The Difference Engine

One of the very first pieces I wrote for Positive Psychology News Daily back in 2007 focused on the application of strengths – whether strengths as defined in positive psychology are always positive and how we know which strength to apply in any given situation. This was inspired by a great article by Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe (see below) about ‘practical wisdom’, the nous we all need to help us navigate life’s trickier waters. What I like about Schwartz and Sharpe is that they remind us that context is king. Positive psychologists tend to define strengths as inherently positive characteristics, but that doesn’t mean they can be applied willy-nilly, hence the need for some practical wisdom to guide our choice of behaviour.

This month’s article for Positive Psychology News looks at a 2011 paper by James McNulty and Frank Fincham (details below) in which the authors argue that positive psychology needs to be more contextual. They have a point – most psychology research is carried out on convenience samples of psychology students in a  college environment, which is hardly representative of people in the real world. They chose 4 well-documented positive psychology topics (forgiveness, positive attributions, optimism and kindness), presenting research which counters the usual positive psychology claims that more of them is better for well-being. However, I found their conclusions more interesting, in particular:

• The need to study the implications of various psychological concepts in the context of both happy and unhappy people. Perhaps some may benefit people in optimal circumstances, but may harm people in suboptimal circumstances. For example, some may not be suitable for people in therapy.

• The need to examine the implications of psychological characteristics over a long period of time. Most of the positive psychology studies look at consequences over the short term, the assumption being that if the immediate outcome is positive, the long term result will be too.

Of course, we should not forget that positive psychology is a very young discipline (about 13 years old). Hopefully it will continue too grow and mature, and perhaps over time it may even acquire the scientific kudos that Seligman is so keen on.

To read the full article and readers’ comments, click here.

* McNulty, J.K. & Fincham, F.D. (2011). Beyond positive psychology? Toward a contextual view of psychological processes and well-being. American Psychologist. doi: 10.1037/a0024572.

In his forthcoming book, Flourish, Martin Seligman reveals his latest approach to well-being.

Readers of his Authentic Happiness (2002), the book which brought Positive Psychology out of the academic closet and into the mainstream, will remember the three pathways to happiness, which were:

1. Positive Emotions  – leading to a pleasurable life

2. Engagement (or flow) – leading to an engaged life

3. Meaning (and purpose) – leading to a meaningful life

All three together lead to ‘the Good Life’.

Now Seligman has updated this model to include two more elements: Relationships / social connections and Accomplishment. The model is now called ‘Well-being Theory’ because Seligman believes that ‘happiness’ is too woolly.

Well-being Theory can be remembered with the acronym PERMA:

1. Positive Emotions

2. Engagement (or flow)

3. Relationships/social connections

4. Meaning (and purpose)

5. Accomplishment

NB – PERMA is only a theory, and not everyone in the positive psychology world agrees with it! Accomplishment in particular causes a fair amount of discussion. Seligman suggests (and indeed recommends) that all 5 facets can be measured both subjectively and objectively, but these measures have yet to be agreed.

Image: Glädje (Joy) by Henrik Ström

The Houses of Parliament and Big Ben

In this month’s article for Positive Psychology News, I look at the government’s plans to measure the UK’s well-being in 2011, and Martin Seligman’s new Well-being Theory.

Stop Press: the Office for National Statistics has now announced the four well-being related questions that will be included in this year’s Integrated Household Survey. They are:

• Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
• Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
• Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?
• Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?

Image: The British Parliament & Big Ben: ** Maurice **

An interesting (and revealing) article from Stacey Burling at The Philadelphia Inquirer on Professor Martin Seligman, often quoted as the founding father of Positive Psychology.

Image courtesy of the US Army

If you have 30 minutes to spare this is an excellent introduction to the background and current issues in positive psychology. Sackur’s argument that helping mentally ill people is a more worthwhile pursuit for psychologists than increasing others’ happiness is one which many in the first MAPP cohort have wrestled with. Seligman’s response is interesting – getting rid of depression and anxiety does not in itself lead to well-being because the skills you need to fight these conditions are not the same as the skills you need to experience positive emotion and find engagement and meaning in life.

Asked whether his ideas can live comfortably with ‘ruthless capitalism’, Seligman says no; his point is that there is bad consumerism (material goods to which we habituate) and good consumerism which creates engagement and meaning.

I’m wondering whether Seligman would have come out of the argument quite so well had Jeremy Paxman been interviewing him. Sackur doesn’t ask, for example, why the schools Resilience project that Seligman is spearheading in South Tyneside (and Hertfordshire and Manchester) is aimed at helping kids combat depression; surely what the project should be focussed on, if you buy the whole happiness argument, is increasing kids’ well-being?

