Is it possible to turn fear into altruism? This is positive psychology in a most creative sense. Take something negative, say psychopathy and look at the flip side: empathy. After all, “Psychopaths also lack empathy towards others in general, resulting in tactlessness, insensitivity, and contemptuousness” (Millon & Davis, 1998). Additionally, a focus on empathy and emotional resilience rather than psychopathy will enable people is the psychologically “normal” range to become even better, more understanding and compassionate educators, mentors, parents, siblings, and friends. Finally, this article focuses on how we must be able to understand the bad, in this case, fear, in order to know how to be good.

While there is a huge range of human emotion, recent studies have suggested that a fearful facial expression is a more salient elicitor of prosocial behavior than are other facial expressions, such as surprise or anger.

Marsh, Kozak, and Ambady (2007) conducted three studies to investigate the relationship between fear recognition and prosocial behavior.
In the first study, participants believed that the researchers were investigating typical reactions to radio broadcasts. The participants listened to an audiotape—a fictional creation of the research team—of a young woman named Katie describing her parents’ death and her struggles to care for her siblings. The researchers instructed one group of participants to empathize with the woman, while telling a control group to focus on technical aspects of the recording. Next, while having participants fill out questionnaires used to disguise the real intent of the study, the researchers handed out a letter from Katie describing her need for help, accompanied by pledge forms and envelopes.

Afterward, they gave the participants a test measuring their ability to identify emotions in photos of adult faces.
Not surprisingly, participants told to empathize with Katie donated more than those told to listen to the tape for technical accuracy. In addition, facial fear recognition skills played a powerful role in predicting their generosity. The accuracy with which participants recognized the fear expression significantly and positively predicted their donations of time and money.

In the second study, the researchers analyzed how participants’ fear recognition skills influenced their rating of people’s photos as attractive or unattractive if they thought the photographed subjects would be told about the ratings. This design created an opportunity for the participants to exhibit prosocial behavior by being kind to the people in the photos, eliminating a costly barrier of undergraduate participants not necessarily having much time or money. Another group of participants, who did not believe that the photographed people would hear their opinions, served as controls.

This study found that participants skilled at identifying facial fear (as well as sadness) responded the most kindly in the rating task. This was only true for participants for whom the task was framed as a prosocial one—who believed their judgments would be shown to the people being rated. In the control group, which did not think the researchers would share their opinions with the photo subjects, fear or sadness recognition skills played no role in the participants’ ratings. This could mean that there is nothing prosocial about rating someone as more attractive than they are if the people being rated are not told.

The third study duplicated Study 2, adding additional analyses to confirm that higher ratings of attractiveness stemmed from participants’ efforts to be kind. In this study, fear recognition again proved to be a strong predictor of prosocial behavior.

The results of the three studies maintain the hypothesis that the ability to recognize the fear facial expression predicts individual differences in prosocial behavior. This is consistent with studies involving psychopaths, because those studies suggest that individuals less prone to experiencing states associated with prosocial behavior (e.g., empathy, concern, and guilt) are less able to recognize distress cues such as the fear facial expression. Cleckley (1976) even defines psychopathy as a “lack of guilt or empathy.” More studies must be conducted to experimentally manipulate empathy, as was done in Marsh et al.’s Study 1, not merely manipulating whether or not the participant will get recognition as in their Studies two and three. Still, these researchers have lain fascinating ground for future studies of other-oriented positive emotions.

Marsh, Abigail A., Kozak, Megan N., Ambady, Nalini. (2007). Accurate identification of fear facial expressions predicts prosocial behavior. Emotion, 7, 239-51.

Millon, Theodore; Davis, Roger D. (1998). “Chapter 11: The Five-Factor Model of Personality, Psychopathy: Antisocial, Criminal, and Violent Behavior. The Guilford Press: New York, NY. pp. 173-177.

I was fortunate to attend Ed Diener’s talk on Well Being and Public Policy hosted by the Claremont Graduate University’s school of Organizational and Behavioral Sciences. The talk was titled, “Happiness for Complete Wealth. Implications for Public Policy.” The over arching theme of his talk was the importance of measuring well being and using it as a measure of governmental effectiveness rather than focusing solely on Gross Domestic Product. He began his talk with this interesting quote from Robert Kennedy.

“Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product … if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

Why should we measure well being? From the talk….

