Gratitude Journal

Do Positive Interventions Ever Backfire?

A few weeks ago someone started an interesting discussion on the ‘Friends of Positive Psychology’ Listserv by asking if using a gratitude activity had ever backfired. The question may have been prompted by a recently published study by Susan Sergeant and Myriam Mongrain in which a gratitude exercise not only did not work with particularly needy personality types, but also appeared to result in lower self-esteem. You can read a review of the research on the British Psychological Society’s website here. (Note that, as usual, there are limitations to the study which you need to take into account.)

Establishing Fitness to Purpose: 3 Alternatives

This again raises the question of fit (which we have covered several times before on PPND, and which Jeremy McCarthy recently discussed here), that is, whether positive psychology techniques, such as expressing gratitude, are suitable for everyone or whether they must be tailored.

It seems from the previous articles and comments on PPND there are three broad approaches:

1. One size fits all: Anyone can benefit from doing any of the positive psychology techniques.

2. Personalized: It’s possible, given the science, to find a specific approach to suit every individual. On the one hand this makes sense because we need to know if there are any exceptions to the general rule. But on the other there is no middle way with this approach. What you could end up with is “This exercise will work for those with personality type A and experience of X but not for those with personality type B or C and experience of Y or Z.” As we are all unique (aren’t we?), the level of detail to which you’d need to drill down to get a definitive answer could go on. And on. And on.

3. The Half-way House: This is the way I describe Sonja Lyubomirsky’s best fit approach. In The How of Happiness she suggests choosing a happiness strategy according to whether there is a fit with your

*source of unhappiness
*your strengths
* your lifestyle

She then provides a handy diagnostic for person-activity fit to determine which four of the 12 empirically-based strategies in her book will be most valuable to you.

Reflections on Fitness to Purpose

I can see why option 1 (one size fits all) is attractive, especially if you’ve got slightly more knowledge about positive psychology than the person you’re talking to and you’re keen to broadcast it, but actually I only know one person who takes this approach – a colleague who insists on being the expert and that people should do the dozen or so empirically validated positive psychology exercises to the letter. I’m not advocating you should take this approach by the way, but as it happens, this person does seem to be pretty successful with it.

Cutting Your Cloth

Option 2 (completely personalized) is also logically appealing. The right positive psychology technique, in the right way, at the right time, for the right person does make sense, doesn’t it? After all if someone broke a leg you wouldn’t prescribe a dose of statins to fix it. But can we deal with unhappiness, mental ill-health, or other deficits in the same way? Whether you work as a coach, therapist, counselor or psychologist, can you ‘see’ the client’s problem with the same clarity that a doctor read an Xray? I simplify to make a point, of course physical illness isn’t always straightforward to diagnose!

So that leaves us with option 3, Lyubomirsky’s half-way house, the person-activity fit. She states that “…there is no one magic strategy that will help every person become happier” because “Each individual is unhappy for a unique constellation of reasons.” However, she appears to be sticking with her twelve broad categories of evidence-based activity and is confident that persisting with your four best matches will pay off and boost your happiness. If not, she suggests trying other complementary activities, again selected from her original 12.

What’s interesting about Lyubomirsky’s approach is that fit is based on what you think and feel about the activity (“Will I enjoy it? Will I value it?”) and your motivation to do it, not on your innate personality characteristics. Perhaps the person-activity fit criteria really are a good proxy, but there is no suggestion that doing the ‘wrong’ activity could actually be harmful to your well-being (as occurred in the Sergeant and Mongrain’s study of highly needy people mentioned above), merely that it won’t work and that you’ll become demotivated.

So what is right? Does fit matter, and if so, how much? Are positive psychology advocates that bothered if a small group of people reacts badly to one of their techniques under laboratory conditions?

I don’t think any positive psychologist has ever given a cast-iron guarantee (even my colleague fights shy of that) but they certainly have led many hundreds of thousands of people to believe that greater well-being is readily within their grasp based on doing a small selection of activities. It would seem that there is a huge amount of work to be done, not just in terms of research but also in the way we present positive psychology to the public. Until then (paraphrasing Richard Lazarus) should we be surprised if the ‘science’ of positive psychology is continually criticized for promising a lot and delivering little?

References

Lazarus, R. (2003). Does the positive psychology movement have legs? Psychological Inquiry, 14(2), 93-109.

Lyubomirsky, S. (2007). The how of happiness. London: Sphere. Quotations are on pages 69 & 71.

