Welcome to the third week of our course on the theory, research,
and practice of positive interventions.
In the first two weeks,
we focused on some of the conceptual underpinnings of positive psychology.
We differentiated between the powers we all have
to fight against things we don't want in the world, and
the powers we have to help grow more of the things we do want.
We used a thought experiment and
talked about these powers in terms of a reversible cape.
We talked about the importance of the red side of the cape and
noted how most of us tend to overuse that side.
To enable us to use our powers in a more balanced way, we emphasize the importance
of focusing on how to use the green side more frequently and more effectively.
In the first two weeks, we also emphasized the scientific grounding of positive
psychology, discussing some of the methods positive psychologists use to test
positive interventions, trying out some of the questionnaires ourselves and
looking at some of the results of the research.
We focused specifically on the topics of positive emotions and savoring, and
experimented with positive interventions in these areas.
I hope you've been able not ony to learn some things about the field of positive
psychology, but also to experience some of its benefits in your life as well.
This week we will be taking up another core area of
positive psychology research and practice, character strengths and virtues.
I mentioned earlier in the course that positive psychology research is often
a green cape approach to topics that have largely been thought about
in red cape terms.
Barbara Fredrickson's broaden and build theory of positive emotions for
example shows how positive emotions differ in their function and
value from negative emotions.
Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff's work on savoring explores various
ways of responding to good events in our lives in contrast to coping
which involves various ways of responding to negative events in our lives.
And the work on character strengths and virtues is very similar.
Now I don't know if you've heard of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, this
manual also known as the DSM is put out by the American Psychiatric Association, and
is enormously helpful to psychiatrists and psychologists in diagnosing mental illness.
Now if you're ever having a day where you're just feeling
too happy about yourself, and your life, and the world and
you want to moderate your mood, you can pull out a copy of the DSM and
look through the hundreds of ways in which the human mind can go wrong.
Now, again, this is an important tool to have in diagnosing mental illness so
that we can try to cure or at least treat it.
And when positive psychologists looked at the DSM, they said,
okay this is important but where is the good news?
Where are all the descriptions of mental orders, of mental strengths?
And so as a complementary response to the DSM, they created the Values in Action
Classification of character Strengths and Virtues, known for short as the VIA.
Now before we turn to this classification in more detail,
it's important to keep in mind that although work on positive emotions,
savoring, and character strengths can be seen as a green cape complement to
negative emotions, coping, and mental disorders,
this does not mean that the positive topics are any less real, or
less important than the red cape topics more traditionally studied by main
stream psychology.
Positive emotions, savoring, and character strengths are more than just the absence
of negative emotions, aversive events, and mental disorders.
So let's turn now to the Classification of Character Strengths and Virtues.
This project came out of the area of positive youth development.
The Mayerson Foundation teamed up with positive psychologists
to try to figure out how best to help youth realize their full potential.