It’s Democratic – Everyone in the world has their pet projects and different things make different people happy. By measuring well being systematically with representative samples, we give equal voice to those who find mud wrestling makes them happy, rather than having public policy driven only by those who happen to have access to decision makers and what makes them happier.

It’s Useful for policy – There is considerable evidence on the negative effects of commuting such that a raise that allows people to buy a bigger house that necessitates a longer commute often has a negative impact on well being. The relationship between money and happiness is also well known and can be used to drive tax policy.

Happy people are productive people - In truth, there is not necessarily a tradeoff that only stupid people are happy (Flaubert’s error). Rather, reseaarch has shown that happy people have higher supervisor ratings, higher organizational citizenship (they help their co-workers), and earn higher income. The last finding is the result of a long term longiitudinal study by Diener, Nickerson, Lucas, and Sandvick (2002) where cheerfulness as an undergraduate was found to predict income 19 years later.

Happy people are healthier people – From his work with the CDC, he has run predictors of national life expectancy through regression analyses and found the following beta weights:

• .12-> GDP
• .01-> Health Expenditure
• .65-> Life Satisfaction

Apparently, life satisfaction shares the most unique variance with societal life expectancy.

Society CAN affect happiness - Representative samples of Danish and Togolese citizens have confirmed that almost all Danish people are happier than almost all Togolese citizens. Happiness is not just an individual phenomenon. Gallup world poll data has found that the best predictors of well being are:

• Money
• Being able to count on others
• Low corruption
• Low assault rates
• Feeling control over something
• Having learned something new recently
• Being able to use one’s talents

We currently focus government policy on some of these things without considering (or measuring) others.

He closed his talk with the following….Well Being is more than money. Obama is briefed daily about the economy using various measures…who measures well being? “Well being should be a policy imperative.”

BTW, Diener is planning on coming out with a book on Well Being and Public Policy in a few months.

Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta have found that when monkeys were given a choice of receiving a food reward, or receiving a food reward and also having another monkey receive food. When paired with relative or “friend” the monkeys primarily went for the “prosocial” choice,  but the monkeys weren’t so generous with strangers, choosing the “selfish” option instead.

Empathy increases in both humans and animals with social closeness, which is often explained by evolution. We help those most closely related to us, to make sure not just our own genes are passed on but that those genes of our family as passed on as well.

Still one may wonder whether giving is still a selfish to capuchins because they can eat together, or if the monkeys simply like to see the other monkey enjoying the food. In the study, eight adult female capuchins were given tokens to exchange for food. One token got them a slice of apple. The other also got an apple slice, plus a similar slice was given to another monkey they could see.

In a series of tests, when the “partner” monkey was a relative or a familiar female from the same social group, the one choosing the token moved closer to the partner and primarily choose the prosocial token that got them both food.

When the second monkey was a stranger, the selfish token was more likely to be chosen, often with the lead monkey turning her back to the stranger. Since the reward was the same for the monkey making the choice, de Waal suggested there must be some intangible benefit to the prosocial choice, perhaps an indication of empathy.

The study put in much effort to eliminate the possibility that the monkeys didn’t understand the task. They also made sure the monkey could always see the other monkey eat the food when they chose the “prosocial option.

Like we’ve found with humans, strict  Dawkinsian evolutionary theory, which asserts that people may seem to act altruistically but only do so if the benefit, is questioned here. If we believed in completely selfish behavior, might researchers find a difference between “prosocial” behaviors toward a friend and toward a relative? In this study, as with many altruism studies with humans, there was no such difference.

Empathy is important to understand for better communities, schools, and personal/professional relationships. Emapthic individuals are less likely to be anti-social and more likely to have strong social ties, better social skills, and more school and life success. There are many applications for increasing one’s empathy, such as teaching it in schools, teaching it to counselors and psychologists, and teaching it as an intervention for criminals and/or emotionally impaired (Autistic, Psychopathic) people. For instance, an important target for Learning by Teaching is to train students in empathy. They have to transmit new contents to the classmates, so that they reflect continuously on the mental processes of their classmates and teachers. This greatly enhances the social relationships of the students and learning that takes place in the classroom.

Regarding psychotherapy, there is an increasing demand to train psychologists to be more empathetic with their clients. In this context, empathy is exremely important for trust and optimal treatment.

