Positive Psychology Notes
Chapter 1
● 3 historical missions of psychology
○ 1) Developing intelligence
■ Cognitive psychology
● intelligence
... [Show More] development
● Learning
● Sensory processing
○ 2) Curing mental illness
■ Started by dealing with stress from war
● known at the time as “shell shock” and “battle fatigue”
● now known as PTSD
■ Clinical psychology: specialty to deal with curing disabling mental
problems
■ Counseling psychology: specialty to help people understand and apply
their intellectual and practical abilities, and helps to sort out problems in
relationships
■ Mental illnesses come from relationships, environment stressors, and
genetics
○ 3) Enhancing everyday lives
■ Life was depressing in the early 20th Century
■ Positive psychology began its roots in the 1930’s
■ Dr. Carl Rogers and Dr. Abraham Maslow
■ Mini revolution in the late 1990’s
● Maslow grew disillusioned with “negative psychology”
○ He believed it to be “low ceiling psychology”
○ People focused on negative because they followed the same belief that health is
simply the absence of illness
● Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: theory about what motivates us, t suggests a sequence
of needs to be filled, from survival needs to finally reaching actualization, becoming all
that we are able to become
○ Physiological needs: food, water
○ Safety needs: protection from injury and illness
○ Love and belonging: social relationships, caring and love
○ Esteem: competence and respect
○ Self actualization: reaching our fully enhanced potential
● 4 General Aspects of the Human Experience that separate us from all other types of life
○ 1) genetically determined biological functions
○ Mental capacities and learning capabilities influenced by personal experiences
○ The need and desire for human social relationships with meaningful work
○ Person-emotional values with a spiritual dimension
● Optimism: the expectation that events will turn out successfully
○ Pessimism: expecting that future events will not have a good outcome
○ Positive psychology emphasizes the positives, but knows that there are
negatives
■ Considers strengths people have, rather than their weaknesses
■ Live a life of reality, be “tough minded”
● Look at events as they are, not as you might want them to be
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● Well-being: a physical, mental, social and emotional feeling of healthiness, happiness,
and general satisfaction
○ In order to develop our well being we have 2 requirements: the freedom without
our environment to be able to pursue these attributes, and the personal
responsibility to accept what happens when we freely to to develop our own life
○ Freedom: ability to think and act within reasonable limits of our biology and
social boundaries
○ Personal Responsibility: willingness to accept the results of our own actions [Show Less]