factors » SocioDynamics

Optimism About the Future

Feb 152010

Source: “Authentic Happiness,” Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D., Chapter 6

Permanence

Permanence and is about time. Permanence reflects thinking in terms of “always” or “never.” Believing that the causes of bad events are permanent may cause one to give up too easily and give in to feelings of helplessness. Believing that the causes of good events are permanent contributes to optimism.

Pervasiveness

Pervasiveness is about space. Pervasiveness reflects the degree to which good or bad events affect unrelated aspects of life. Pervasiveness distinguishes between universal and specific explanations.

Hope

Hope is associated with permanent and universal explanations of good events as well as temporary and specific explanations for misfortunes. Hopeful people recover from troubles more rapidly and are better able to sustain successes.

Increasing optimism and hope

Most people never hesitate to accept negative self talk. To build optimism and hope one must recognize and then dispute pessimistic thoughts.

Martin Seligman uses the ABCDE model of disputing pessimistic thoughts. A – Adversity is the event that stimulates negative self talk. B – Belief is the set of established assumptions that contribute to negativity. C – Consequences… D – Disputation… E – Energization…

Learning to Argue with Yourself

Evidence – A negative belief may disappear if you consider it analytically and demand supporting evidence from yourself.
Alternatives – Consider alternative causes. These may indicate different meanings to an even that what you previously assigned. Especially seek alternatives that are changeable, specific, and nonpersonal.
Implications – Realistically, how bad are the implications? What would have been the worst possible outcome? It could have been worse. Decatastrophize the event.
Usefulness – Is this belief useful? Does it produce good? Am I expecting something that is unlikely? What factors of the event are under my control?

Disputation record

During future adverse events, keep a record of your mental steps. Pay attention to your thoughts, consider alternative beliefs and meanings, observe possible consequences of various beliefs, and observe the energy of choosing alternatives to negativity.

Examining and Pursuing Happiness

Positive Psychology, Psychology No Responses »

Feb 052010

Source: “Authentic Happiness,” Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D., Chapter 6

Satisfaction with Life Scale

Are most people happy?

A large majority of people in the United States report themselves as being happy. This result is common to most populations around the world. Oddly, most people see themselves as happier than others especially the popular, powerful and educated.

Why be happy?

Happy people are healthier, live longer, work more productively and have higher incomes, are more tolerant, more creative, and make decisions more easily, select challenging goals, are more persistent, have greater empathy, more friends, and better marriages. Much of this reflects an improved ability to function in social situations. But

“There is no duty we sell underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.” Robert Louis Stevenson

Who is happy?

Men and women report roughly equal levels of happiness and satisfaction. The same equality holds true across the age spectrum. Factors including formal education, IQ, and race also fail to affect happiness. Married people report more happiness than single who, in turn report more happiness than divorced or separated. Spiritual practice tends to increase happiness and tend to experience fewer negative life circumstances. It seems important that basic needs be met, but material abundance above those basic needs does not increase happiness.

“The happiest people all seem to have good friends.” Psychologist Ed Diener

The happiest people tend to be highly social, and spend the most time in the company of others. They tend to be extroverts and have the desire and ability to build strong social relationships. In one study, conscientiousness, with goal setting, personal control, and purposeful achievement, strongly correlated with life satisfaction. Happy people tend to experience high intrinsic self-esteem; they’re optimistic about themselves and their circumstances.

Pursuing Happiness

Do not interpret material achievement as happiness and success in life.
Compare yourself, and set your expectations, relative to those who have less.
Keep a gratitude journal and review it to remember the things you appreciate.
Discover the activities that allow you to experience a sense of flow and learn to reproduce those circumstances.
Commit to your goals, finish what you start, and experience your effort with quiet mindfulness.
Have and enjoy the hobby. Prefer engagement with life too sedentary activities.
Build and maintain satisfying family and social relationships.
Volunteer your attention, creativity, and efforts in service to others.
Sustain a satisfying spiritual practice that builds hope.

Martin Seligman’s Happiness Formula

Positive Psychology, Psychology No Responses »

Feb 012010

Source: “Authentic Happiness,” Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D., Chapter 5

Martin Seligman proposes a formula for happiness: H=S+C+V.

Enduring level of Happiness =
Set range + life Circumstances + factors under Voluntary control

H – Enduring level of Happiness

Enduring happiness is not the same as momentary happiness, which can spring from a wide range of positive, but transient events. Increasing these momentary pleasures have no enduring effect on enduring happiness.

In repeated studies of identical twins, fraternal twins, and adopted children, demonstrate that about half of all personality traits can be attributed to genetic inheritance. While some of these heritable traits are rather firmly fixed, some are remarkably malleable.

S – Set range

Traits which are inherited and more fixed establish a “set range” of what is normal or typical for each person. They define areas that may serve as barriers to increased happiness.