Not only is empathy a vital skill in order to maximize social relationships, but empathy is also linked to happiness and general well-being. Martin Seligman originally hypothesized that unhappy people are likely to be more altruistic since they would be more likely to identify with the suffering of others. Findings of studies on mood and helping behaviors, however, showed that happy people are more likely to demonstrate altruism (Seligman, 2002). There is no evidence to show the direction of this relationship, so it very well may be that being altruistic causes happiness. Studies conducted by Isen, George, and Brief (1992) also showed that people are more willing to help others and engage in altruistic behaviors when they are happy. Hence, it can be proposed that altruism and happiness are reciprocal.

In short, happy people are altruistic and altruistic people are happy. We’ll just have to wait for a monkey-mood-measure to see if the same is true for our capuchin friends.

Is it truly better to give than receive? The verdict’s still out, but one thing is certain: it is great to give! At least, many positive psychology researchers are finding kindness and general pro-social behaviors to increase well-being. Kindness interventions show that happiness can be increased by doing random acts of kindness for others.
In one ten-week experiment, participants were invited to regularly practice random acts of kindness (Boehm, Lyubomirsky, & Sheldon, 2008). Engaging in kind acts (e.g., 12 holding the door open for a stranger or doing a roommate’s dishes) was thought to impact happiness for a variety of reasons, including bolstered self-regard, positive social interactions, and charitable feelings towards others and the community at large. In this study, happiness was measured at baseline, mid-intervention, immediately post-intervention, and one month later. Additionally, two variables were manipulated: 1) the frequency with which participants practiced acts of kindness (either three or nine times each week) and 2) the variety with which participants practiced acts of kindness (either varying their kind acts or repeating the same acts weekly). Finally, a control group merely listed events from the past week.
Interestingly, the frequency with which kind acts were performed did not affect well-being. The variety of the kind acts, however, influenced the extent to which participants became happier. Those who were asked to perform a wide variety of kind acts revealed an upward trajectory for happiness, even through the 1-month follow-up. By contrast, the control group showed no changes in their happiness throughout the 14 weeks of the study, and those not given the opportunity to vary their kind acts actually became less happy midway through the intervention, before eventually rebounding to their baseline happiness level at the follow-up assessment.
In another kindness intervention, students were asked to perform five acts of kindness per week over the course of six weeks, and those five acts had to be done either within a single day (e.g., all on Sunday) or across the week (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, et al., 2005). In this study, happiness levels increased for students performing acts of kindness, but only for those who performed all of their kind acts in a single day. It was theorized by the authors that when kind acts were spread throughout the week, the effect of each kind act was dispersed, such that participants did not differentiate between their normal behavior and the kindnesses prompted by this intervention. Taken together, these  two kindness interventions suggest that not only can happiness be boosted by behavioral intentional activities, but that both the timing and variety of performing such intentional activities significantly moderates their impact on well-being.
Not only is doing kind acts important for well-being, but counting the kindnesses one already offers (in the way one may count blessings) also increases happiness. Otake et al. (2006), found that happy people (determined by a median-split) are more motivated to do kind acts and recognize them, have more happy memories in number and quality, become happier through kindness and are more grateful. Additionally, they perform more acts of kindness during the intervention. One could think of this as positive reinforcement. Some theorized reasons unhappy people did not benefit in this way include depression influencing memories and motivation and/or the possibility of these people not actually performing kind acts in the first place. One recommendation for this group may be to engage in a Lyubomirskian intervention, as mentioned in the prior paragraphs!
Not only does doing varied acts of kindness increase happiness, but spending money on others promotes happiness as well. This may be surprising given how much we covet our assets and can even find happiness in being financially stable. While money can buy happiness (Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002), when a person thinks too much about their wealth (think of a miser as the extreme [or Scrooge during this holiday season]), they are less likely to help acquaintances, to donate to charity or to choose to spend time with others (Vohs, Mead & Goode, 2006). Still, spending more of one’s income on others predicts greater happiness both cross-sectionally (in a nationally representative study) and longitudinally (in a field study of windfall spending). In an experimental setting, those who were randomly assigned to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those assigned to spend money on themselves (Dunn, Aknin & Norton, 2008).

