Positive Psychology

1. Positive Psychology Fall 2015 Indiana High School Psychology Teacher Association Conference IUPUI Campus September 18, 2015 Sponsored by the Department of Psychology – IUPUI John C. Guare, PhD Clinical Associate Professor Department of Psychology – IUPUI jguare@iupui.edu

2. Outline • Brief overview of how the field got started • A classic text on Happiness and its topics/findings • Other key researchers/topics in Positive Psychology • Additional resources

3. A starting place • Martin Seligman, PhD • Early in his career he developed the Learned Helplessness Theory of Depression • Over time he did a complete turn-around, wrote a book called Learned Optimism, and authored other books and many articles on the topic of Positive Psychology • APA President 1996 • Used this platform to help psychology engage in positive psychology research and address its applications

4. Nikki and the weeds • Seligman’s inspiration • Weeding garden • 5-year old daughter throwing weeds • Seligman irritated, yelled at Nikki • “Daddy. From when I was 3 until I was 5, I was a whiner. I whined every day. On my 5th birthday, I decided I wasn’t going to whine anymore. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. If I can stop whining, you can stop being such a grouch.”

5. An epiphany • Seligman resolved to change • His purpose in life was not to correct his daughter’s shortcomings • Instead, raising her to nurture the strength she displayed (social intelligence) • Can psychological science be about identifying and nurturing strengths? • His mission as APA president

6. Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth Ed Diener, PhD Smiley Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois Robert Biswas-Diener, PhD Part-time instructor at Portland State University Managing Director for Positive Acorn – a Positive Psychology and Coach Training Program (Note: Some of these ppt slides are from Ed Diener)

7. “The most authoritative and informative book about happiness ever ^ written”

8. Unique Aspects of the Book • The book presents research on the benefits of happiness – to health, work, and relationships • Addresses the need for “negative emotions” • Discusses the danger of averages when applied to individuals, like for religion or marriage • Contains self-scoring measures for 7 variables • Discusses myths such as a happiness “set-point” • Interesting stories as examples

9. Part l: Understanding true wealth • Psychological Wealth: The Balanced Portfolio • Two Principles of Psychological Wealth • Part 2: Happy people function better • Health and Happiness • Happiness and Social Relationships – You Can’t Do Without Them • Happiness at Work: It Pays to be Happy • Part 3: Causes of happiness and genuine wealth • Can Money Buy Happiness? • Religion, Spirituality, and Happiness • The Happiest Places on Earth: Culture and Well-Being • Nature and Nurture – Is There a Happiness Set-Point, and Can You Change It? • Our Crystal Balls: Happiness Forecasting • Taking AIM: Attention, Interpretation, and Memory • Part 4: Putting it all together • Yes, You Can Be Too Happy • Living Happily Ever After • Measuring Your Psychological Wealth

10. Pie Chart of True Wealth

11. First Principle of Happiness • Happiness is a Process, Not a Place • Ongoing new challenges • How one “travels” • Winning an award

12. Climbing Mount McKinley • Native name is Mount Denali (in Alaska) • North America’s highest peak – 20,321’ • U of Illinois professor Art Kramer studied how oxygen deprivation affects cognitive functioning • He climbs and conducts research with elite soldiers in the US Navy • One time he met less experienced Canadian climbers on McKinley, so he guided them up to within a few hundred meters from the peak – he and they only needed to go up a straightforward gentle slope

13. Climbing Mount McKinley • But he stopped, turned around and came back down • He did not want any potential concerns about his using government money for his own private ambitions • Dr. Art Kramer’s views on turning back and descending: • Climbing is more about the activity than the end goal • It’s not about the summit. It’s about the process of climbing • Lots of enjoyable, rewarding moments along the way • Entire process involves – training at home, feeling the ‘flow’ while climbing, taking in the awe and wonder, etc

14. While we climb in life… • Happiness comes from doing rather than having • If we enjoy the activities needed in working for our goals, many hours and years of pleasure are provided, whereas reaching summits provides only the occasional short-term high • Plus, since we adapt to new things, we need to move on to new experiences/goals to keep enjoying life to the fullest • (Side note: our brains work best when we are continually learning something new)

