Why You Should Take that Positive Psychology Program— Career Path and Interventions

A positive psychology program is one of the most promising fields these days. This article will lay out the history of the field, its theory and concepts; criticisms; the academic path to practice; careers, and the types and examples of positive psychology interventions.

Positive Psychology

As a branch of Psychology: History and Founder

This subfield of Psychology was not formally recognized until it was introduced by the past president of the American Psychological Association Dr. Martin Seligman. Together with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, they described positive psychology as the psychological study of “positive human functioning” which aimed to further understand and support growth in individuals, communities, and families.

• Positive Psychology’s foundations
  were laid out from his past research which led to his theory about “learned helplessness” (it was about how animals are like people who has a tendency to “learn to become helpless” or crippled by their present disadvantages that they feel that they lose control over what happens to them).In the perspective of positive psychology, this idea was the main concept of which he then turned it into “learned optimism”.
• Seligman’s movement was about how “psychology is not just the study of disease, weakness, and damage; it is also the study of strength and virtue”; (Seligman, 2002) and that it should include looking into concepts of the following to name a few:
  • well-being,
  • contentment,
  • satisfaction,
  • happiness,
  • flow experiences,
  • optimism, and
  • hope
  • resilience
  • character strengths

Seligman has advocated looking into the psychological perspective that does not focus on mental illnesses and disorders as it was a means for people to become less happy and neglects to put into view the positive aspects of life—and what can further be improved. It has gained a lot of media attention and traction since it has been introduced, it has also quickly produced a lot of researches and has continued to increase its following through the years.

This has also produced interventions which will later be discussed in depth through this article.

Theory and Concepts

Positive psychology programs are often thought of as the same as the self-help books about happiness or self-improvement which has that same feel-good approach. But its difference is that it is a perspective that is backed up by scientific methods, researches, and evidence-based theories.

In psychology, the scientific term for happiness is “subjective well-being”.

Under theory and concepts, the following are to be discussed:

• PERMA Model
• Flourishing
• Flow

PERMA Model

The PERMA Model is introduced by Martin Seligman as an acronym for the five aspects of well-being.

• P – Positive Emotions: Experiencing positive emotions is an important factor to boost one’s, but alone, it may not be as effective to increase well-being.
• E – Engagement: Having a sense of enjoyment in what you are doing at the moment, is when you are completely absorbed at the moment, and as you are excelling at what you do, that you find a good sense of well-being.
• R – (Positive) Relationships: As social creatures, we flourish through our connections, meaningful relationships are important to our well-being.
• M – Meaning: Our sense of well-being cannot only be achieved thru happiness, it is in finding meaning in our life that we end the pursuit. A sense of meaning is found in putting dedication in something that is beyond ourselves and recognition.
• A – Accomplishment / Achievement: A sense of achievement is reached when we achieve our visions and when we see our self-improvements. Without a motivation to reach the goal it is said that “we are missing one of the puzzle pieces of authentic well-being” (Seligman, 2011).

As this model enumerates the features of well-being this gives us an idea of how we can improve our well-being like:

• increasing experiences that lead to positive emotions,
• increase engagements when you excel like in hobbies, or developing skills;
• creating and improving significant and deep relationships;
• seeking out meaning thru charity works and volunteerism, and finally,
• Increasing the sense of achievement thru reaching goals be it small or big goals.

The PERMA model’s aspects are measurable to their own and putting them together is the only time that well–being can be said to be achieved, meaning well-being cannot be achieved just thru positive emotions, it has to be side-by-side and dynamically existing with the other aspects.

Flourishing

Flourishing is an important concept in positive psychology since it encompasses and extends other positive concepts. Flourishing is an idea of the state when one focuses on each aspect of the PERMA to boost a concrete sense of well-being. One flourishes as you develop your talents, skills, and strengths; when you increase meaningful relationships; feel of delight and appreciation, one flourishes when they achieve objectives and the visions of success.

