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Motivation and emotion/Tutorials/Positive psychology

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Tutorial 11: Positive psychology
This is the eleventh tutorial for the motivation and emotion unit of study.

Overview

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This tutorial:

Take-home messages:

  • Positive psychology assumes that people have a natural motive towards personal growth
  • Self-actualisation involves connecting to higher values, being autonomous, engaging deeply, and rich interpersonal relationships
  • Happiness can be counter-intuitive – humans aren't good at predicting what will make them happy. For example, our decisions about pursuing happiness are undermined by "impact bias" (we overestimate the hedonic impact of events). But we have a "psychological immune system" which "synthesises happiness" when we don't get what we want.

Growth psychology

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Growth psychology is a broad term which encompasses:

  • Humanistic psychology (1950s-1960s): Focuses on individual potential, self-actualisation, and the inherent goodness of people, emphasising personal growth and self-development
  • Positive psychology (1990s-present): Aims to understand and promote well-being, strengths, and positive emotions, concentrating on factors that contribute to human flourishing and happiness

Humanistic psychology

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This sections considers how aligned you are with the assumptions of humanistic psychology and then explores the extent to which you experience the characteristics of self-actualised people that were identified by Abraham Maslow.

Assumptions

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To what extent do you agree with the underlying assumptions of humanistic psychology?

Not sure?

Consider these questions:

 
 
 

Which answers correspond to assumptions of humanistic psychology? (the 2nd answer in each case)

Self-actualisation profile

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  1. What is self-actualisation? (Self-actualisation is the fulfillment of your potential; self-actualising in the process of becoming self-actualised).
  2. Maslow identified 16 characteristics of self-actualised people which can be grouped into 4 domains:
    1. Values: Connection to higher values/purpose (e.g., truth, love, and happiness)
    2. Autonomy: Internal control
    3. Engagement: Deep involvement, productivity, and happiness
    4. Relationships: High quality interpersonal relationships
  3. The last three domains map closely to self-determination theory's basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness). The first category relates to meaning/purpose.
  4. Complete this Self-actualisation profile (Google Form).
    1. Before submitting, note down:
      1. What are you doing particularly well that is helping you towards self-actualisation?
      2. What could you improve to better promote your growth towards self-actualisation?
      3. What self-actualisation characteristic(s) could you share or learn more about? e.g.,
        • Emphasis on higher level values - meaningful connection to higher values, purpose
        • Frequent peak experiences - this is the lowest rated characteristic overall, but can very powerfully provide lived experiences of self-actualisation; self-actualised people tend to have more frequent, intense, and meaningful peak experiences(5.9)
        • Philosophical, unhostile sense of humour - an underappreciated and researched, prevalent aspect of human psychology (7.9)
  5. Review class responses

Positive psychology

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Since the emergence of positive psychology in the 1990s, which focused on a science of identifying and building human psychological strengths and well-being, there has been a renewed focus on psychological theory and research about happiness.

Happiness types

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Martin Seligman suggests three components of happiness which he calls the:

  • Pleasant life: Dealing with past, optimism about future, happiness in present (hedonic pleasure and the skills to amplify pleasure). Limitations:
    • 50% heritable
    • short-lived, subject to the hedonic treadmill (i.e., pleasure wears off quickly).
  • Good life: Engagement (flow, absorption) or Eudaimonia;
  • Meaningful life: Connection to a higher purpose

Dan Gilbert suggests two types of happiness:

  • Natural happiness: What we feel when we get what we want
  • Synthetic happiness: What we feel when we learn to like what we get (instead of what we wanted)

Science of happiness

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How well can humans predict their emotional reactions to events? This is what is known as affective forecasting.

The science about what makes people happy shows that people are subject to many biases. For example, we tend to overestimate the hedonic impact of good and bad events (known as impact bias). This undermines our decision-making about how to be happy because it distorts our capacity to decisions that optimise long-term happiness.

On the other hand, we something like a "psychological immune system" which "synthesises happiness" even when we don't get what we want.

Freedom of choice, then, is a friend of natural happiness, but the enemy of synthetic happiness.

These are ideas are discussed in: The surprising science of happiness (Dan Gilbert, 2004, 21:00 mins, YouTube, TED Talk)

Questions to consider:

  • What is natural happiness?
  • What is impact bias?
  • What is synthetic happiness?
  • What is the role of freedom of choice in happiness?

Gilbert's talk concludes with this quote about affective forecasting / impact bias:

Recording

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See also

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Additional tutorial material
Book chapters
Wikipedia

People

Topics

Lectures and tutorials

References

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Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(8), 917–927.

Gilbert, D. (2009). Stumbling on happiness. Vintage.[1]

Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2005). Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(3), 131–134. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00355.x

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