Is positive psychology all it’s cracked up to be?

an article by Joseph Smith published in The Highlight

Kaiser Permanente commissioned a mural on a downtown Denver building to encourage people to talk about depression and other mental illnesses. 

RJ Sangosti/Denver Post/Getty Images
Just over 20 years old, this field has captivated the world with its hopeful promises — and drawn critics for its moralising, mysticism, and serious commercialisation.

The story of positive psychology starts, its founder often says, in 1997 in his rose garden.

Martin Seligman had just been elected head of the American Psychological Association and was in search of a transformational theme for his presidency. While weeding in his garden one day with his young daughter, Seligman found himself distracted and frustrated as Nikki, then 5, threw flowers into the air and giggled. Seligman yelled at her to stop, at which point Nikki took the professor aside. She reminded him how, from ages 3 to 5, she had been a whiner, but on her fifth birthday, had made a conscious decision to stop. If she could change herself with an act of will, couldn’t Daddy stop being such a grouch?

Seligman had an epiphany. What if every person was encouraged to nurture his or her character strengths, as Nikki so precociously had, rather than scolded into fixing their shortcomings?

He convened teams of the nation’s best psychologists to formulate a plan to reorient the entire discipline of psychology away from mostly treating mental illness and toward human flourishing. Then, he used his bully pulpit as the psychology association’s president to promote it. With Seligman’s 1998 inaugural APA presidential address, positive psychology was born.

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Predictors of men's psychotherapy preferences

an article by Brian P. Cole and Michael Baglieri (University of Kansas, USA), Gregory J. Petronzi (Connected Psychology, New York, USA) and Daniel B. Singley (The Center for Men’s Excellence, San Diego, USA) published in Counselling & Psychotherapy Research Volume 19 Issue 1 (March 2019)

Abstract

Aim
The current study examined men's perceptions and preferences for four types of psychotherapy.

Method
Men (N = 315) were recruited by Qualtrics panels to complete a survey that included vignettes describing therapeutic orientations.

Results
Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that gender role socialisation, self‐stigma and attitudes about professional psychological help negatively predicted willingness to engage in psychodynamic, person‐centred, cognitive behavioural and positive psychology positive masculinity therapy. Furthermore, men in the study preferred positive psychology positive masculinity therapy to cognitive behavioural therapy.

Conclusion
Given the role of gender role socialisation, self‐stigma and fear of femininity in the development of barriers to men's help‐seeking, the present study provides support for “man friendly” therapeutic orientations such as the positive psychology positive masculinity model. Implications for clinical practice and future directions for research are discussed.

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A Comparison of Strengths and Interests Protocols in Career Assessment and Counseling

an article by Rhea L. Owens (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada), Thomas C. Motl (Psychologist) and Thomas S. Krieshok (University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA) published in Journal of Career Assessment Volume 24 Issue 4 (November 2016)

Abstract

This study examined the relative performance of three career counseling protocols: a strengths-based protocol, an interest-based protocol, and a protocol that combined strengths and interests.

Outcome measures included career exploration, occupational engagement, career decision self-efficacy, hope, positive and negative affect, and life satisfaction pre- and post-intervention. The participants consisted of 82 undergraduate students enrolled in a career and life-planning course. Each participant received a career counseling intervention and a Strong Interest Inventory (SII), StrengthsFinder, or both the SII and StrengthsFinder interpretation.

While all three groups showed significant gains from pre-test to post-test on most outcomes, results suggest the interests protocol (IP) was the most effective approach when considering the conservation of resources.

However, results also merit further exploration of the combined protocol (CP; strengths plus interests) given the greatest gains were achieved by this approach on all but one construct, though not significantly different from the IP. Implications are discussed.

Full text (PDF)

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The role of organizational facilitators in promoting job-related mental health and group service effectiveness: a two-wave analysis

Esther Gracia (Universitat de València, Spain and IDOCAL Research Institute, Valencia, Spain) and  Marisa Salanova, Edgar Bresó and Eva Cifre (Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain) published in Work & Stress: An International Journal of Work, Health & Organisations Volume 30 Issue 3 (2016)

Abstract

This study aimed to add to knowledge by providing a more systematic integration of work characteristics, workers’ health and performance. The two-wave multi-source study was conducted to test the relationship over time between the healthy states of groups of service-oriented workers and their service effectiveness when their organizations provide facilitators such as training, technical support and autonomy.

The study takes healthy states to be a composite of affective-motivational and competent collective states (collective vigour and service competence) and service effectiveness. Service effectiveness was a combination of service quality as assessed by customers and their loyalty intentions.

Data from 53 hotels and restaurants in Spain were aggregated from 256 boundary workers (i.e. workers in direct contact with customers) and 530 customers at Time 1 and from 470 customers at Time 2 six month later.

Structural equation modelling showed that organizational facilitators at Time 1 were related to the service effectiveness reported by customers at Time 2, and also that there was a relationship between service effectiveness at Time 1 and the healthy states reported by the groups at Time 2. That is, contrary to what is widely believed, there was an influence of performance on well-being.

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The well-being outcomes of career guidance

an article by Peter J. Robertson (Edinburgh Napier University, UK) published in British Journal of Guidance & Counselling Volume 41 Issue 3 (June 2013)

Abstract

The potential for career guidance to impact on well-being has received insufficient attention in the UK. There are both conceptual and empirical reasons to expect that the impacts may be positive, but a lack of evidence directly testing this proposition.

Career guidance has commonalities with therapeutic counselling suggesting analogous effects, and it promotes positive engagement in work and learning, which may be associated with health benefits. There are implications for services in reconciling health and employment objectives.

However, the promotion of well-being need not imply quasi-clinical ways of working. A call is made for more research and debate in the career guidance community as to the extent and implications of the potentially important relationship between career guidance and well-being.

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Do Video Games Promote Positive Youth Development?

an article by Paul J. C. Adachi and Teena Willoughby (Brock University, St. Catharines, Canada) published in Journal of Adolescent Research Volume 28 Number 2 (March 2013)

Abstract

We argue that video game play may meet Larson’s (2000) criteria for fostering initiative in youth, and thus, may be related to positive outcomes such as flow, cooperation, problem solving, and reduced in-group bias.

However, developmental and social psychologists examining adolescent video game use have focused heavily on how video games are related to negative outcomes, while neglecting potential positive outcomes.

In this article we review the adolescent video game literature, examining both negative and positive outcomes, and suggest important directions for future research.

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