Flourishing is a concept about achieving growth and improvement through the ups and downs of life. It can also be called positive growth. Dr. Lyn Soots, notes that it is not a trait or characteristic of which you can have or not have, “it is a process that needs action”. This means that anybody can flourish! We are all capable of flourishing, we only have to work on it.

Flow

The second founding father of positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explored this concept of flow as he has observed from artists— the state of great concentration and focus on their work that sometimes they lose track of time. He came up with six factors characterizing this experience:

1. 1. 1. 1. Hard and deep concentration on the present;
         2. Doing things consciously, or being fully aware of one’s actions;
         3. A loss of attention to oneself;
         4. A sense of control over the task;
         5. An inaccurate sense of the passing time;
         6. A personally rewarding feeling when the task was done (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975).

The state of flow is a sense of preoccupation that happens when a task at hand is important and is almost equal to our skill or knowledge. When our skill is higher than the difficulty of the task, we get bored; when our skill is lower than the difficulty of the task we get overwhelmed. When our skill is as low as the challenge of a task, we become dispirited; it is only when our high skills are at the same level as the challenge of our task that we experience a state of flow.

Criticisms

Although Positive Psychology immediately gained following and traction, as any new movement is, it had its fair share of criticisms, with on-point reviews, these led to the second wave which will be tackled in the next part.

Early research findings were invalid, exaggerated, and confusing.

In its early years, positive psychology’s research findings were prone to errors which may have been due to the excitement of its potential for depth of topic range. Its first obstacle was the scientific consistency as claims were being made despite having limited methodologies. But with lots of researches done through the years, the development of interventions and methodologies, and concepts; we can now be confident with the findings that we have at hand.

Use of too much self-reported data and cross-sectional survey data.

This is one of the limitations of most positive psychology literature, as it uses self-report as a method for surveying and it affects the credibility of data. This is something that positive psychology should look more into when doing research.

Positive psychology has a cultural and ethnocentric bias.

Since it is a movement that started in the West, of course, the first studies would come mostly from the West first. As it had been embraced easily by the media, most respondents and subjects have been “white, middle-class audience” which somehow disregards impartiality, poverty, discrimination, and differences. Although by now, researches are also done on a wide range of respondents.

The field focuses too much on the individual level.

Positive psychology puts its attention mostly on personal experiences, traits and characteristics, and intrapersonal developments and occurrences. Relationships, teams, groups, organizations, and communities are seemed to be neglected, but at the present, there are now interventions that apply on a group level.

This focus on individuals can lead to victim-blaming (like it would be your fault if you don’t find happiness in things.) and might render excuse of those accountable for systemic issues (like the concept of resilience in impoverished families that could have been helped and improved by government programs).

Too disregarding of the negatives

The negatives (thoughts, traits, and experiences) as not being in the spotlight, are somehow dismissed and its benefits can be overlooked if it will always just be on the other side of the spectrum of optimism.

Second Wave

The first wave of positive psychology focused on positive institutions of emotions, traits, thoughts, etc. and regarded “traditional psychology” as something that focused on the “negative” (pathology of illness, classification of disorders).

This resulted in the notion that “negative” states and thoughts should be discouraged and that “positive” thoughts and states should be encouraged. The dichotomy into positive and negative has seemingly overlooked the long-running psychological movement of ending stigma about mental health. An example would be the movement about body positivity. Yes, it is good to accept one’s body type, flaws, and natural features but in a way, this disregards the hazards entailed with being overweight. That although they may find happiness in their self-appreciation they might also neglect and ignore the health consequences of not maintaining a healthy weight.

The second wave unified the first wave of Positive Psychology (PP) and the “traditional psychology” (sometimes referred to as ‘psychology as usual’)rendering this second wave as a balance between the two.

This second wave now also focuses on tapping on the “positive” but doesn’t outright disregard the “negative”, but rather treats the latter as something that can lead to growth and transformation. An example is how traumatic events can lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD, as “negative”) but it can also lead to Post Traumatic Growth (PTG, “positive”).

The second wave also looks into how fluid positivity and negativity are. Like how the positive could turn into negative; and the negative into positive. This shows how a negative or positive appraisal could turn into its opposite when it is viewed from a broader perspective or a context of time.