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

Sergeant, S. & Mongrain, M. (2011). Are positive psychology exercises helpful for people with depressive personality styles? The Journal of Positive Psychology, 6 (4), 260-272

Images

Gratitude Journal courtesy of Limevelyn
Scissors courtesy of trakygraves

As always, you can post your comments here and on the PPND website.

Image: thanks to PVBroadz

Working Together

Here’s a link to my posting to Positive Psychology News Daily this month, called      ‘Creating Strong Bonds in the Workplace’, which gives you some of the major theories and practical applications of positive psychology for developing positive relationships at work.

As usual, feel free to leave your thoughts and comment here, or on the PPND website.

Image: thanks to enfad

• Their average turnover rate is 11% vs 39% nationally
• 85% of their employees reported being satisfied with their jobs vs 61% nationally
• 87% of their employees said they would recommend their organizations to others as a good place to work, vs 44% nationally
• Only 5% their employees intend to seek employment elsewhere within the next year, vs 32% nationally
• Only 25%  of their employees reported experiencing chronic work stress vs 39% nationally.

What surprised me somewhat was the last statistic – only 25%? And that’s a good place to work? I wonder whether the 2010 winners’ average will be higher or lower. We’ll have had over a year of Full-blown Economic Crisis by then. On the other hand, it’s also just been reported in the Wall Street Journal that people are more satisfied with their jobs than last year and less likely to complain (they’re grateful that at least they have a job).

The five award-winning organisations run programmes aimed at improving their employees’ involvement and recognition as well as their personal growth and development, and work-life balance. No wonder 91% of them say they care about the organisation they work for.

I wonder what the latest stats are for the UK, and whether they’re following the same trends…

In my recent posting on Positive Psychology and Coaching I referred to Sonja Lyubomirsky’s new book, “The How of Happiness”.

The video clip from 20/20 is a great intro to the science behind the book. The case of the identical twins is fascinating isn’t it?

On Tuesday I was fortunate enough to take part in a telephone seminar with Professor Lyubomirsky, in which she outlined the key messages from the book. The things which I found most interesting were:

1) that happiness takes effort – i.e. you need to be prepared to work at it; it may not come naturally

2) according to Lyubomirsky, you need to ensure that you choose the strategies which you’re comfortable with. Some may not be your cup of tea. She readily admits to finding the Gratitude exercise difficult. If that’s the case try something else.

3) whatever strategies you find work for you need to become habits – things that you do on a regular basis without thinking about it, like cleaning your teeth twice a day. How will you get the happiness habit?

4) some of the strategies which have been empirically validated, like gratitude, savouring and acts of kindness, may sound corny and trivial, but they do work. Plus, you have nothing to lose by trying them for a few weeks.



Let us know how you get on with her ‘Person/Activity Fit’ diagnostic tool (p73) and the various strategies you choose as a result.

Thanks to Christine Duvivier for the links.

You might be interested to know that there’s been a great deal of research into the benefits of gratitude; grateful people, for example, report higher levels of life satisfaction, vitality, optimism and positive emotions, as well as lower levels of depression and stress*. I’ve talked about gratitude in several postings before, covered new ways of expressing gratitude, and looked specifically at Peterson’s 10 minute exercise to increase your well-being by identifying the things you’re thankful for.

This 30 minute BBC Radio 4 programme today explores the subject both for those people expressing their thanks, and for the people being thanked. It’s well worth listening to for some real-life insight into the research.

* McCullough, Emmons & Tsang (2002)

In this New York Times article last week, journalist Henry Fountain considers Thanksgiving 21st Century style – via the practice of keeping a Gratitude Diary. We’ve talked about gratitude several times before; there’s increasing empirical evidence to show that being grateful in a mindful way, for example through a diary or a letter, increases your well-being.

What I like about Fountain’s article is the acknowledgement that giving thanks is simple but not easy, it requires some effort and self-discipline.

I think this is a very important message to get across to the Victor Meldrew’s of this world*; happiness isn’t something that just happens, despite what you often see in films and magazines, you actively need to do something. That something varies from person to person, although Positive Psychology is giving us a lot to go on.
So if you haven’t tried it, I challenge you to keep a gratitude diary for three weeks, and see what a difference it makes.

PS You might like to know that there is a Victor Meldrew Appreciation Club on the business networking site Ecademy…and yes, it is British….

Thanks to Viv Thackray for the link

A new slant on the Gratitude Diary.

