Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi’s introduction to the “Positive Psychology” issue of American Psychologist emphasizes the need to develop the study of a “positive psychology” that would discuss the effects of optimism on overall health, wisdom, talent, and creativity in individuals, yet more importantly, how this could be productive within a social/political future. In the first paragraph of their introduction, they write,
“Entering a new millennium, Americans face a historical choice. Left alone on the pinnacle of economic and political leadership, the United Sates can continue to increase its material wealth while ignoring the human needs of its people and those of the rest of the planet. Such a course is likely to lead to increasing selfishness, to alienation between the more and the less fortunate, and eventually to chaos and despair...Psychology should be able to help document what kinds of families result in children who flourish, what work settings support the greatest satisfaction among workers, what policies result in the strongest civic engagement, and how people’s lives can be most worth living.”
It is fascinating to me that this article was written in January 2000, just before the 2000 presidential election. It seems like this article was almost intended to convey a need for optimism that will be helpful in the future. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi’s article stresses the importance of working towards a discourse on positive psychology that would benefit our society in the long run, in terms of community, family, education, and so forth. This need stems from the past and current focus on pathology and “damaged” brains instead of putting attention towards the need to develop the positive aspects of our psychological cognitive and unconscious abilities.
On reading this paper, one personal event came to mind. Last weekend I went to Providence for Passover where my aunt lives. One day we took the whole family (all 25 of us) to see these mosaic installations that my aunt did as community projects in my cousin Sophie’s old elementary school (she has done one every year for the past ten years). She works with classes (usually 5th graders) to create mosaic murals based on a general theme and the children’s’ own drawings. For example, one mural showed all the kids favorite places in Providence. Another was about family heirlooms (each student designed their own plaque based on a family heirloom which was incorporated around the mosaic). As I walked through the school (which was otherwise sterile and depressing, aside from the mosaics) my cousin informed me that in the time since she left the school no longer had funding for math, science and music. After hearing this sad news, I thought about how effective the mosaics were for my own positive psychology, walking through this otherwise dismal environment, and how, for these kids, these collaborative, creative projects must be so beneficial for their own positive psychology, to be able to walk through the halls and see something bright, colorful and imaginative that they contributed to. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi’s article, therefore, seemed almost like a plea for this sort of influence in communities, schools, families, etc., in that a study of the aspects of positive psychology, in the long run, may benefit our society on a much broader spectrum than we realize.
One study by Kent Berridge et al. focusing on positive psychology investigated “unconscious emotions” in a positive framework. They believed that the cognitive “unconscious” is similar to implicit memory/perception (Kihlstrom) as related to unconscious affective reactions. In the study they showed a series of faces (with the participants given the task of identifying the gender as a means of distraction) with positive, negative, or neutral facial expressions. They tested the subliminal effect by providing the participants with a fruity drink and seeing how much they consumed or wanted to consume. In this test they aimed to determine how unconscious core affective processes are developed, and if they exist at all. What they discovered is that unconscious core effective processes are similar in many ways to conscious core affective processes in that they require a stimulus for elicitation, a reaction direction (positive, negative, or neutral), and they must persist and be expressed later. Unlike conscious core affective processes, however, they are not subjective in reports. They also are caused by an unconscious event. All of these factors are related and applied to what Berridge et al. call a “value-laden event”. This also relates to the distinction made between wanting versus “liking”, and pleasure versus enjoyment. An unconscious emotion can be elicited by applying this “liking” factor to an event, and therefore subliminally attaching the notion that something good is about to happen. In the same sense as “free floating anxiety” (in stressful cases, seen in Ledoux’s studies) a free floating “goodness” also exists, what Berridge calls “the pleasure gloss”.
In general I found this study to be one of the most entertaining we’ve looked at so far, and very insightful. I’m not sure if I understand exactly how the consumption method was effective in measuring the unconscious emotion, especially when thirst is taken into account, but I did find it interesting how something subtle can subconsciously affect your mood. In context to the Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi article, I think this development of the emotional unconscious can be useful in treating cases like depression. It’s exciting to think that sans medication we can be capable of controlling our optimism at all times.