15. Magic Genie • A magic genie floats out of his lamp • He promises you everything you wish for as soon as you wish it • Keep in mind, though, that you cannot wish for: • Happiness • needing to work for things in order to obtain them • So this is wishing for typical things like money, beauty, fast cars, getting A’s in all your classes, etc. • Class exercise I did: Discuss in triads for 10 minutes what this would be like

16. Needing the rigors of the game • Anyone think this wish might get a bit empty after a while? • Adapt to our blessings? Having everything and working for nothing? Things get boring? (TV show “Last Man on Earth”) • What about the idea that with effort, the activities needed to gain the reward are rewarding in themselves? • Quote from former Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo: • “In the end the great truth will have been learned: that the quest is greater than what is sought, the effort finer than the prize (or rather, the effort is the prize), the victory cheap and hollow if it were not for the rigor of the game.”

17. Second Principle of Happiness • Happiness is desirable! • Not everyone has shared this opinion: • “To be stupid, selfish and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.” • French author Gustave Flaubert • The good news is research shows happiness is beneficial

18. Happiness is a resource • Research by Alice Isen (early 1970’s) shows happiness can be used to benefit ourselves and/or others • One study – potential outcome of good moods: • Secretly planted coins in the coin return slot in a telephone booth • When unsuspecting callers found the coins, they were more likely to help a bystander (a research accomplice) carry books or pick up dropped papers compared to callers who did not find any coins • Second study – giving a gift bag of candies + chocolates to your MD is good for your health • Compared to patients who did not give such a gift to their MD, those who did give such a gift led their MDs to be a better diagnostician, integrate information better, arrive at a diagnosis sooner, and show more flexible thinking

19. Happiness and Creativity • Studies show that happy people, when given simple tests to test “flexible thinking” or problem-solving, think faster, clearer, and more broadly. In other words, they are more “creative” in terms of finding novel solutions and new associations, than people who are unhappy or even depressed. They can think more open-mindedly and more broadly, seeing more options, seeing the bigger picture. They don’t fixate on any one piece of information. In contrast, when we’re unhappy, we focus very narrowly in our attentional selection (Rowe, Hirsh, and Anderson, 2007).

20. Happiness and cognitive flexibility • The eye experiment was one where they trained a camera on subjects’ irises to see exactly what the subject looked at when presented with a new problem (Wadlinger and Isaacowitz, 2006). Happy people looked around at every part of the picture, looking to all the edges, and looking back and forth between different objects in the picture. Unhappy people looked mostly in just one place – straight in the center, at the largest object, in a closed-view way.

21. Happiness and performance • Alice Isen’s studies through Cornell in the 1980s to 90s (repeated by Barbara Fredrickson in the 2000s) show that people do much better on creative tasks and also academic tests of intelligence if they are happy because they have just received a small gift (a wrapped-up bag of candy) immediately before performing the task or test. • The cause that showed up through testing was that happy people somehow had more energy to be involved in their play and more rigorous in their work.

22. More Benefits of Happiness • University of North Carolina psychologist Barbara Fredrickson • Positive emotions serve a positive purpose: they “Broaden and Build” our personal resources • Positive moods: • Lead us to seek out and cultivate relationships • Help us think more creatively • Enhances our curiosity and interest in new activities • Helps our playful spirit show up

23. Challenges look easier when you are happy • Positive emotions make goals seem easier to achieve • Research by Proffitt and Clore (U of Virginia) • One study: • While walking with Ss to a hill, researchers played classical music that was either upbeat/bouncy or rather depressing. When got to the hill, Ss were asked to rate the steepness of the hill (its slope). Ss in the former group rated it as 19 degrees vs. 31 degrees in the latter group • Second study: • Ss were asked to rate how far it would be to walk to Monticello (this is the famous home of Thomas Jefferson). Ss who had a friend with them rated it as closer compared to Ss who did not have a friend with them when they made the distance rating. (Side note: Kamarck study - effect of social support on blood pressure during a challenging/stressful task)

24. Benefits of Subjective Well-Being (SWB)Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener Social relationships Work and income Health & longevity Societal benefits • Causal direction? • Longitudinal, lab experiments, quasi-experiments