This also takes out the pressure of being happy in moments of despair bringing equilibrium into the once all-happiness-scheme of the first wave.

Taking up the Career Path to Being a Positive Psychologist

Here will be a brief discussion of the steps to take on the way to being a positive psychologist:

Bachelor’s Degree

If you are looking to be a positive psychology practitioner or a psychologist in specific, a bachelor’s degree is the first step. Most aspirants take up a general psychology degree. There are limited career options after a college degree, most would have to take up advanced degrees to be able to pursue a positive psychology career. Some positive psychology programs can earn you certificates, (you can take them if you are on a non-psychology degree program) which you can use for CPD renewals. You one still have to take a master’s degree next.

Master’s Degree

After earning an undergraduate degree, you will now have to advance to your master’s degree. Even though you are from a different bachelor’s program you can still take a Masters in Psychology as long as you will take up additional courses to prepare you and give background on your future subjects.

Most master’s programs will require having internships, practicums, and/or supervised training, with a written thesis or dissertation. Although a Master’s in Positive Psychology is advanced enough for the field, it is not enough if one wants to practice being a psychologist.

Doctoral Program and Postdoc Opportunities

A doctoral degree has to be taken to be able to practice in the field. It takes five to seven years to complete most Ph.D. or PsyD programs. At this level, they now have to take the board exam to be able to practice then choose a positive psychology program within general psychology, counseling, or educational programs.

Although not required, positive psychologists with research- or clinical-focused careers usually apply for postdoctoral fellowships which lasts one or two years and usually involves grant-funded research at large universities.

Alternatively, those who wish to work in areas such as healthcare, human resource departments, or consulting firms seek internships or may volunteer in these types of settings which offers training beyond what they have learned in graduate school but can surely help them become more knowledgeable in the field.

Certifications and Licenses

To be able to offer patient services, administer tests, provide therapy, etc., one has to obtain a license first (done through examination and completing a certain number of hours under supervision) then a certification from the state they want to practice.

Continuing Education

When a positive psychology practitioner has the license, they would have to renew it now, and then, most states require continuing education courses to proceed with renewal. These programs help professionals stay-up-to-date with trends and advances and points may be acquired through:

• Workshops and seminars offered by state-approved educational institutions.
• Seminars, courses, and workshops sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA).
• Membership in societies and subscribing to industry journals.

Related Careers

A positive psychology practitioner has almost the same education, skills, and training as other psychology careers. The following are some of the other related careers other than being a positive psychologist.

School Counselor: School counselors are the ones responsible for helping students improve their social and academic skills and interactions, sometimes even sort out personal matters. Their duties differ but mostly involve resolving conflicts between students or students and the faculty; interacting with parents and faculty, and providing graduation or career advice; maybe even providing skill training, and psychological assessments and tests.

Human Resource Generalist: Human Resource (HR) Specialists are typically in charge of handling employees, settle disagreements, introduce and often train new employees, and also for payroll and benefits. They can also work on companies’ to comply with requirements for local, state, and national regulations.

Life Coach: Life coaches tie-up with their clients – business leaders, musicians, artists, managers, small business owners, professionals, and even homemakers – to help them overcome problems, find their priorities, and set themselves to reach their goals.

Psychosomatic Medicine: Individuals who want to practice in the field of psychosomatic medicine needs to first have a degree in medicine. A medical degree is essential because it involves diagnoses and treatment of behavioral disorders in patients. From a positive perspective, human functioning can considerably be influenced by the course of physical sickness.

Health Psychology: Health psychologists are the ones consulted regarding understanding how different factors like (behavioral, cultural, and psychological) contribute to somatic health and healthcare.

