The Good Life

Being real and loving the reality of life on planet earth seems so hard for people to do. Psychologists need to lead the way with both feet on the ground and an open heart. Life is grand enough if you embrace it with all of your body, heart and soul.

I understand your intellectual criticism. My question to you is how does your commentary add anything positive to the field of positive psychology?

It seems to be a whole host of negativity in world you claim to be an expert in..............

Chris - I can only say well said. It captures many of my concerns about PP.

I follow several PP websites and list serves and would suggest that they are predominantly bad company.

By the way do you have any comments on Todd Kashdan's new research on the VIA questioning the structure

You left out the self-help people who just write crap with absolutely no science to back it at all, but act as if it is the abolsute truth.

God knows a few of them lurk this very site.

Positive Psychology is a SCIENCE! with a noble aim, namely finding a way to consistently bring out the best in people. The problem I see is Positive Psychology is being hijacked by the snake oil salesman of the anecdotal. You know what I mean, the secret, and other people who believe we physically manifest the world around us. We don't, we merely interpret it, and it's in this interpretation that Positive Psychology can help us. But it's message is being lost and confused just like the message of humanist movement was lost and confused. Positive Psychology isn't just saying something nice, it's a science that uses evidence to instruct us how we can focus on what we can do, how we can actually take action to improve our situation.

More science, less anecdotes is what I say.

Chris-I totally agree with you!! After following all kinds of PP developments in the last 4 yeards I've embarked on my PhD in Education which in essence is a positive psychology at work project. Although, a variety of research strings in the literature (psychology, education, bussiness) support this project I'm usually extremely reluctant to tell people with no PP background that my own PhD is a PP project...

Due to the phenomena that you describe there is a very-real-constantly-growing danger positive psychology not to be taken seriously as a science...
However, I think that because it's basic thinking has grown and is now echoed under different names all around the social sciences (& that't a fact!) at some point maybe the two words "positive psychology" will need to be re-evaluated.
People create words and produce science (not the other way around) in order to give names to meaningful ideas. So I do hope that if we find a way to deal with positive psychology's bad company it's important content will remain with us even under another name.

I don't see the problem here. Whether we are dealing with plumbers,
dentists, lawyers, monks, religious books, spiritual teachings,
archeology, computer science etc.... we will find the whole range
of skills/competence. A few will be very good, more will simply be
good, many will be bad and less will be very bad.

Positive psychology is not exempt and I do not see how it is worse
than "realists" self destructing because they "are not going to be
fooled by anything/anyone".

I can't help thinking that calling it "positive" psychology has created an extra hurdle to clear - although, it has probably helped as far as funding. Almost everyone I mention "positive psychology" to thinks I mean "the power of positive thinking." It seems like it's also too broad a label. I have very little idea what someone means when they say they're "applying positive psychology" and I'm getting a degree in the field. I'd much rather hear them say that they try to develop meaning or values or engagement or whatever in their clients. And I still encounter psychologists who take offense to the whole notion of a positive psychology, as though well-being wasn't studied at all beforehand, and as though they study negative psychology.

I also have to say that I am just astounded at the lack of clarity, even within the field, about the terms "happiness" and "well-being." Even "positive emotion" is unclear or generalized hugely in some cases. Vaillant means something different than Fredrickson who means something different than Seligman. You really have to look at the operationalization to understand what a study was really measuring, and without looking at that... it's really hard to see what might have been missed, and thus what other experiments need to be done to fill in the gaps. Is there a review of the field where someone has noted the various differences in operational definitions?

Those who confuse positivism with science

And those who confuse linear models with science

You make some really good points. I just wish you were brave enough to be more specific.

Let's see, your colleague and fellow scientist Dr. Lyubomirsky wrote a book narrowly focusing on happiness (How of Happiness). She dumbed it down for the general public. Are you indicting her?

Then there is your friend Dr. Seligman whose book Authentic Happiness is based on a model that has almost no research to back it up. A couple of questionnaire studies, at most? Are you indicting him?

And then from what you wrote, it sounds like you don't want critics. You want to keep the science protected from skeptics. Doesn't sound like a good scientific approach to me. What's the problem?

I think your post raises a lot more questions than answers.

This social architecture works for all kinds of social dynamics based on ideology, like elections, where candidates select the roles of stupid, evil, one-trick pony, etc. Anyone for a flat tax?

Sadly this indicts positive psychology as more ideoloical than scientific, because a scientific domain wouldn't have groups of people in it that we could identify ideologically, other than "the old guard" and "the whippersnappers" if you believe Thomas Kuhn.

“Be Who You Are and Say What You Feel Because Those Who Mind Don't Matter and Those Who Matter Don't Mind.” These are topics that need to be addressed. I'm glad you're raising these issues in the public arena and promoting discussion Chris. You are a teacher in the truest sense!

Wonderfully well written article...