25. Social Benefits Happy people more likely to have: Self-confidence Leadership Warmth Sociability More friends

26. Work Success People higher in subjective well-being (SWB) demonstrate: A. Higher supervisor ratings B. Organizational citizenship Example: Helping others on the job C. Higher income

27. College Entry Cheerfulness, and Income 19 yearslaterDiener, Nickerson, Lucas, & Sandvik (2002)

28. Health & Longevity “The Nun Study” Discussed in chapter 3 – this is a classic study (Danner, Snowdon, & Friesen (2001) Ss were nuns who originally entered convents between 1931-1943. Upon entering they wrote an autobiography describing their lives and reasons for joining a religious order. Danner et al. were curious to see if what the nuns wrote in their early autobiographies would predict health status decades later. Special attention was paid to language that reflected positive or negative emotions. (Note: same environment for all nuns) The emotional content was rated to develop an index of happiness (looked for words like: happy, interested, love, hope, gratitude, etc) Survival Rate at Age:8593 Most Cheerful Quartile 79% 52% Least Cheerful 54% 18%

29. Why happy are healthier? • Stronger immune systems • Better cardiovascular health • Health behaviors (e.g., seatbelts) • Fewer lifestyle diseases (e.g., alcoholism) • Younger genes (telomeres)

30. Societal Benefits of Happiness • Volunteering • Pro-peace attitudes • Cooperative attitudes

31. Part 3: Influences on Happiness • Supportive social relationships • Temperament & adaptation • Money • Society & culture • Cognition: Positive attitudes

32. Strong Social Relationships Every single one of the happiest people we studied have good social relationships (Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener)

33. GIVING • Social support: People who help others live longer and are happier! • DacherKeltner’s (UC Berkeley) research on giving people $20 to spend on themselves or others. Afterwards, Ss who spent it on others had higher happiness ratings vs. those who spent it on themselves.

34. Inborn Temperament • Identical twins reared apart are much more similar in happiness than fraternal twins reared together • Heritability – 20 to 50 percent of individual differences in happiness

35. Adaptation • Temperament has substantial effect in long-run because people adapt to their conditions to some degree • They react strongly, but then adapt back to their baseline (all the time?)

36. Unemployment

37. Slow Adaptation to Widowhood

38. Life Satisfaction and 100 Percent Disability (Lucas)

39. Conclusion The “Set-point” is really more like a “Set-range” Temperament is important, but circumstances matter too

40. Money Despite popular myths, money is correlated with happiness, although not always strongly

41. But Warnings About Money! • Toxicity of materialism • Don’t sacrifice too much of other components of wealth, such as relationships • Declining marginal utility

42. Even the poor can be happy • Maasai • Inuit • Amish • Slums of Calcutta A. If basic needs met -- for food etc. • If not desiring more • Have other rewards such as relationships

43. Society Influences Happiness The individualism bias in positive psychology – happiness is within you only But what of positive institutions?

44. Denmark 8.0 Finland 7.7 Switzerland 7.5 Netherlands 7.5 Spain 7.2 Ireland 7.1 Togo 3.2 Cambodia 3.6 Sierra Leone 3.6 Georgia 3.7 Zimbabwe 3.8 West Bank 4.7 Life Evaluation LadderIdeal to Worst (10 to 0)

45. “Cognition:”Positive Mental Outlook • The habit of seeing the glass half-full • Seeing opportunities, not threats • Generally trusting and liking oneself and others

46. Cognition: AIM Model • Attention • Interpretation • Memory

47. Cognition: AIM Model • Attention • Seeing beauty and good in the world • Interpretation • Interpreting many things as positive • Memory • Savoring rather than ruminating COGNITIVE HABITS PEOPLE GET INTO!

48. “Spirituality”: Experiencing Broadening Positive Emotions – which makes life larger than just our own self-interests: Gratitude Love Awe Transcendence

49. Part 4: Putting it all together • Yes, You Can Be Too Happy • Living Happily Ever After • Measuring Your Psychological Wealth

50. Being too happy? • No negative emotions? • Negative emotions can be appropriate • They sometimes help functioning • Searching for constant euphoria & ecstasy • Expectations too high • In some instances “8’s” do better than “10’s”