Positive Psychology
Grit – Passion and Perseverance
What makes someone successful? Is it intellect? Education? Physical health? Talent? Maybe luck? According to Dr. Angela Duckworth from the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, it is none of those things. In her 2016 bestselling book – Grit – she interviewed successful people in a wide variety of professions – business, sports,…
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Building Psychological Capital (Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, Optimism)
This article is part of the course THRIVE 102: Psychological Capital or How to Be a Hero. Jump to Course You Can Bank On it Psychological capital in many ways is like a savings account for our well-being. Just as it is good to save money for a rainy day, it is good to build…
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The Real World Benefits of Expressing Gratitude
Gratitude: As Old as Animal Kind Gratitude may be an evolutionary component of human development, passed down for thousands of years according to sociologist Georg Simmel (Greater Good Magazine, n.d.). While we may think of it as something personal and internal, it is also considered an important social skill that helps humans interact with each…
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The Fading Affect Bias in Pursuit of the Pleasant Life
Fading Affect Bias (FAB) The Fading Affect Bias, or FAB for short, refers to the cognitive phenomenon supported by research showing that memories associated with negative emotions tend to fade faster than memories associated with positive emotions (Skowronski, 2014). This means we tend to forget the bad times at a faster rate than the good…
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Brief History of Positive Psychology (Part 2)
This article is part of the course THRIVE 101: Positive Psychology History and Introduction Jump to Course Continued From Part 1… But Wait, There is Good News Remember, Csikszentmihalyi found that teenagers can be unhappy and can see life through their suffering, but he also found an interesting exception. When teenagers focus their energies on…
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Well-Being and the Five ‘Happy’ Lives
This article is part of the course THRIVE 103: Activating Strengths in Pursuit of Well-Being Jump to Course Well-Being and The PERMA Model Seligman (2011) argues that well-being is enhanced through thriving in one or more pillars of well-being. His model, often referred to as the PERMA Model, consists of Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning,…
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Brief History of Positive Psychology (Part 1)
This article is part of the course THRIVE 101: Positive Psychology History and Introduction Jump to Course It Didn’t Start Off Very Positive I could not think of a better or more ironic way to start a paper on the history of positive psychology than with a quote on the inevitability of pain and suffering.…
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Sleep and Resilience Can Form a Virtuous Cycle for Teens
Resilience, or being able to bounce back from adverse events, is a useful skill to have – if we didn’t already know that, 2020 has certainly driven the point home! Psychologists know that resilient people tend to share certain traits, such as finding meaning in events and trusting their ability to navigate challenging situations. And…
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Helping Others Makes Toddlers Happy
A finding that comes up again and again in psychology research is that people feel better when they take prosocial actions, which is why helping others is one of the best ways of helping yourself. The ability to derive happiness from supporting other people seems to show up early in life. A new study published…
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The Psychology of Finding the Silver Lining
Finding something good in a bad situation is a common way of coping with adversity, as can be seen when we talk about clouds, silver linings, and the like. It’s also a technique that has a decent amount of evidence to back it up from the psychology literature. Psychologists talk about benefit finding, or being…
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