In a nutshell, do good things for others and do it with variety. I would recommend buying lots for others, but during this recession, I’m going to stick with the variety recommendation for now. And because it’s hard to think up these things on one’s own, here’s an abbreviated list written by Joanathan Haidt:

==> · Be a listening ear to a friend. Ask your friend how her day was and actually listen and respond to her before describing your own day.
==> · Flu season is upon us. Help a friend or neighbor who is ill by delivering chicken soup, doing the laundry, or walking the dog.
==> · Give someone else the gift of time-Do something for someone else that requires time and effort on your part.
==> · The next time someone admires something of yours and you can afford to do without it, give it away.
==> · Volunteer in your community.
==> · One day each week, “commit” five random acts of kindness. And, when possible, make them anonymous.

Boehm, J. K., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). Does happiness lead to career success? Journal of Career Assessment, 16, 101-116.

Dunn, E.W., Aknin, L.B., & Norton, M.I. Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness. Science, 319, 1687-1688.

Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, 131, 803-855.

Otake, K., Shimai, S., & Tanaka-Matsumi, J. (2006). Happy people become happier through kindness: A counting kindness intervention. Journal of Happiness Studies, 7, 361–375.

Gregor and Masa Zvelc from the Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy and Counseling presented on the power of Mindful Processing at the 4th European Conference of Positive Psychology.  Their presentation was entitled: “The Power of the present moment – Mindful Processing in psychotherapy and counseling.”  As defined by Jon Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness is “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and nonjudgmentally.”  Zvelc commented that the cornerstone of mindfulness is a non-judgmental and accepting awareness of the present.  During the presentation, the Zvelc couple cited Segal, Williams, and Teasdale’s paper from 2002, which compared “doing” mode and “being” mode.  Doing mode stresses solving problems.  In contrast, being mode focuses on accepting and allowing without pressure to change the present.

During the workshop the Zvelcs taught a method of counseling called “Mindful Processing.”  Mindful Processing “invites the client to become aware of the moment” and to experience the present with acceptance.  The counselor is also in a state of mindfulness with the client.  With both therapist and client tuned into the present moment, the therapist asks the client to describe his/her present bodily sensations, feelings, and emotions.  The client is not to judge the sensations, only to describe and experience them fully.  The result is “deep experiencing.” 

The Zvelcs showed a video of Mindful Processing between a client and therapist.  In the video, the client first explained the situation that was causing him trouble.  He next expressed his bodily sensations becoming very aware of them.  With an awareness of the body, came an awareness of his emotions.  He deeply experienced the emotions that this situation had brought out.  The therapist helped to guide the client and to extract the meaning from the emotional experience.  With a better understanding of the emotions in this mindful state, a transformation of the emotions became possible.  New awareness arose along with insight into the initial situation.

The Zvelcs summed the protocol one should follow for Mindful Processing into a seven step process:

Step 1: Description of Mindful Processing to the client

Step 2: Description of the original situation – What issue would you like to discover more about?

Step 3: Finding body sensation connected to the whole problem – How do you feel it in your body?  Where?

Step 4: Focusing on body sensation related to the whole problem – Close eyes and focus.  Just observe what is happening within your body.

Step 5: Description of the Inner Experience – Slowly open your eyes and tell me what occurred.

Step 6: Intrapsychic Contact and Mindfulness – Stay with that feeling, emotion, sensation, thought.  Focus on it.  Just be aware.  Just observe.

            (Repeats steps 5 and 6 as many times as desired.)

Step 7: End of Processing – When considering the original issue, what comes?

Mindful Processing can be a very powerful way to gain new insight in an objective manner on any issue or problem.  It is without a doubt a slow and meditative process; however, with time and patience it can be quite effective.

At the 4^th European Conference for Positive Psychology, Kim Rose-Inza from the Korea Counseling Center and the Deh-In Positive Psychology Educational Foundation in Seoul, Korea presented on Reality Therapy. Reality Therapy is a method of counseling, which focuses on the client’s current behavior and whether or not it will help the client attain what he or she wants. Reality Therapy centers on helping the individual to re-connect with others in his/her life. Dr. William Glasser first developed Reality Therapy in 1965 incorporating Choice Theory, which suggests that living creatures behave and all behaviors attempt to satisfy one of the five basic needs.

Total behavior has four aspects: Thinking, Acting, Feeling, and Physiology. Dealing with feelings as in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy takes too long Rose-Inza suggests. She believes that the action aspect of behavior should be central. If one concentrates on the action, the feelings and physiology will follow. Reality Therapy stresses the importance of one’s present actions in order to alter the future. Glasser recommends leaving the past behind and concentrating on the present.

