Glossary
Positive Psychology
What is Positive Psychology?
Positive Psychology is a branch of psychology that studies the aspects of the human experience that contribute to a life of fulfillment, contentment, and well-being. It focuses on factors that allow individuals and communities to thrive and flourish.
Key Aspects
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Strengths and Virtues
Positive psychology studies strengths and virtues, including how people identify and develop them. -
Positive Emotions and Experiences
Positive Psychology also emphasizes the role of positive emotions and experiences, such as joy, gratitude, love, and contentment, in promoting well-being and resilience. -
Flourishing
A central goal is to understand and support flourishing. Positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment are the five elements of Seligman’s PERMA model, rather than an agreed exhaustive definition.
Role in Behavioral Science
Positive psychology has expanded research attention to strengths and well-being alongside the study of distress and disorders. Its insights have been applied in various fields such as education, healthcare, coaching, organizational leadership, and public policy.
Positive psychology interventions and behavior change
Positive Psychology provides a framework for behavior change that focuses not just on reducing negative behaviors or symptoms but on promoting positive ones. Interventions may target positive emotions, strengths, relationships, or meaning. A meta-analysis of 39 studies found small average benefits, with substantial variation and concerns about study quality and publication bias. These findings do not establish that every exercise benefits every person.
A gratitude exercise studied in a trial
One study included in the review was Emmons and McCullough’s gratitude research. In its first experiment, students were randomly assigned to list up to five things they were grateful for, hassles, or significant events on weekly reports. Over the follow-up weeks, the gratitude group reported more favorable evaluations of life as a whole than either comparison group. The general positive- and negative-affect measures did not show significant group differences in that experiment.
This shows what an exercise and its outcome can look like: a specified reflection task, a comparison activity, and a measured response. It does not mean that gratitude improves every aspect of wellbeing or guarantees benefit for an individual.