Lottery winners study

A study of major lottery winners found that most returned to their previous levels and styles of happiness within one year. On the other hand, the effect also works in reverse, with people usually recovering after adversity.

Quadriplegia study

Even people who become quadriplegics and experience a period of depression usually recover their more-positive mood within months.

Hedonic Treadmill

The concept of a hedonic treadmill describes people who, like lottery winners, begin to take good things for granted. They can begin seeking greater and greater stimulus events, trying to create the feel of an increased enduring happiness out of repeated transient experiences.

In contrast, severe tragedies such as death of loved ones and produce long-term decreases in happiness.

C – life Circumstances

Changed circumstances can sometimes contribute to enduring happiness.

Impacts of money, marriage, social life, negative emotion, health, education, climate, race, gender, religion.

Intractable poverty and other enduring negative circumstances can directly produce higher levels of unhappiness and depression. However, once a certain level of perceived basic needs are met, improving circumstances no longer reliably produce emotional satisfaction. Security is important to happiness; wealth is not.

Marital satisfaction is clearly related to happiness. However, unhappy people may be less likely to become married or stay married. Satisfying romantic and social relationships are also reliably related to reported happiness. It is still unclear that one causes the other.

The mere existence of unhappy situations and negative emotions does not intrinsically deny a person joy. Women tend to experience greater levels of emotion, both positive and negative, than men. Although they experience twice as much depression as men, they also experience more frequent and more intense positive emotions.

Younger people, evidently often report carefree and youthful “fun” as happiness. A close examination indicates that life satisfaction tends to increase with age while extremes of emotional intensity moderate.

Factors such as education, climate, race, and gender do not directly and reliably correlate with sustained happiness.

The exercise of religious faith, and the social support that it often provides, often removes adherents from certain negative life circumstances. This has a noticeable but not reliable protective effect on happiness. The element of increased hope maybe the most significant beneficial factor: increasing happiness and reducing despair.

Increasing Happiness: The Bottom Line

The most influential effects on long-term happiness include: living in a wealthy democracy; having a satisfying marriage; avoiding events that overtly produce negative emotions; developing a social network; embracing a hopeful spiritual path.

Disappointingly ineffective effects on long-term happiness include: materialistic pursuits beyond basic needs; immoderate pursuit of health; pursuit of advanced education; cosmetic surgery; geographic moves.

Positive Psychology – Human Strengths

Positive Psychology, Psychology No Responses »

Jan 112010

Source: “Pursuing Human Strengths,” Martin Bolt, Preface

The weakness of psychology, during its short history as a science, has been its primary focus on human weaknesses rather than on human strengths. That began to change dramatically when Martin Seligman was elected president of the American Psychological Association. Seligman leveraged his research on learned helplessness and hopelessness into a new focus on learned optimism and happiness.

A primary focus of positive psychology is on human strengths, a core set of virtues. The intent is to study, measure, and understand these strengths so that they can be purposefully developed, increasing both subjective and objective psychological well-being.

Responsibility – Both researchers and individuals have a responsibility to understand the factors that influence thinking and behavior, and to use this knowledge to increase the healthful development of individuals and societies. Responsibility is vital for the development of other strengths.

Love – Hereditary nature and environmental nurture both contribute to human development. Attachment styles, developed in early life, have a powerful impact on adult relationships.

Empathy – The ability to recognize and consider the feelings of others is a vital step in psychological development. Empathy is necessary for forgiveness and altruism.

Self-control – the ability to accept delayed gratification, instead of only immediate rewards, is also vital to psychological maturity. Purposeful achievement requires a persistent cycle of goal setting, reflection, and self regulation.

Wisdom – intelligence involves a great deal more than the ability to acquire rote knowledge. Wisdom is associated with reasoning ability and the productive application of knowledge in a complex social environment.

Commitment – our goals must have meaning and reflect a satisfying purpose if we are to pursue them with persistence. But there are important differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivators.

Happiness – positive emotions such as happiness were required for salutogenesis. It is irresponsible for psychology to focus on pathology.

Self-respect – while self-esteem serves to artificially heighten a sense of entitlement, self-respect involves a realistic valuation of one’s potential within society.

Hope – learned optimism can be an effective therapy for the hopelessness of depression. Hopefulness helps us to sustain effort through difficult times. Community support is vital for individual and collective well-being.

Friendship – individual support is also effective in promoting personal and collective well-being. Shared responsibility also helps to sustain persistent effort to achieve goals.

Lecture: Yale: Paul Bloom: Self and Other

Psychology, Sociology No Responses »

Jan 012010

Lecture 16 – A Person in the World of People: Self and Other, Part I

This is the first of two lectures on social psychology, the study of how we think about ourselves, other people, and social groups.

Students will hear about the famous "six degrees of separation" phenomenon and how it illuminates important individual differences in social connectedness.