Positive Psychology Interventions

Categories

According to Park and Schueller (2014) there seven categories of positive psychology interventions:

• Savoring PPIs
• Gratitude Interventions
• Kindness Boosters
• Empathy PPIs
• Optimistic Interventions
• Strength-Building Measures
• Meaning Oriented PPIs

1. Savoring PPIs

Savoring interventions according to Peterson (2006) emphasizes the experience to enhance their results to maximize happiness. The underlying principle of these interventions’ are rooted to inspire the person to grasp and enjoy every facet of experience:

• physical,
• sensory,
• emotional, or
• social

Mindfulness meditation may sound similar, but it does not meet the criteria of a PPI. Savoring PPIs are proposed to have two subcategories:

1. Activities that concentrate on general principles of savoring by teaching these principles and encouraging their practice. Ex: Teaching about mindful eating and encouragement of the practice
2. The second category of savoring activities concentrates on teaching and encouraging to practice a specific skill or activity. Ex: Teaching about mindful photography, as a skill can be innate or can also be learned.

2. Gratitude Interventions

These positive psychology programs are aimed to find happiness through gratitude since gratitude results in strong feelings of positivity to both people who give and receives it. It is divided into two parts:

• Self-reflection activities – is where we express our self-gratitude and keep to ourselves, ex: gratitude journal
• Interactive practices- actively expressing our gratitude to others, ex: saying thank you, giving tokens of appreciation

Both parts are proven to increase happiness and satisfaction (Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010) even by simply specifying and enumerating instances and people we would like to be thankful of, there is an increase in positive and intrapersonal motivation (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005).

3. Kindness Boosters

Kindness is present to all happy people even studies prove that they are complementary (Aknin, Dunn, and Norton, 2012). Kindness activities promote happiness through unselfish and generous acts (Howell and Iyer, 2012).

An example is ‘prosocial spending’ or an act of willingly spending something for someone as a gesture of benevolence, but not all kindness activities involve the use of money.

4. Empathy PPIs Empathy-based interventions focus on improving relationships by effective communication, expanded perception, and connecting the self and others (Davis et al., 2004) because researches found that meaningful social relationships are essential to happiness (Diener & Seligman, 2002; Myers & Diener, 1995; Peterson, 2006). As also what is represented in the PERMA Model. An example is loving-kindness meditation. This meditation focuses on creating positive feelings towards self and towards others. Another would be a forgiveness meditation since empathy is closely related to promoting compassion (McCullough, Root & Cohen, 2006).

The mentioned meditations involve putting oneself into the shoes of others to see and understand their perspective and how they feel. By doing these “one can truly understand how they feel, one might find oneself feeling more similar to the other person” (Hodges, Clark, & Myers, 2011).

Its underlying principle is understanding others’ perspectives and to be able to build a strong connection (Hodges, Clark, & Myers, 2011). 5. Optimistic Interventions Optimism based activities are interventions that aim to make people create realistic and optimistic expectations of themselves in the future.

• One common way of doing this is by letting people write down a future that they see themselves in the best way possible.
• Another is making a “Life Summary,” (Seligman, Rashid, and Parks, 2006), where participants write a page or two of a summary of their life like a biography, assuming they lived long and was also successful. After which they are asked to examine how they spend their everyday life and to into the things they could adjust from their routines to more align it with their ideal life.

The previous two are one-time activities, so Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006) created a more repeatable activity. This asked participants to do almost the same activity (as mentioned above), then they asked them to spend 2 weeks after to think back about what they wrote then regularly. They found a strong benefit for this activity both instantly and at follow-up. 6. Strength-Building Measures Strength is regarded in positive psychology as internal capabilities and principles. Strength-based interventions involve making people recognize and develop their strengths. (Parks and Biswas-Diener, 2013) As it helps increase happiness and decrease symptoms of depression (Seligman, 2005) Strength-building however should be used with caution and appropriation (Schwartz & Hill, 2006). Like, if honesty is identified as a strength, one might use that strength to hurt other’s feelings and create conflicts. The use of strengths should be used appropriately and beneficially which psychologists term as “practical wisdom”. 7. Meaning Oriented PPIs Meaning-oriented PPIs are done to help find meaning in one’s daily activities, reflecting on our thoughts and emotions, setting realistic goals and expectations, and aligning actions to achieve them, (Grant, 2008). This category of PPIs helps us understand what is meaningful to us, what we can do at the moment, and the future to achieve the things those things that matter in life.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs includes self-enhancement and self-esteem, to achieve the peak of which is finding the true meaning of life.