Rose-Inza offered a concrete example from her own practice: A couple she was counseling wanted to divorce after 20 years of marriage. The main, specific grievance cited was a dirty bath brush. The husband never hung it on a hook after showering making it become old and moldy quickly. The wife was terribly upset over the $5 bath brush. Rose-Inza had them both list their wants: hers – to have a clean bath brush; his – to not have to hang it up after showering. She recommended simply replacing the bath brush regularly. For a small price the conflict was solved by altering the actions just slightly and the marriage was saved. The plan of action for any couple must be simple, attainable, measurable, immediate, consistent, and client-centered. This method is known as Samic Planning. In addition, she recommends detailed, careful, and active listening as well as using I-messages in all relationship disputes.

Many people at the conference questioned that the problems between the couple may run much deeper than the simple conflict over the brush. However, Rose-Inza suggested to take one conflict at a time. Reality Therapy systematically questions if the wants of the client are being met by his or her actions. If not, the actions are changed through the Samic Plan.

In the Thriving Through Inner Conflict Workshop at the 4^th European Conference on Positive Psychology, Dina Nir and Avraham N. Kluger from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Isreal presented on Negotiational Self Theory.

Dina Nir said that whenever we need to make a decision about an Inner Conflict, we negotiate inside ourselves. These negotiations often lead to either a distributive or integrated outcome.

In 1990 Herman published his Dialogic-Self Theory. He writes that many I-positions talk to each other within us, which is good and healthy. The I-positions of our multifaceted and dynamic selves ask questions, criticize, ridicule, and disagree with each other. Many different voices are ok; inconsistency is normal. However, a pathological situation develops when one I-position takes over the entire identity. Alternative versions of reality are no longer able to have a voice.

Negotiational Self Theory believes that most often, in an inner conflict, one I-position dominates the weaker I-positions. Therefore, one side of us wins, while the other side completely looses. There is no compromise. The more submissive voice is completely unfulfilled and unsatisfied. The goal of using the Negotiational Self Theory and Method is to create win-win solutions where all inner voices are heard and no part of the self is marginalized. Negotiotional Self Method transforms the internal negotiation into all win-win outcomes.

Nir presented a four-stage method as outlined below:

Stage 1: Framing the Inner Conflict

• Recall an unresolved inner conflict that you are experiencing.
• Freely describe the nature and background of the conflict.
• Identity the two most polarizing sides in terms of “for” and “against.”

Stage 2: Eliciting and mapping different self-aspects

• Completely elicit and list all the “for” voices within yourself.
• Then, completely elicit and list all the “against” voices within yourself.
• Reconsider if anything has been left out. Add those voices under the appropriate category.

Stage 3: Revealing underlying interests and needs

• Uncover the deep and underlying interests and needs of each voice. Ask such questions as Why this? or What will that achieve?

Stage 4:

• Construct a win-win solution.

On her handout, Nir writes: “Construct a solution that simultaneously satisfies all the different voices, aspects and interests at both ends of the conflict. The criterion for evaluating the integrative level of the decision is objective as opposed to normative or subjective. That is, each voice that has been mapped should be acknowledged, attend to and satisfied in the constructed decision.”

Nir believes that using this method will make inner conflict a positive rather than a negative experience. Moreover, each conflict is an opportunity for change and it works in both serious as well as trivial matters. During the workshop many people raised the question of whether or not it was possible in all situations. Nir truly believes that it is. Others questioned what happened if the person was not healthy as in the case of addictions. She suggested that in the case of pathology, the inner dialogue is not rich and involves only a few voices. An addiction situation involves only false voices. She also encouraged those attending the workshop to try the method with a partner, as that may make the process easier.

In normal circumstances, especially when we are depressed, it is easier for us to see the negative things that happen around us, thus making us feel more down. We forget to see the brighter side of things. When this happens, we are practically allowing ourselves to be robbed off of the chance to be happy.The good news is, there is actually a way around it. And it comes in the form of Positive Psychology. It is a relatively new branch of psychology that focuses on cultivating positive emotion, character traits and institutions. It was founded by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman on the belief that people want more than just a cure to depression, but how to avoid it as well. Positive Psychology aims to help us in cultivating these emotions, character traits, and institutions so that we would know what to do

According to Professor Seligman’s research, it is possible to be happier and more positive regardless of one’s circumstances. He has also demonstrated that through Positive Psychology interventions, the symptoms of depression can be lastingly decreased.

