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

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

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)

It won’t surprise many of you who work in business that if you use the same approach to setting personal goals that you use at work for annual objectives, you’re far more likely to succeed.

This BBC article covers many of the key elements, which are often referred to in business by the SMART acronym: i.e. your goals should be:

S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R - Realistic
T – Time-based

So for personal goals:

i) make sure they’re well-defined rather than vague,
ii) make sure you can measure your progress towards the goal and tell when you’ve achieved it
iii) minimise the conflict between achieving this goal and other areas in your life. Take small steps.
iv) are you willing and able? Make sure you have enough resources (e.g. time, money etc) to achieve the goal
v) set a time for starting and finishing, and give yourself enough but not too much..

It’s interesting to see that, according to research by Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, men are 22% more likely to succeed when they set well-defined goals, such as losing a pound a week rather than just saying they wanted to lose weight.

Women, on the other hand, can increase their chances of success if they tell other people what their goals are. Sharing your goals publicly has really taken off in the US, with websites such as Caroline Miller’s your100things.com.

And if you want to take part in Professor Wiseman’s New Year’s Resolution Experiment for 2008, sign up here.

Good luck!

It won’t surprise many of you who work in business that if you use the same approach to setting personal goals that you use at work for annual objectives, you’re far more likely to succeed.

This BBC article covers many of the key elements, which are often referred to in business by the SMART acronym: i.e. your goals should be:

S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R - Realistic
T – Time-based

So for personal goals:

i) make sure they’re well-defined rather than vague,
ii) make sure you can measure your progress towards the goal and tell when you’ve achieved it
iii) minimise the conflict between achieving this goal and other areas in your life. Take small steps.
iv) are you willing and able? Make sure you have enough resources (e.g. time, money etc) to achieve the goal
v) set a time for starting and finishing, and give yourself enough but not too much..

It’s interesting to see that, according to research by Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, men are 22% more likely to succeed when they set well-defined goals, such as losing a pound a week rather than just saying they wanted to lose weight.

Women, on the other hand, can increase their chances of success if they tell other people what their goals are. Sharing your goals publicly has really taken off in the US, with websites such as Caroline Miller’s your100things.com.

And if you want to take part in Professor Wiseman’s New Year’s Resolution Experiment for 2008, sign up here.

Good luck!

It won’t surprise many of you who work in business that if you use the same approach to setting personal goals that you use at work for annual objectives, you’re far more likely to succeed.

This BBC article covers many of the key elements, which are often referred to in business by the SMART acronym: i.e. your goals should be:

S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R - Realistic
T – Time-based

So for personal goals:

i) make sure they’re well-defined rather than vague,
ii) make sure you can measure your progress towards the goal and tell when you’ve achieved it
iii) minimise the conflict between achieving this goal and other areas in your life. Take small steps.
iv) are you willing and able? Make sure you have enough resources (e.g. time, money etc) to achieve the goal
v) set a time for starting and finishing, and give yourself enough but not too much..

It’s interesting to see that, according to research by Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, men are 22% more likely to succeed when they set well-defined goals, such as losing a pound a week rather than just saying they wanted to lose weight.

Women, on the other hand, can increase their chances of success if they tell other people what their goals are. Sharing your goals publicly has really taken off in the US, with websites such as Caroline Miller’s your100things.com.

And if you want to take part in Professor Wiseman’s New Year’s Resolution Experiment for 2008, sign up here.

Good luck!

It was reported in the Guardian on Friday 30th December (“Psychologists seek key to successful new year resolutions”) that Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at the University, is hoping to get around 10,000 people to take part in this on-line experiment. The point of the research is to find out what are the best ways of motivating people to keep to their resolutions.

So, even if you don’t succeed, you’ll still be providing some useful input to the research! If you want to take part, simply log on to newyearscience.co.uk.