Hefferon & Boniwell's Book

Unusually for me, my posting for Positive Psychology News this month is a book review, Kate Hefferon and Ilona Boniwell’s Positive Psychology: Theory, Research and Applications. Don’t be put off by the fact that it’s a textbook, in short it’s a highly enjoyable, educational, and engaging read, well worth the £18-£20 it’s currently selling for online. It includes all the usual subjects such as positive emotions, subjective well-being and resilience, lots of new research, and topics you won’t find mentioned in other positive psychology textbooks, like the positive body, sex and positive death. I thoroughly recommend it whether you’re a student, lecturer, practitioner or positive psychology enthusiast. It’s so good it’s now at the top of our list of recommended reads on our Positive Psychology Masterclass!

For the full review, click here.

Word cloud from the national well-being debate

A few months ago (see here and here) I wrote about the British government’s intention to measure national well-being. This project came about because of the obvious failing of GDP (gross domestic product) to capture all the nuances of social and economic progress (and more recently, the lack of it).

I promised to update you on this project’s progress, and at the end of July 2011, a series of reports was issued by the Office for National Statistics. In August’s posting for Positive Psychology News, I review  the ONS interim findings and question whether we are really any better informed about the nation’s well-being than we were 8 months ago.

Read the full article here.