Also known as PosPsych, Positive Psychology is founded on the belief that people want more than an end to suffering. Seligman said that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play. He also believes that we have the opportunity to create a science and a profession that not only heals a psychological damage but also builds strengths to enable people to achieve the best things in life.

On the other hand, PosPsych does not deny that life has its distressing and negative aspects, rather, it focuses on the study on the positive side. It concentrates on things such as the ways that people feel joy, show altruism, and create families and institutions, and how can these things address depression.

History

According to Seligman, prior to World War II, psychology has three distinct missions: curing mental illness, making the lives of all people more productive and fulfilling, an identifying and nurturing high talent. But after the war, the latter two missions fell away, and curing mental illness became the primary and almost enitre mission of practicing and academic psychologists. In 1946, two strong economic reasons shifted the focus of psychology into curing mental illnesses. It was when the Veterans Administration was founded and psychologists started to practice by counseling post-war veterans. On the other hand, the National Institute of Mental Health was founded on 1947 and academic psychologists learned that grants were more forthcoming to studies of pathology and mental illness.

When Martin Seligman became the president if the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1998, he launched the idea of studying the positive functioning of people as the central theme of his term. According to Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, there have been many predecessors to the idea of studying positive psychology. They believe that Aristotle and other Greek philosophers have laid out the foundation of thoughts of what Positive Psychology is. Moreover, former APA presidents Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow had focused on what makes people be at their best.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Ph.D. is a professor at Claremont Graduate University and is the Seligman’s partner in the Positive Psychology Movement. He explains that therapy rarely helps human functioning since it only brings us back to our normal state, whereas Positive Psychology develops us to be optimistic-even happier.

Who is Martin Seligman?

At present, Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D., is a Fox Leadership Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Psychology Department. He is also the network director of the Positive Psychology Network and Scientific Director of the Classification of Strengths and Virtues Project of the Mayerson Foundation.

He is known for studying Positive Psychology, learned helplessness, depression, and on optimism and pessimism. Aside from that, he is also a best-selling author and that his research and writing has been broadly supported by a number of institutions including the National Institute of Aging, the National Science Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. His research on preventing depression received the MERIT Award of the National Institute of Mental Health in 1991.

In 2000, his main mission has been the promotion of the field of Positive Psychology. This field tackles on the study of emotion, positive character traits, and positive institutions. Since then, he has committed himself in training Positive Psychologists to help other people make the world a happier place.

The PosPsych Movement

Positive Psychology’s general goal is to enhance our experiences of love, work, and play. Seligman says that it is a psychologist’s “birthright” to explore optimism, love, perseverance, originality, responsibility, good parenting, altruism, civility, moderation, and tolerance. This small corner of the mental health field is considered a revelation since it opens another opportunity for healing and coping strategies.

Seligman said that our conception of depression is all wrong. He says that depression is much less complex than being rejected or the childhood traumas we had that make us feel bad or say negative things, and that “negative thinking” itself is the disease.

According to Seligman, Positive Psychology is to enhance our experiences of love, work, and play. Though PosPsych is believed to be still in its infancy, Seligman projects that the movement’s research will help the people make the ‘good in life’ even better. It could mean exercise being less tedious, work more rewarding, and relationships more enjoyable.

Sometimes, for us to see what is right, we have to see first what is wrong. Professor Seligman, who is working on a supplement to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, says that the DSM is the “knowology” of what’s wrong with you. The DSM, being the leading authority in mental disorders would feature Seligman’s book “Knowology of Virtues,” a Positive Psychology literature that teaches “learned optimism” and maximizing joy and good, therefore preventing depression.

Goals of the movement include:

• Developing two complementary branches of science and practice: one that alleviates and prevents negative traits and feelings, and another that promotes well-being.
• Changing the nature of psychotherapy by developing ways to identify and nurture patients’ strengths.
• Developing a curriculum for teaching positive psychology, both at universities and in high-school psychology classes.
• Launching a fund-raising campaign to support expanded scientific research.

So why consider a Positive Psychology movement? Over the years, the science of psychology has taken great steps toward classifying and addressing what is wrong with people, families, and institutions. Today, Positive Psychology offers to identify what is right and how we can make it work to better our lives. It encourages us to use our strengths and virtues to minimize the depression we may encounter. Not only it is healthy for our minds, it is also beneficial to our well-being.

