Thanks to Paul Barrett for the link

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

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.

Creativity expert, Sir Ken Robinson, talks about the need for revolution in the education system.

“Very many people go through their whole lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of. I meet all kinds of people who don’t think they’re really good at anything”, he says. This sounds very familiar to me – only today I was working with some public sector admin staff who had no idea of their strengths, or that there might be a role for them at work in which they could really flourish, rather than just survive the 9-5.  We focussed on ways to identify and apply their strengths in the workplace using the VIA-Inventory of Strengths* – and it was a real eye-opener for them.

Robinson talks about the need for an organic “agricultural model” of education, in which the conditions necessary for flourishing are created, rather than the linear, “manufacturing model”, which merely standardises everything, and squashes creativity and talent, as well as depleting our spirit and energy.

A brilliant short talk, which brings ideas such as strengths, flow, positive energy, flourishing, authenticity, meaning and spirituality to life, all without mentioning Positive Psychology once. An inspiration.

* You can do this inventory yourself for free here: it takes about 30 minutes to do, and you get an immediate report of your strengths in order. Well worth it.

Thanks to Morten Mortensen for the link.

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

New research from Netta Weinstein and Richard Ryan (2010) suggests firstly that you need to be intrinsically motivated to help in order to derive these benefits for yourself, and secondly helping others when you’re extrinsically motivated (e.g. by reward or the fear of reprimand) is worse for their well-being than if you don’t help them at all.

Clearly this has implications for companies where excellent customer service is at the heart of their business. Are your customer service staff intrinsically motivated to help?

My article on Positive Psychology News this month covers this topic in more depth – read it here.

Image courtesy of D3 San Francisco

Tal Ben-Shahar, Psychology Lecturer at Harvard University talks about how organisations can use Positive Psychology to improve motivation, creativity and loyalty, and ultimately productivity (2.37 mins).

Thanks to bigthink.com