Meaning-oriented PPIs are widely used for treating stress disorders, especially posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), to guide them to find the lost happiness in life and cope after a tragedy or disaster.

Other Examples of Interventions

1. Mindful Interventions

Kabat-Zinn’s works showed how mindfulness nurtures happiness and awareness. In positive psychology, mindfulness as an intervention is used in combination with other psychotherapeutic treatment plans, life coaching practice, and in the clinical field. The popular mindfulness-based PPIs include activities like sensory awareness, guided meditation, breath control, and careful observation.

2. Gratitude Exercises

The following are simple gratitude practices:

• journaling,
• self-compliments,
• sending thank you notes

The above is found to bring genuine happiness. Studies have shown practicing gratitude exercises regularly enhances awareness and we can develop more joy from social relationships (Ryan and Deci, 2001).

3. Objective Assessments

PPIs are often administered in the form of objective measures like scales, inventories, etc and are administered under the supervision of a psychometrist or a psychologist,: these assessments and tests are then evaluated by a psychologist. Some examples are:

• Mental Health Continuum,
• Authentic Happiness Inventory
• Orientations To Happiness Questionnaire
• Positive Relationships And The Accomplishment Scale

The scores of these interventions can indicate the happiness level of the respondents and indicate how positive interventions impact them.

4. Positive CBT

The American Psychological Association defines Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) as:

“a form of psychotherapy that integrates theories of cognition and learning with treatment techniques derived from cognitive therapy and behavior therapy. CBT assumes that cognitive, emotional, and behavioral variables are functionally interrelated. Treatment is aimed at identifying and modifying the client’s maladaptive thought processes and problematic behaviors through cognitive restructuring and behavioral techniques to achieve change.”

The above mentioned classical CBT has been modified to Positive CBT by shifting the focus from symptom reduction to the promotion of well-being. Positive CBT concentrates on the identification of the clients’ strengths than addressing and identifying only the apparent problems (the focus of classical CBT).

5. Active Aging PPI

The idea of growing old gracefully is encompassed by the concept of active aging, also called positive aging, healthy aging, or optimal aging (Cosco et. al, 2013).

A study by Roos and Zaaiman (2017) on active aging has shown that the aged people who were led to look into the happier facets of life and were encouraged to live a life of self-worth and happiness have endured illnesses and losses than others.

Participants of the program, all of who were 60 or above, reported having found the lost meaning of their lives and agreed to practice positivity as a daily habit after that.

Psychology Intervention for the Workplace

1. The Innovation Time Technique

This PPI involves encouraging individuals to spend some time pursuing their passion projects. The intention of this is for them to enjoy independence and also spend time in something they love to do.

2. Gratitude Interventions

Gratitude interventions are used alone or in combination with other interventions to enhance self-satisfaction and pleasure. Examples of these interventions are:

• Making a gratitude journal
• Group gratitude exchange sessions
• Sending gratitude notes
• Self-gratitude drills
• Guided meditation for gratitude

3. Feedback Mechanisms

Feedbacks are commonly used in the workplace and is good practice for self-improvement. As someone learns to accept criticisms they can then use it to build their professional proficiency for them to be happier and more satisfied with their jobs.

Common feedback interventions are:

• Employees and supervisors update discussion about progress and plans.
• Feedback assessments and surveys
• One on one feedback sessions where employee and supervisor are free to present their opinions for resolution.

4. Stress Management Exercises

Fatigue from work can turn to stress. Stress management exercises and assessments are just some of the ways to check on the general physical and mental well-being of everyone in the workplace.

Keypoints

Positive Psychology is a developing field in psychology but despite evolving it surely opened new perspectives and opportunities for research and developments. To pursue a career of being a positive psychologist one must have the needed degrees, licenses, and certifications. There are positive psychology interventions that are specifically designed for certain needs and settings.

A positive psychology program can be taken by anyone interested in the field, one only has to find the best package that suits their need and capacity.