Positive+Psychology

 Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life worth living. Focusing on what makes your life good can greatly change your outlook and life experience. Positive psychology is about learning to live your life in a way that you can take positive experiences and negative experiences and learn from both equally. While positive thinking has shown to have significant changes in mental health issues such as depression ( Hibbs & Jensen, 1996), the positive psychology community recognizes that thinking in terms of reality can be beneficial when it is appropriate.

 Positive Psychology studies the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive (Seligman.)  According to a recent study by Seligman (2002) positive psychology has three central concerns: positive emotions, positive individual traits, and positive institutions. Positive emotions are the general feeling of well being and contentedness with your past, present and future. Positive individual traits focuses on finding constructive traits about oneself and positive institutions focuses on finding a meaning and purpose for you, as a person, in a larger system, like a community. Positive psychology focuses on the state of mind in happiness and is not necessarily on any specific brain function. How people savor positive feelings and contribute to following what they believe is right and how they make themselves feel a part of something larger than themselves is all a part of the positive psychology perspective.

 Interest in human feelings has interested intellectuals from a very early time. Philosophers such as Plato and Socrates started the search for what happiness means and the interest has continued into today’s time. Though, positive psychology wasn’t called such until a much more recent period in time. It’s been known as Humanistic Psychology (Maslow, 1970) and been researched as a different type of intelligence (Sternberg, 1985) but has always been explored with the same concepts and questions.

Martin Seligman began one of the first educational programs at the University of Pennsylvania and is the director of the positive psychology center at this time. Seligman is a psychologist and self-help book writer is a great contributor to the positive psychology research industry. He began the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at Penn State University. Some other positive psychology contributors are Christopher Peterson, who worked with Seligman on one of the first Positive Psychology manuals and who is the author of A Primer in Positive Psychology , and Robert Clonginger author of Feeling Good: The Science of Well Being which is a prominent positive psychology textbook.

__REFERENCES: __  Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). //Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification//. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association and Oxford University Press. 

Seligman, Rashid, & Parks, (2006). [|Positive Psychotherapy] , University of Pennsylvania 

University of Pennsylvania. (2007) Retrieved February, 11th from []