For me, there are two important points. Firstly, no-one in positive psychology is asking why depression levels amongst school-kids (and adults for that matter) in the UK are increasing in the first place*, and what we are doing to address the causes. I’m sure Seligman would have had an answer for that.

The other point is that ‘people muddle through’ is not a very sound argument with which to criticise positive psychology! Not only does depression impact life-chances negatively e.g. it affects ability at school, attendance at work and your immune system (all of which are huge costs to society), research shows that happiness brings benefits such as increasing health, longevity and productivity. I think these seem like very good reasons for taking positive psychology seriously, don’t you?

* But see child psychologist Oliver James’ work “Affluenza”.

Thanks to Thanos Karanatsios for the link

The Kingdom of Bhutan, a predominantly Buddhist country of approximately 750,000 inhabitants in the Eastern Himalayas, has been measuring Gross National Happiness since the late ’80s. The King, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, was concerned about the sorts of issues affecting countries which focussed only on increasing economic prosperity, and as a result, he declared that GNH (Gross National Happiness) not GDP, was the priority for his people. “The ultimate purpose of government”, he said, “is to promote the happiness of its people”. This, of course, was more than a decade before Martin Seligman launched the Positive Psychology movement.

Now, says writer, analyst and UN Editor Rasna Warah, GNH vs GDP has become an issue in the upcoming Kenyan elections (December 27th). In this article on the All Africa Global Media website, Warah explores the background to GNH, and why it matters. It’s the case that back in 2006 presidential candidate Dr Raila Odinga, cast doubt on the accuracy of Kenyan economic growth figures being quoted by other candidates, and proposed that a GNH survey be carried out instead. In an interview with Nation Magazine, Odinga is quoted as saying: “People are happy when they put food on the table, feed and educate their children.” However I haven’t been able to find any mention of Gross National Happiness on Odinga’s election website. Could it be the case that when the chips are down (and when votes are needed) what people really want to see is good old-fashioned economic growth?

Image: New Scientist

I doubt many would argue about positive relationships being a corner-stone of happiness and well-being, although you might be interested to know that there is remarkably little published scientific research into this field. But the importance of positive achievements seems to have people divided.

In the business world, goal-setting has been the back-bone (along with a smidgen of good luck) of company and personal prosperity since the dawn of time. Call it strategy, business planning or personal development planning, it’s all about creating a new, more successful future. To some, particularly coaches, goal-setting and accomplishment is vital, it’s what successful coaching is all about. When we were training as coaches, one of the first things we learnt was how to help clients (or coachees) define where they want to be by setting their goals clearly and then to help them achieve these goals. After all, how can you get where you want to go unless you know where you’re going in the first place?

Goal-setting is also making its way into normal life; you will no doubt have noticed yourself the proliferation of books and articles about so-called Life Lists, those 101-things-you-must-do/see/experience- before-you-die type lists. Earlier in the year for example, the New York Times published an article called 10 Things To Do Before I Finish This Article. If you google ‘Life Lists’, you’ll retrieve millions of entries, such as the original 43things.com, which invites you to publish your own Life List and which contains everything from the quirky (“build a trebuchet”) to the frankly quite dull (“organise my filing cabinet”). You can get Life List websites which list the things you need to consider when making your list. Curiously, in my google search for UK Life Lists, three of the top ten were by bird-watchers; it left me wondering whether twitchers are happier than your average UK resident. Perhaps that could be the subject of my MAPP dissertation…..

There are even people who make their living out of their Life List, such as John Goddard, aka ‘The World’s Greatest Goal Achiever’. This is a man who has achieved 109 of his 127 life goals (you should look at them, this is not a man who needs to organise his filing cabinet…). Interestingly, his 126th goal was to marry and have children – he now has five. My question is, how on earth does he get time for them, in between scaling Mount Kilimanjaro, retracing the steps of Marco Polo and Alexander the Great, and exploring the Amazon river?

And going back to coaching for a moment, Caroline Adams-Miller, the well-known US life coach, author and Pennsylvania MAPP graduate, specialises in goal-setting theory and happiness in her coaching practice, based on the research evidence that identifying and achieving ones goals can increase your well-being (e.g. Locke 2005). Miller has also set up a very successful website where people can make a public statement about their goals, called Your100things.com.

But Life Lists don’t attract support from every quarter; there are some who think that making a list of what you want to achieve in life actually detracts from what life is all about, i.e. living. I don’t often listen to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day on the Today programme, but this one by Rhidian Brook about Life Lists caught my attention, particularly Brook’s claim that “They provide us with a kind of short cut to meaningful achievement and self-fulfilment”. I’m not sure that’s the case at all. Surely it depends to a large extent what your goals are (materialistic? altruistic?), whether they are realistic goals or just wild dreams, and how relentlessly you pursue them. Many Life Lists I’ve looked at contain a mix of goals which cover all Seligman’s pillars of well-being (creating pleasure, engagement, meaning and good relationships).

