Positive Psychology

 Positive Psychology

Positive Psychology is a newer and increasingly popular branch of psychology that seeks to focus not on pathology, but on what contributes to human happiness and emotional health. It focuses on strengths, virtues, and factors that help people thrive and achieve a sense of fulfillment, as well as more effectively manage stress.

History

The Positive Psychology movement has its roots in the work of humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow, who tried to focus more on healthy human development and less on pathology, but really came into being as we know it around 1998. It was primarily founded by psychologist Martin Seligman, who made it the focus of his American Psychological Association presidency and inspired others to contribute to this growing area of study. For Seligman, it became clear that there must be a new branch of psychology when he thought of how he wanted to raise his young daughter. He knew much more about what causes pathology and how to correct that, than he knew about how to nurture strength, resilience and emotional health. This had been a greatly under-studied area of research, so it became his primary focus.

Focus of Positive Psychology

Positive Psychology aims to discover what makes us thrive. It looks at questions like, ‘What contributes to happiness?’, ‘What are the health effects of positive emotions?’ and, ‘What habits and actions can build personal resilience?’ So far, they’ve found some wonderful things. For example, it’s well-documented that negative emotions like anger, anxiety, and sadness can impact our health in negative ways, such as triggering our stress response and contributing to chronic stress, making us more susceptible to cardiovascular disease. But Positive Psychology research has now found that positive emotions can aid health by undoing the physical reactivity that can lead to these problems.