Sure, we cannot avoid problems from actually happening. Not even the depression that comes to us once we acknowledge these problems. Positive Psychology is a strategy that helps us lessen the depression and encourage us to be optimistic and think of the positive things instead of the negative. It only proves that prevention is still better than cure. Instead of waiting for depression to occur before thinking of a solution, PosPsych grants us the option to be positive and develop this into a habit of being optimistic.

Sources: www.pos-psych.com, University of Virginia, www.psychologytoday.com, www.ggs.vic.edu.au, www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu

Negative Affect is Stronger than Positive Affect

The following is 6 studies that test whether Negative Affect (NA) is stronger than Positive Affect (PA). These studies examine how we react to negative and positive events in our lives with regards to the intensity of our reactions (study 1), the duration of the reaction (study 2), and our cognitive involvement (experiments 1-4).

Randy Larsen presented these studies in his talk on the Hedonic Treadmill at the 4th European Conference on Positive Psychology.

Study 1 – Reactivity

62 subjects for 56 days were required to keep daily records and ratings of their best and worst events of each day. Therefore, in total 5,971 events were self-rated.

Larsen questioned how good or bad each event was for the average person. He selected the events that were rated as greater than 1 (>1) for standard deviation for his analysis; they were either exceptionally good or bad days.

The following chart shows the results of his analysis:

* These figures are not Larsen’s actual measurements but approximations from a projected powerpoint presentation.

The results of this reactivity study show that there was a significantly stronger reaction for the negative affect self-rating than the positive one.

Study 2 – Duration

In this second study the participants were again required to record how affected they felt by events in their lives. This study lasted 28 days, and required the participants to record 3 times a day their reactions – at noon, 6 pm, and bedtime.

Larsen again selected only the events where the either the PA or the NA had a standard deviation of greater than 1. These events were either particularly negative or positive. Instead of questioning how strongly do people react, he questioned how long does that reaction last?

* These figures are not Larsen’s actual measurements but approximations from a projected powerpoint presentation.

These results show that adaptation rates are far slower for negative than positive events. This idea is what Larsen calls the Hedonic Treadmill.

In his presentation, Larsen next said that we needed more information to understand the positive and negative affects concerning cognitive involvement. He cites 4 experiments performed by Peter Lang’s Lab in Florida.

Experiment 1 – Emotional priming with sound

Lang used the international affective sound set. (He also has an international affective vision set.) The sound set is comprised of several positive sounds, such as clapping, laughing, and the buzz of a lively room from a cocktail party, and several negative sounds, such as a domestic fight, a car crash, and a baby crying.

In the study, the participants would hear a sound for 10 to 17 seconds and then see a word on a screen, which they would have to characterize as positive or negative within a half-second. Lang analyzed all the errors that the participants made. Here is a graph of the results:

* These figures are not Lang’s actual measurements but approximations from a projected powerpoint presentation.

The results show that the errors, which people made after hearing a positive sound are fairly balanced between the two types of words. However, after hearing a negative sound people made many more errors concerning positive words, i.e. they identified the positive words as negative, and many less errors concerning the negative words, i.e. the correctly identified the negative words as negative.

Therefore, he concluded that the positive system in us seems ready to accept negative sounds.

Experiment 2 – Affective Simon Task

In this experiment participants viewed a variety of negative and positive words, such as murder and happy. They were instructed to ignore the meaning of the word and just to notice whether the word was in upper or lower case. If the word was in upper case, they were to identify the word as “negative,” whereas if it was in lower case, they were to identify the word as “positive.”

He suggested that we cannot help but read and process the meaning of the words. He analyzed the reaction time of the participants. Here is the graph of the results.

* These figures are not Lang’s actual measurements but approximations from a projected powerpoint presentation.

In this graph, the vertical y-axis is the reaction time of the responses. For negative words when they were to respond in “positive,” people’s reaction time was significantly slower. The reaction time was balanced if the words were positive, showing an asymmetry between the positive and negative affects.

We have a senor is our cognitive system moderating the sensory stream, which always asks: “Is this bad for me?” and does not ask: “Is this good for me?” We have more stimuli for processing negative than positive input.

