Multicultural Positive Psychology : Cultural Perspectives of the Good Life

2017 ◽  
pp. 271-281
Author(s):  
Lisa Y. Flores ◽  
Lisa M. Edwards ◽  
Jennifer Teramoto Pedrotti
Keyword(s):  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Cultural Perspectives

scholarly journals Sports as a Mechanism for Reaching Your Potential: The Relationship between Positive Psychology and Sports

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Human Potential ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Relationship

People have been searching for the good life or personal well-being since the ancient Greeks. During this same period, people have been expressing themselves through sport, participating in games of athleticism as a means of discovering who they are and reaching their potential. This chapter examines the relationship between sports and a flourishing life. By examining sports as a mechanism of achieving specific traits of positive psychology associated with flourishing, the researcher is able to determine that sports are a matrix in which human potential can be nourished.

Positive Psychology: Past, Present, and Future

2009 ◽  
pp. 6-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ed Diener
Keyword(s):  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Functioning ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

This chapter briefly reviews the history of positive psychology, and the endeavor by scientists to answer the classic question posed by philosophers: What is the good life? One piece of evidence for the growth of positive psychology is the proliferation of measures to assess concepts such as happiness, well-being, and virtue. The chapter briefly reviews the importance of C. R. Snyder to the field of positive psychology. Several critiques of positive psychology are discussed. One valid critique is that there is too much emphasis within positive psychology on the individual, and too little focus on positive societies, institutions, and situations. We can profit from considering the various critiques because they will help us to improve the field. Positive psychology has important strengths, such as the number of young scholars and practitioners who are entering the field. The Handbook of Positive Psychology is an outstanding resource for all those who are working in this discipline, and also for others outside of the area, to gain broad knowledge of the important developments that are occurring in our understanding of positive human functioning.

scholarly journals The Joyful Life: An Existential-Humanistic Approach to Positive Psychology in the Time of a Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brent Dean Robbins
Keyword(s):  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Personal Growth ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The Face ◽  
Autobiographical Narrative

In the midst of a global pandemic, psychology has a duty to identify dispositional or character traits that can be cultivated in citizens in order to create resiliency in the face of profound losses, suffering and distress. Dispositional joy holds some promise as such a trait that could be especially important for well-being during the current pandemic and its consequences. The concept of the Joyful Life may operate as bridge between positive psychology and humanistic, existential, and spiritual views of the good life, by integrating hedonic, prudential, eudaimonic and chaironic visions of the good life. Previous phenomenological research on state joy suggests that momentary states of joy may have features that overlap with happiness but go beyond mere hedonic interests, and point to the experience of a life oriented toward virtue and a sense of the transcendent or the sacred. However, qualitative research on the Joyful Life, or dispositional joy, is sorely lacking. This study utilized a dialogical phenomenological analysis to conduct a group-based analysis of 17 volunteer students, who produced 51 autobiographical narrative descriptions of the joyful life. The dialogical analyses were assisted by integration of the Imagery in Movement Method, which incorporated expressive drawing and psychodrama as an aid to explicate implicit themes in the experiences of the participants. The analyses yielded ten invariant themes found across the autobiographical narrative descriptions: Being broken, being grounded, being centered, breaking open, being uplifted, being supertemporal, being open to the mystery, being grateful, opening up and out, and being together. The descriptions of a Joyful Life were consistent with a meaning orientation to happiness, due to their emphasis on the cultivation of virtue in the service of a higher calling, the realization of which was felt to be a gift or blessing. The discussion examines implications for future research, including the current relevance of a joyful disposition during a global pandemic. Due to the joyful disposition’s tendency to transform suffering and tragedy into meaning, and its theme of an orientation to prosocial motivations, the Joyful Life may occupy a central place in the study of resiliency and personal growth in response to personal and collective trauma such as COVID-19.

scholarly journals Living the Good Life: A Conversation about Well-being, Education, and Culture

Paideusis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-22
Author(s):  
Trudy Cardinal ◽  
Louise Lambert ◽  
Sandra Lamouche
Keyword(s):  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Education System ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
World View ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Kitchen Table

In this paper we engage in a conversation speaking from three different perspectives and discuss the ways literature and our personal life experiences can inform policy and practice in relation to the concepts of well-being, education, and culture.  We gathered around a metaphorical kitchen table, bringing to it our life experiences, as well as the literature that informed our individual research programs (positive psychology, Indigenous world view, and narrative inquiry) and we began to unpack the questions: “What role does culture play in understanding and educating for well-being and why should an education system be concerned about it?”

Shared Virtue: The Convergence of Valued Human Strengths across Culture and History

2005 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Dahlsgaard ◽  
Christopher Peterson ◽  
Martin E. P. Seligman
Keyword(s):  
Positive Psychology ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Moral Behavior ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Positive Traits

Positive psychology needs an agreed-upon way of classifying positive traits as a backbone for research, diagnosis, and intervention. As a 1st step toward classification, the authors examined philosophical and religious traditions in China (Confucianism and Taoism), South Asia (Buddhism and Hinduism), and the West (Athenian philosophy, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) for the answers each provided to questions of moral behavior and the good life. The authors found that 6 core virtues recurred in these writings: courage, justice, humanity, temperance, wisdom, and transcendence. This convergence suggests a nonarbitrary foundation for the classification of human strengths and virtues.

Self-Esteem and Individual Well-Being

2018 ◽  
pp. 91-112
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Mruk
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Human Values ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Sense Of Purpose ◽  
Intrinsic Values ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 5 focuses on understanding the connection between self-esteem and positive psychology. It begins by looking at self-esteem in relation to two theories of mental health and then moves on to explore research concerning two forms of happiness, namely, hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. The chapter also highlights the relationship between self-esteem and basic human values that positive psychologists have associated with the good life in an Aristotelian sense. This material includes appreciating the importance of identifying one’s own intrinsic values concerning such things as wisdom, compassion, balance, beauty, courage, and more. Special attention is given to the idea that making these types of values a greater part of one’s life may increase a sense of purpose and meaning or well-being. Practical suggestions and activities round out this chapter to make its concepts more useful.

What Is Positive Evolutionary Psychology?

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Glenn Geher ◽  
Nicole Wedberg
Keyword(s):  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
New Research ◽  
Shed Light

Positive evolutionary psychology is the marriage of positive psychology and evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology focuses on using Darwin’s big idea to shed light on all kinds of psychological phenomena. Positive psychology seeks to use the scientific approach to understanding psychological phenomena to help people lead richer lives. Positive evolutionary psychology thus is the use of evolutionary principles to help guide people toward living richer lives. This first chapter spells out the basics of this approach to help set the reader on a journey toward understanding Darwin’s implications for living the good life. Laying the groundwork for the basic assumptions and parameters of positive evolutionary psychology, then, should have the capacity to lead to new research questions and new insights into the positive aspects of the human experience.

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