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I also found the "Positive Psychology" articles especially exciting and progressive. I'm surprised this straight forward perspective is only recently developing. I think Julia's example about how the colorful murals in the otherwise empty school setting is key to what Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi were getting at--how important environment is--the major relationship between psychology and city planning, social planning, artistic expression education, school environment, etc. Every building, every peice of furniture, everywhere needs to be taken into account--the more aesthetically pleasing one's surroundings are relates directly to one's happiness. Like discussed in "The Peculiar Longevity of Things Not So Bad," environment could help with long lasting happiness (along with keeping track of the positive things in your life, etc.). It seems like what positive psychology is heading toward is an understanding of community within enviroment--and the understanding of the balance between self in community and self alone in community (social vs. autonomous self). Although I agree that there needs to be a lot more building of positive things, I felt like Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi over emphasized eliminating the repairing of bad things. I think there needs to be a balance between fixing the weaknesses that our society has created and building new strenghs in order to get to a point where we can fully focus on the positive aspects.
In response to Julia and Tisch a few posts below- I loved the articles on Positive Psychology too. I was interested to know whether the anyone else had an opinion on whether "the peculiar longevity of things not so bad" fits into the framework of positive psychology based on Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi's work. Daniel Gilbert and his colleagues prove that in many cases, the path to happiness is not straightforward because people fail to take into account the "psychological processes that different outcomes trigger". If Gilbert and co. fit in with positive psychologists are they advocating for better judgement (and therefore more happiness) through a greater awareness of our own psychology? How could this influence social policies?
What I thought was so interesting was the conversation about dopamine in the brain and how it plays into the "pleasure wanting" aspect as opposed to "liking". Berridge talks about how pleasure creates a "sort of gloss" on sensation and also about rewards that help us to gain insight into durn addictions, eating disorders, depression, etc. I think that this factors in nicely with the positive psychology that everyone else has been discussing. If we know what we want and what we like, this will help us have positive outlets for us to create a reward system.
For me too the ideas expressed in the positive psychology readings round out the picture of mental health and are an important reminder of what human potential really is. I think it is so important to look at an individual’s strengths, not just their weaknesses or pathologies. However, the actual situation for people suffering from clinical disorders can be very complex.
The reading made me think about my experiences a few years ago when I did intake interviews for a clinical program that supports survivors of political torture. People that I interviewed were all suffering from PTSD and often from some combination of symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. Nearly all of them were in this country seeking refugee status and were struggling to make a new life with very little support, far away from their families and homelands, either without work or doing work that paid very little. (They were often living with other refugees from their country whom they had found by chance.) Though it had initially seemed scary to me to do this work, I ended up feeling very lucky to speak to the people that I did and inspired by them. They were often strikingly articulate both about their experiences and their frustration with feeling unable to feel themselves in the way that they had before their traumas. I was struck by their ability to cope in such demanding situations and that they garnered their resources to seek out this program at the hospital hoping to feel better. But the complexity of their situation was very challenging—they had personal strengths and enormous resiliencies but also overwhelming psychological challenges (traumatic memories and often the loss of loved ones by death or separation.) How far would building on their strengths take them in healing and reconstructing their sense of themselves? I wasn’t involved in their therapies but it seems like the positive psychology approach offers an important approach to acknowledging who they are as people and survivors, but probably is not sufficient to address their moment-to-moment experiences of anxiety and painful remembering, etc.
I’m not sure this really makes sense but one aspect of the situation of these refugees seems to me to relate to the ideas of liking/wanting and saliency in a way. It occurs to me that people have a certain sense of themselves and are inspired to be generous, compassionate, etc. often when surrounded by people they love, a place that is important to them, etc. What happens to these personal qualities when a person is far from all these things that inspired them? To some extent people carry these values within them but what will inspire them to continue to care enough to express them, to allow them to guide their behavior?
I am most intrigued by the possibility that the increasing awareness and acceptance of positive psychology could revolutionize not only the way psychologists deal with topics in psychology, but impact positive psychology could have on the wider community, including for those who have no familiarity with psychology at all. I am excited by the concept of adopting a greater focus on the positive aspects of human experience, rather than honing in solely on the development of treatments and therapies for mental illness. If anything, I believe positive psychology's message of hope could apply to anyone - and certainly to those who are not considered mentally ill. By identifying strategies to better live one's life, positive psychology has the potential to garner global appeal - a "therapy," if you will, that could truly help heal the world.
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