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.

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?

From July 1^st to July 4^th, the 4^th European Conference on Positive Psychology was held in Opatija, Croatia and ravi and jane will be reporting on their experiences from the conference over the next few weeks. In addition, we will be inviting people from the conference to report on their research first hand, offering cash incentives of $25, $50, and $100, depending on the quality of their reports.An updated list of links to conference related reports is below.

- Movie Presentation: What is your happiness?

- Randy Larsen’s talk on Positive and Negative Affect

- Thriving Through Inner Conflict Workshop

- The Power of the Present Moment

- Happiness with Reality Therapy 

On the first day of the conference, Lisa Kamen presented a movie she made in the course of her study of Spiritual Psychology at Santa Monica University in a session called H-Factor….Where is Your Heart?

The movie, where Lisa interviews people as diverse as Los Angeles county prisoners, New York cabbies, the homeless, children, and happiness researchers like Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and Robert Biswas-Diener, was very well received by the audience and sparked many interesting questions. The strength of the movie is in the fact that all of these people are asked the same question, What is your happiness?

From a psychological point of view, viewing happiness as a unitary construct, rather than as satisfaction, engagement, meaning, etc, may not yield research answers, but the diverse viewpoints captured in first person accounts gives the movie a contextual richness that goes beyond most any of the research presented at the conference.

Lisa lives in Los Angeles and plans to take the movie to film festivals after getting a final cut together. You can actually view the movie at www.whatisyourhappiness.com. Other ideas for the future include creating a charitable foundation and using it in schools to teach happiness. I actually hope to bring her to USC to show her film to our science of happiness class.

The project was done as part of her master’s thesis and the genesis of the project was in a cycling trip in India, where she witnessed joyous people living in poverty. Her natural question was how to teach her daughter, a “child of means”, the true definition of happiness beyond money. As such, the film was written with her daughter in mind (she’s the director of photography) and Lisa mentioned that her 11 year old daughter’s conception of happiness has moved beyond chocolate as a result of her involvement.

Incidentally, Lisa’s happiness is found in “having a voice” to share things she is passionate about, such as her movie.