And anyway, who is it who said that ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans’?

The father of Positive Psychology, Martin Seligman, gave the keynote address; here was the opportunity we had all been waiting for. No Positive Psychologist worth their salt would willingly pass up the chance to hear the man in person. He referred to the three pillars of positive emotion, engagement and meaning which you will be familiar with from his Authentic Happiness book, then oh so casually mentioned the possibility of “a 4th or even a 5th pillar” although he presented no new research in support of this theory. Turns out many prominent Positive Psychologists, among them Caroline Adams Miller and UEL’s own Dr Ilona Boniwell, have long been in favour of including positive relations and positive achievement in the definition of happiness, but are too polite to say ‘I told you so’.

You’ll remember from this posting a few days ago that I hoped Seligman would clarify his revelation at the Washington Global Well-Being Conference that Positive Psychology should henceforth be known as “Positive Social Science”. Well, unfortunately he didn’t elaborate. In our MAPP-only seminar, however, he said ‘everything I told you this morning is wrong’.

Hmmmmmm.

These might just be word games, of course, but I suspect there is more to it than that. I got the sense that there is a lot of discussion and thinking going on about the possible emergence of a new field of science, which of course would have serious implications for the future of Positive Psychology.

It has been suggested that Positive Psychology is the new paradigm. With the emergence of Positive Social Science, however, I think we’re already moving on.

It would appear that the Templeton Foundation does fund a huge amount of academic research into many Positive Psychology subjects such as gratitude, strengths and wisdom, and that Seligman’s Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania was established on the back of a multi-million dollar Templeton grant. Templeton also funds other research unconnected with Positive Psychology, such as the natural sciences, world religions, freedom and free enterprise.

As far as I’m aware though, the Positive Psychology Summit (or the Global Wellbeing Forum as it’s now called) referred to in Ehrenreich’s article is actually funded by the mighty Gallup Organisation, which since the 1930s has provided consulting services and market research on public opinion to Fortune 500 clients.

According to one of my fellow MAPP students who attended the Washington conference, it was unexpectedly badly organised, so I think there are some sympathies with Ehrenreich’s opinion on that score. As for her criticisms of the content of the conference, there is increasing evidence ((see Lyubomirsky, King and Diener (2005) for example)) that positive and/or strengths-based approaches in organisations ultimately provide a boost to the bottom-line. Even without the supporting research, common sense tells you that business benefits if its employees have more job satisfaction and are more engaged. It makes good business sense; we have previously featured organisations like Norwich Union and Standard Chartered who have benefitted from taking a strengths-based approach.

Incidentally, it turns out that The Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business is also partly funded by the Templeton Foundation and by the Gallup Organisation. The Centre, whose purpose is to energise and transform organisations through academic research into the theory and practice of positive organising and leadership, is the number one source of information on this subject, so if you want leading edge ideas about business transformation and positive leadership, this is the place to start.

Thanks to UEL MAPP student Viv Thackray for this link

Unfortunately I wasn’t at the conference to hear the initial reaction, but I understand that the majority of delegates were somewhat shocked. As a science Positive Psychology is still in its infancy (the phrase having been coined around about the year 2000). People working in the field, whether psychologists, therapists, coaches or educationalists, are still getting used to the terminology. Others, it has to be said, are probably hoping that if they ignore it long enough, it will go away.

Well it seems that Seligman now wants this field of research to be known as “Positive Social Science”. Those who support this idea believe it makes sense to take the study outside of the domain of just psychology, into health, neuroscience, economics and politics. The more I study the subject, the more complex it appears to become, and it does indeed touch our lives in many more ways than I originally thought. When you look at the make-up of the first UEL MAPP cohorts, you’ll see that we’re a very varied bunch, including GPs, therapists, coaches, trainers, business people, HR experts, journalists, teachers, social workers, economists and government policy makers. Yet all of us are taking something relevant from the course and applying it at work and individually. Positive Social Science seems a broad term to cover what is a very broad subject.

On the other hand, Positive Psychology is a young subject, and its students are relatively inexperienced when compared to those of traditional psychology. In the US, of course, it’s much more firmly embedded (and accepted) in the world of work; here in the UK, it’s only just taking off. Might changing its name at this early stage risk losing some of the enthusiasm and energy currently being poured into it?

We may get to hear all about Seligman’s reasons at the forthcoming conference in a week’s time. If so, I’ll let you know what he says!

* Co-incidentally, the Gallup PP Summit has been renamed the Global Well-Being Forum, reflecting the their name change to the Gallup Institute for Global Well-Being.