perspective. Journal of Family Psychology, 22 (3), 475-483.

Oishi, S., Diener, E., Suh, E. & Lucas, RE. (1999). Added value as a moderator in subjective well-being. Journal of Personality, 67 (4), 157-184.

Peterson, C., (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Image: Shelly S

July 3, 2008 6 comments

All Business Global Policies Interview Parenting & Schools

Interview with Alex Linley: Amplification of Positive Psychology (Part 2 of 2)

by Timothy T.C. So June 23, 2008

written by Timothy T.C. So

I urge all positive psychologists – especially the younger generation – to investigate this and to build greater communion and understanding between the traditions of thought in the East and the West.

~ Alex Linley

Alex Linley In the last article, Alex has illustrated the concept of strength, how it became the mission of CAPP, how to apply the concept to individual and organizations, as well as how strength can improve our lives. In Part 2, we try to learn more from the experience of Alex, on how to promote, apply, and amplify positive psychology in a widened sense.

Timothy So: Let’s move a bit further to the discussion of the broad PP development. What are the major obstacles/difficulties in promotion of PP, and are there any examples in the operation of CAPP at schools and organizations?

Alex Linley: One of the major challenges we often face with the promotion of positive psychology is simply that it is a new idea and that we are asking people to change. As is well-known, people are resistant to change and will try to avoid it. As such, introducing a positive psychology or strengths-based approach that is asking people to change the status quo is always going to come up against resistance. Add to this our inherent negativity bias as human beings, and the picture becomes even more tricky.

That said, we find a huge appetite for the applications of positive psychology, because people in organizations and in schools are increasingly recognizing that what they have done so far has not worked as well as they wanted it to. As a result, they are looking for new approaches that will be more effective. When organizations and schools do start to apply some of the principles of positive psychology and strengths, the results are often demonstrable quite quickly, and this can be a powerful way of overcoming some of those initial obstacles and embedding the change towards a new approach.

Timothy: It is never easy to promote new principles or approaches, but to me the development of PP in Europe is very successful under the efforts of different scholars and practitioners. What is your view about this?

Alex – It has been wonderful to be involved with the development of positive psychology in Europe. The European Network for Positive Psychology goes from strength to strength, and the fourth European Conference on Positive Psychology is in Croatia in July 2008.

I am also pleased to see the development of more indigenous approaches to positive psychology in European countries, which I believe is a very important step forward: positive psychology should develop its own culturally-informed identity in different countries, and the cultural traditions and variations of Europe provide a great opportunity for this. As but one example, I have recently contributed a Foreword to a volume on positive psychology in Denmark edited by Anders Myszak and Simon Noerby, and I strongly support initiatives such as this, which are helping the appreciation of positive psychology from increasingly diverse cultural perspectives.

Timothy: Yes, I am excited about the upcoming conference in Croatia as well. Besides, You mentioned ‘cultural awareness’, that really excites me as PP is rapidly developing in the past 10 years but mainly in the West. How do you view PP in Asia?

Alex: Extending this theme of positive psychology being understood and studied from diverse cultural perspectives, positive psychology in Asia, in my view, has huge potential. There is certainly the need for some of the major constructs and conceptions of positive psychology to be considered through an Asiatic lens, and fundamentally, I would like to see far more recognition in the West of how many positive psychology ideas and constructs have been around for hundreds and thousands of years in Asia. This is very rarely recognized in any significant way.

For example, I was honored to be invited to deliver a keynote address at what I understand to be the first positive psychology conference in India, in February 2007, organized by my great friends and colleagues Professor Jitendra Mohan and Professor Meena Sehgal of Panjab University, Chandigarh. At this conference, one of the speakers was Professor Ramachandran Rao, a famous Indian thinker, who demonstrated in his presentation the many, many parallels between Indian thought on living a good life and the views espoused by positive psychology.

There is a huge need for more rapprochements such as this, since in the West we are far too easily convinced that we have discovered something for the first time, when actually there is an extensive tradition of Eastern thought that speaks to many of these topics. As a result, I urge all positive psychologists – especially the younger generation – to investigate this and to build greater communion and understanding between the traditions of thought in the East and the West.

Timothy: With my background as an Asian, I am impressed and can’t agree with you more on your urge, thanks Alex. Lastly, to conclude the interview, would you like to share more about some future directions of CAPP to facilitate the development of PP?

Alex: We are totally committed to our mission of Strengthening the World, and will be continuing to do that as widely as we possibly can. This will mean broadening our work with organizations and schools, and increasing our reach and dissemination through our books and through Realise2.

In addition, we are organizing the 2nd Applied Positive Psychology Conference on April 1-3, 2009, at the University of Warwick, UK, and this will showcase all the latest developments in positive psychology and its applications. Our confirmed keynotes so far for this event include Barbara Fredrickson, Jenifer Fox, Anthony Seldon, Nic Marks, Robert Biswas-Diener and myself. Also, Adrian Belic, the film director, will be screening Beyond the Call, which has so far won no less than 37 Best Film awards!

Timothy: It sounds very exciting, I am looking forward to all these activities and I wish CAPP continuing success, and to make positive psychology more applicable and beneficial not only to the academia but also to different professions and lay-men. Thank you very much for your interview.

Timothy’s Note: As a founding member of CAPP, after such an insightful interview, I not only wish everything Alex is doing for Positive Psychology can be a greater success, but also love to contribute myself more and more to the field – to ‘Strengthening the World’ and to contribute to positive psychology across cultures. How about you? I hope you’d also get some inspirations as well.

References

P. A. Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.) (2004). Positive Psychology in Practice. pp. 105-124. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Linley, P. A. (2008). Average to A+: Realising Strengths in Yourself and Others. Coventry, UK: CAPP Press.

Linley, P. A., Willars, J. & Biswas-Diener, R. (2010). The Strengths Book: Be Confident, Be Successful, and Enjoy Better Relationships by Realising the Best of You. (Added later)

June 23, 2008 3 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts

HEART Initiative: For further information about Jennifer Cory or her organization, HEART Initiative you can contact...
Brent Hughes: I would like to email Jennifer Cory does she have any contact info I can have?
Sriram: Thus article is brilliant! Just summarises all my readings about trees and the way I feel about them and how...
3movs: Already, considerable progress has been made toward developing specific definitions of well-being that lend...
MJ Shaar: Ryan, thanks for your comment, and very good to hear! I’m eager to check it out! 😉
Ryan Niemiec: Thanks for this, Marie-Josee. I also want to let you know that one of my new books is entirely about...
art marr: On FLOW and Mindfulness, or why mindfulness is integral to flow Presented for your consideration is new...
Lisa Sansom: Thank you Lisa and Amanda for your thoughtful and heartfelt comments! Lisa
Amanda Horne: Thank you Lisa. I love this book, which should be on every bookshelf, at home and work. It has so many...
Lisa Buksbaum: Thanks for sharing this uplifting and important new book Thriving Women and the power of Appreciative...
Nandhini Satheshkumar: Dear Colleague, Greetings from Psychology 2019, We would like to solicit your gracious...
Judy Krings: Fantastic, thoughtful synopsis as always dear Ryan. I can’t imagine how much time it must take for you...