There is empirical research to suggest that writing a Gratitude Diary is an effective positive intervention; most studies to date have concentrated on writing a Gratitude Diary on a daily or weekly basis; we have blogged about this before, in March, June and August. Today a friend and fellow UEL MAPP student, Paul Marshall, sent me this five minute gratitude video, with the suggestion that you download it onto your ipod and play it every morning in order to enhance well-being.

I’m not sure if it will be as effective as writing down what you’re grateful for, because the act of writing in itself is known to be extremely important in processing information, however, why not give it a try for a week and let us know whether you notice any difference in your level of well-being?

P.S. Sometimes the Gratitude Diary intervention is referred to as ‘Counting Your Blessings’. If you’re considering using it with a coaching client, you might want to think about what to call it beforehand as there are religious/spiritual connotations to the latter which may not be suitable in your particular situation.

There’s increasing research to show that focusing on your strengths at work rather than on your weaknesses brings huge benefits, not just to yourself but also to your organisation. As mentioned in one of our previous posts, companies like Norwich Union are using strengths-based approaches successfully in the business, for example in recruitment. Other organisations are focusing on strengths for personal development, using them as the basis for the Annual Appraisal, for example. It gives employees a boost of confidence and really helps them feel good about themselves, in a way that leads to further performance improvements.

In the last couple of posts we’ve looked at new ways of applying strengths (from the VIA-IS online survey, not from the Clifton StrengthsFinder, which actually measures talents). Today we continue on this theme with six more strengths. Try picking one activity from one of your Top 5, and stick with it for a couple of weeks. If you find it isn’t working after a day or so, try something else.

LEADERSHIP:
i) Organise a social get-together for your team or department
ii) Go out of your way to make a new colleague feel welcome
iii) Take responsibility for an unpleasant task at work and make sure it gets done

GRATITUDE:
i) At the end of the day write down three things that went well
ii) Write and send a gratitude letter
iii) Keep track of how many times you say thank you during the day and increase the number every day for a week.

PERSPECTIVE / WISDOM:
i) Think of the wisest person you know and try to live one day as if you were them
ii) Resolve a dispute between two work colleagues, or two family members
iii) Don’t give advice unless asked, and then do so as thoughtfully as possible

FORGIVENESS:
i) Let a grudge go every day
ii) Write a forgiveness letter, do not send it, but read it every day for a week.
iii) When someone does something you don’t understand, stand in their shoes and try to work out their positive intention

TEAMWORK / CITIZENSHIP:
i) Pick up litter that you see on the ground
ii) Volunteer your time to a charity, community group, Parent-Teacher Association, Parish Council etc
iii) Organize a team / department dinner
iv) Act as a facilitator

BRAVERY:
i) Speak up for an unpopular idea in a group
ii) Stand up for someone even if you disagree with them
iii) Protest to the appropriate authorities about an injustice that you observe

These are just some examples of activities, you can of course adapt them to suit your circumstances.

We’d be delighted to hear your experience of using some of these activities in practice, or if you have any ideas for new ones, so please send us your comments.

We’ll cover the remaining 7 Character Strengths in future posts.

Thanks to Professor Jonathan Haidt , author of The Happiness Hypothesis, and the students in his psychology class at the University of Virginia and Chris Peterson for many of the suggested activities.

Following on from yesterday’s post about the Open University Psychological Society’s Psychology of Wellbeing Conference , I’d like to share with you the Top 10 Happiness Tools, devised by Dr Richard Stevens, Dr Jane Henry, Linda Corlett and Nevia Mullan , which were tried and tested during the BBC2 documentary ‘Making Slough Happy’.

1. Physical exercise – take half an hour of exercise three times a week.
2. Count your blessings – see our previous post for more information.
3. Set aside some time for talking to your partner or closest friend – an hour long, uninterrupted conversation.
4. Plant something (pot, container, window box) and tend it carefully.
5. Cut your TV viewing by half.
6. Smile at and/or say hello to a stranger at least once a day.
7. Phone a friend – make contact with someone you haven’t seen for a while and arrange to meet up.
8. Have a good laugh at least once a day.
9. Give yourself a real treat every day and take the time to savour it.
10. Do a good turn for someone every day – see this post for further information, or look at Random Acts of Kindness for ideas.

To this list, and following Bernard Gesch’s nutritional advice mentioned in yesterday’s post, we would also add:
11. Ensure you’re getting the recommended daily allowance of essential vitamins and minerals.

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be looking at some of the research which supports these Happiness Tools.

Stevens et al suggest you try using them for two months and see the difference they make to your happiness. On average they made the citizens of Slough 33% happier, so they can work for you too. Let us know how you get on.