This lecture also reviews a number of important biases that greatly influence how we think of ourselves as well as other people.

Watch it on Academic Earth

Lecture 17 – A Person in the World of People: Self and Other, Part II

This lecture begins with the second half of the discussion on social psychology.

Students will learn about several important factors influencing how we form impressions of others, including our ability to form rapid impressions about people.

This discussion focuses heavily upon stereotypes, including a discussion of their utility, reliability, and the negative effects that even implicit stereotypes can incur.

The second half of the lecture introduces students to two prominent mysteries in the field of psychology.

First, students will learn what is known and unknown about sleep, including why we sleep, the different types of sleep, disorders, and of course, dreams, what they are about and why we have them.

Second, this half reviews how laughter remains a mysterious and interesting psychological phenomenon.

Students will hear theories that attempt to explain what causes us to laugh and why, with a particular emphasis on current evolutionary theory.

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Lecture: Yale: Paul Bloom: Morality

Lawrence Kohlberg - Moral Development, Moral Development, Psychology No Responses »

Dec 312009

Lecture 15 – A Person in the World of People: Morality

Professor Bloom provides an introduction to psychological theories of morality.

Students will learn how research in psychology has helped answer some of the most central questions about human morality. For instance,

which emotions are "moral" and why did these moral feelings evolve?
What factors guide our moral judgments?
And what factors predict when good people will do bad things?

Watch it on Academic Earth

Ed Diener

Positive Psychology, Psychology, Virtue: Happiness No Responses »

Dec 182009

Source: Amazon.com

“Ed Diener is the Joseph R. Smiley Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois. He received his doctorate at the University of Washington in 1974, and has been a faculty member at the University of Illinois for the past 34 years. Dr. Diener was the president of both the International Society of Quality of Life Studies and the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. Currently he is the president of the International Positive Psychology Association. Dr. Diener was the editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the Journal of Happiness Studies, and he is the founding editor of Perspectives on Psychological Science. Diener has over 240 publications, with about 190 being in the area of the psychology of well-being, and is listed as one of the most highly cited psychologists by the Institute of Scientific Information with over 12,000 citations to his credit. He won the Distinguished Researcher Award from the International Society of Quality of Life Studies, the first Gallup Academic Leadership Award, and the Jack Block Award for Personality Psychology. Dr. Diener also won several teaching awards, including the Oakley-Kundee Award for Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Illinois.”

Shop at Amazon for:
Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth
by: Ed Diener

“Happiness is a process, not a place. That’s one of the key concepts that leaps from Happiness: Unlocking The Mysteries Of Psychological Wealth by Ed Diener and Robert Biswas- Diener.” (Diana’s Blog: Quirky Words and Book)

“In their sweeping new book Diener and his son, Robert Biswas-Diener, distill the results of worldwide research into happiness and come up with an explanation, a recipe, for a sustained state of good feeling, psychological wealth, as they call it.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 2008)

Shop at Amazon for:
Assessing Well-Being: The Collected Works of Ed Diener

The collected works of Ed Diener, in 3 volumes, present the major works of the leading research scientist studying happiness and well-being. Professor Diener has studied subjective well-being, people’s life satisfaction and positive emotions, for over a quarter of a century, and has published 200 works on the topic, many more than any other scholar. He has studied hundreds of thousands of people in over 140 nations of the world, and the collected works present the major findings from those studies. Diener has made many of the major discoveries about well-being, which are outlined in the chapters.

Shop at Amazon for:
Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology

The book is highly recommendable for those interested in hedonic psychology especially Subjective Well-Being (a.k.a. Happiness). It covers a wide range of chapters which include definitions, measurement, clarifications/reactions, recent findings and researches. Its probable drawback is that, to a certain degree, it is somewhat very technical in approach. Not too many readers might easily grasp some contents/materials presented. Nonetheless, it is a great reference material.

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Worker Well-Being and Public Policy, Volume 22 (Research in Labor Economics)

In this volume, the authors explain the reasons why subjective indicators of well-being are needed. They describe how these indicators can offer useful input and provide examples of policy uses of well-being measures. The book then delves into objections to the use of subjective well-being indicators for policy purposes and discusses why these objections are not warranted. Finally, the book contains answers pertaining to the measures that are currently in use and describes the types of measures that are most likely to be valuable in the policy domain.

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Culture and Subjective Well-Being (Well Being and Quality of Life)

This book is based on the idea that we can empirically study quality of life and make cross-society comparisons of subjective well-being (SWB). A potential problem in studying SWB across societies is that of cultural relativism: if societies have different values, the members of those societies will use different criteria in evaluating the success of their society. By examining, however, such aspects of SWB as whether people believe they are living correctly, whether they enjoy their lives, and whether others important to them believe they are living well, SWB can represent the degree to which people in a society are achieving the values they hold dear. The contributors analyze SWB in relation to money, age, gender, democracy, and other factors.