Dow Jones Sinks

In this month’s posting for Positive Psychology News Daily, I reviewed some brand new research from Professor Carol Graham, Soumya Chattopadhyay, and Mario Picon (all from the University of Maryland). Their objective was to better understand the effects of the US economic crisis on well-being and to determine if individuals adapt both to the bad news of the crisis and then to the good news of potential recovery.

Looking across time during the crisis, not surprisingly happiness levels decreased markedly at the start of the crisis, reaching their lowest levels early in 2009. They then followed an equally marked upward trend after April 2009. During the downward trend, happiness levels lag the stock market spikes, which makes intuitive sense.

But the most striking result is that happiness levels lead the stock market on the upward trend. What’s more, by July 2009 happiness levels were above those at the start of the crisis, even though the Dow Jones was only just starting to recover, having hit rock bottom.

For the full posting and to read all the comments, see Positive Psychology News Daily.

Image  courtesy of Scorpions and Centaurs

Rainbow of Books

Anyone who takes their positive psychology research seriously will know how difficult it is to get hold of quality academic papers if you don’t have access to a university library or piles of cash to pay for a journal subscription. Sometimes you can find stuff on the web (often the researcher’s website is a good place to start), but more often than not you can only read the abstract.

I’ve just come across this great new resource from Warren Davies, also from the UEL MAPP programme – it’s got some fabulous articles on positive psychology, as well as many other branches of psychology including cognitive, developmental and social psychology. Well worth exploring. Thanks Warren!

Image courtesy of Mind on Fire

Ice-cold beer - one of life's small pleasures

Another new study (Quoidbach et al, 2010 – see details below) has been published on the topic of money and well-being, specifically, whether being wealthy enough to access the best things in life affects your ability to savour small pleasures.

The research suggests that wealthier individuals report lower savoring ability, and even being reminded of wealth produces the same negative impact on savoring as actual wealth. In fact, you don’t actually need to enjoy any peak experiences (such as spending time on a tropical beach holiday) for your savoring ability to be impaired – simply knowing that these peak experiences are readily available may increase your tendency to take life’s small pleasures for granted.

For a full review of the research and its implications, see Positive Psychology News Daily.

Reference:

Quoidbach, J., Dunn, E.W., Petrides, K.V. & Mikolajczak, M. (2010). Money giveth, money taketh away: The dual effect if wealth on happiness. Psychological Science 21 (6), 759-763.

Image:

Cold beer courtesy of niel schubert

Mt. Taranaki, New Zealand

I’ve just heard that Aaron Jarden, lecturer in psychology at the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand and  president of the New Zealand Association of Positive Psychology is about to launch an open source journal for the study of well-being.

According to the website, the International Journal of Well-being is a “blind peer-reviewed journal that publishes timely original high-quality scholarly articles and book reviews focussed on scientific and philosophical investigations into wellbeing. The journal aims to promote thought, discussion and understanding, and to disseminate scientific research on wellbeing through published academic papers and video abstracts“. Normally you have to pay an absurd amount to get access to academic journal articles, so this is a very welcome development.

You can register for free monthly IJW updates here.

Image: courtesy of  Heike_Quosdorf

Thanks to Todd B. Kashdan for the link

The 5^th European Positive Psychology Conference took place June 23-26 in Copenhagen, Denmark. I’ve written three separate reviews, covering eleven Keynotes, invited speakers, and opening and closing presentations. To read the full reviews, take a look at Positive Psychology News Daily:  part 1, part 2 and part 3.

Part 1:

Keynote 1: Stopping the Insanity: Promoting Positive Mental Health is Sanity in a World Needing Better Mental Health - Corey Keyes, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology at Emory University, USA

Corey Keyes

Keynote 2: How Positive Emotions Work, and Why – Barbara Fredrickson, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.

Part 2

Keynote 1: Occupational Health Psychology: A European Perspective – Wilmar Schaufeli, Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at Utrecht University in The Netherlands.