Tutorial 11: Positive psychology

Resource type: this resource contains a tutorial or tutorial notes.

This is the eleventh tutorial for the Motivation and emotion unit of study.

Overview

This tutorial is about growth psychology, self-actualisation, and happiness.

Growth psychology assumptions

To what extent do you agree with the underlying assumptions of growth psychology? Not sure? Consider these questions :

1. Do you think that "evil" (or anti-social) behaviour is:
   • inherent in human nature?
   • a product of a sick culture?
2. How does learning best occur? Does it follow from:
   • well-developed curricula and expert teaching?
   • having one’s interests identified, facilitated, and supported?
3. Does psychological therapy work best by:
   • fixing what is broken?
   • nurturing what is best?
4. Which answers correspond to growth psychology paradigms? (the 2nd answer in each case)

Self-actualisation

1. Self-actualising is the process of fulfilling your potential.
2. Complete this Self-evaluation of self-actualisation (Google Form). After submitting, click "See previous responses" so you can review your scores. Alternative version (Wikiversity).
3. Review your answers and highlight:
   1. What are you doing that is particularly well that is helping you towards self-actualisation?
   2. What could you improve to better promote growth towards self-actualisation?

Happiness

Since the development of positive psychology in 1990s, there has been a significant focus on psychological research and understanding of happiness.

1. Martin Seligman suggests three components of happiness which he calls the:
   1. Pleasant life: Dealing with the past, optimism about the future, happiness in the present (hedonic pleasure and the skills to amplify pleasure). However, this form of happiness is limited by being short-lived, subject to the hedonic treadmill, and heritable.
   2. Good life: or Eudaimonia; Engagement (flow, absorption)
   3. Meaningful life: Connection to a higher purpose)
2. Dan Gilbert suggests two components of happiness: (Why are we happy? (Dan Gilbert, 2004, 21:20, TED talk) - see also: Ten years later: Dan Gilbert):
   1. Natural happiness: What we feel when we get what we want
   2. Synthetic happiness: What we feel when we learn to like what we get

Take-away message: The science of happiness is counter-intuitive - people are subject to many biases (e.g., we overrate the anticipated hedonic impact of events) which undermine our decision-making about how to be happy.

Recording

• Tutorial 11 recording, 2020

See also

Additional tutorial material

• Problems for discussion
• Fully functioning person
• Happiness - Practical exercises
• Meaning and coherence
• Optimal human functioning

Wikiversity book chapters

• Peak experiences and emotion (2019)
• PERMA model of well-being (2020)
• Self-actualisation and motivation (2020)
• Subjective well-being (2020)
• Synthetic happiness (2017)

Wikipedia

• Happiness
• Self-actualization

Lectures and tutorials

• Growth motivation and positive psychology (Lecture)
• Time perspective (Previous tutorial)
• Review (Next tutorial)

References

External links

• Authentic happiness (authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu)
• The developmental assets framework (search-institute.org)
• The common approach (aracy.org.au)