Experiment 3 – Visual Search Task

In the experiment Lang again studied the reaction time of the participants. He set up the faces you see below in a 3×3 grid. They were all the same, or just one face was different. The subjects needed to decide if there was one unique face or not. Half were all the same (same expression, same length of each line, same size of circles) and half were unique in some varying way.

Here are the results:

* These figures are not Lang’s actual measurements but approximations from a projected powerpoint presentation.

The results again show that the reaction time concerning negative stimuli is significantly quicker than the reaction time for positive stimuli.

Experiment 4 – Digital Flanker Task

The participants of this experiment saw many common words with a number at the beginning and end of them. The participants were asked to identify if the number was the same or different. Lang analyzed their reaction time. His hypothesis was that the negative words should decrease their reaction time.

Here are some examples of the words and numbers:

63rotten63
16mama61
32kitten23
83scum88
45lice47
98spa98
91cozy91
63pus63

The summary of the results is below. The y-axis represents reaction time.

* These figures are not Lang’s actual measurements but approximations from a projected powerpoint presentation.

The results show that his hypothesis was correct – reaction time is slower for negative words.

On the morning of the second day of the conference Randy Larsen gave a talk entitled “Overcoming the Hedonic Treadmill: Self Regulation of Emotional Well-Being.” He stated that our overall satisfaction with life is correlated to the effects that our experiences have on us.  In general, he presented the idea that our Subjective Well-Being (SWB) is a ratio of how effected we are by the positive events in our lives to the negative events.

He offered this equation:

SWB = S (PA) / S (NA)

In this equation Positive Affect (PA) and Negative Affect (NA) contribute equally to one’s SWB.

However, negative affect is actually stronger than positive affect; therefore, the equation is incorrect, Larsen revealed. He said that R. Baumeister et al. commented in their 2001 study: “Bad [affect] is stronger than good [affect].” Positive affect is frail, not strong, whereas negative affect is strong to begin with.

To show that negative affect is stronger than positive, Larsen asked the audience to consider the following examples:

• Loosing $50 is much more painful than winning $50 is positive.
• A positive first impression can easily be reversed if one learns something negative about the person. However, a negative first impression is rarely if ever reversed.

There is a negative bias, which is stronger and lasts longer.

In Ed Diener’s study (1991), he questioned why positive affect is stronger than negative affect. (To evaluate your SWB, take Diener’s Satisfaction with Life Scale in the Quizzes section of MyHappy: http://www.myhappy.com/quizes/.) Larsen conducted research in order to study why negative affect is stronger with regard to three aspects: reactivity, duration, and cognitive involvement.

He performed two studies: one on people’s reactions to negative and positive events and one on the duration of their reactions. To test cognitive involvement, he used four experiments conducted by Peter Lang. (Explanations of the 6 studies and their results are available here.) His results were conclusive. Negative affect creates stronger responses and lasts longer than positive affect.

With this new information Larsen wanted to know exactly how much stronger is negative affect to positive affect. He questioned how his initial equation needed to be modified.

He cited four studies that had found varying answers to this question:

Larsen 2002 - For people with average levels of SWB, they usually have three good days to every one bad day. PA to NA is about a 3 to 1 ratio.

Schwartz et al. 2002- For recovered depressed people (those who were once depressed but are now no longer depressed), the ratio was 2.3-4.3 to 1.

Fredrickson and Losada (2005) - For flourishing workgroupsâ, the ratio is 2.9 to 1. Flourishing individuals were 3.2 to 1 in one study and 3.4 to 1 in another study.

Gottman (1994) - In highly satisfied married couples the ratio was a bit larger: 4.7 to 1, which indicates that for every bad event, it takes nearly 5 good events to reverse the effects!

Therefore, Larsen said that his conclusion was only an estimate. It seems that the ratio of PA to NA is about pi or 3.1415. His equation is then changed to SWB = S (PA) / S (NA/ pi).

As a final word, Larsen commented that PA and NA are the emotional core of SWB. Moreover, they help determine the global SWB. The negative bias in us creates an asymmetry. Diener believes that we need to figure out how to encourage positive affect and cope with negative affect. Larsen suggests that efforts to speed adaptation to negative events may be more important to SWB than increasing the duration of positive events is to SWB.

Larsen’s talk ended with that final point. I had a few questions: How could we speed adaptation of negative affect? How could we lessen our intense reactions? What interventions might be possible?