Additional Views: Positive Psych

Existentialism is a….

philosophical model that dates back to the mid- 1800s.

The most famous existential philosophers were Nietzsche, Sartre,
and Kierkegaard.

Existentialists believe that one of the biggest challenges in life is
accepting responsibility for your own experiences. They also believe
there is no outside source of meaning; each person must create
meaning for themselves.

Only an individual’s own experience (or phenomenology) is under
his or her own control, and therefore the individual has a
responsibility to make conscious choices about how to experience
his or her own life.

For personality psychologists, the implications of this view are that
there are….

important individual differences in how people face this
challenge.

Understanding how a person deals with making meaning in his life
and taking control of his own phenomenology (personal life experience) is central to understanding the person and their unique personality

Positive psychology is the study of…

positive human experiences, including happiness, self-actualization, leadership, compassion, and gratitude. A continuation of humanism, this movement arose
out of the feeling among many researchers that psychological
science has focused almost exclusively on psychopathology and
malfunction.

While it is important to understand why human beings sometimes
suffer or hurt each other, the positive psychology movement is
committed to the idea that it is also important to understand why
and how humans sometimes flourish, succeed, and are good to
each other.

For personality research, this has meant complementing the study
of

personality disorders and personality pathology with the study of
positive personality traits (sometimes called character traits or
virtues).

These include courage, compassion, and wisdom, among many
others. It has also meant studying the positive side of well-being to
understand why some people are especially happy and fulfilled in
life.

One topic that has received a great deal of attention from positive
psychology researchers is Ryan and Deci’s

self-determination theory.

This theory says that real happiness comes not just from pursuing
pleasure (hedonia), but from fulfilling our needs and goals
(eudaimonia).

According to self-determination theory, human beings have a need
to pursue goals they value intrinsically (things they value for
themselves, not as means to an end). Furthermore, humans share
three fundamental intrinsic goals: autonomy, which is the freedom
to make your own choices; competence, which is developing skills
and mastering something; and relatedness, which is having
meaningful relationships with others.

Another topic that has received a lot of attention from the positive
psychology movement (but actually predates it) is

Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow: the state people are in when
they are doing something challenging and engaging.
It is the experience you have when you are so engrossed in
something, working hard at it, you don’t even notice time passing.

Csikszentmihalyi believed this state was only achievable when
doing something intrinsically enjoyable (not just enjoyable because
of the outcomes it produces) and that this is the optimal experience
one can have in life.

He agreed with other humanists that our phenomenology is of
utmost experience, and his theory of flow was a theory about how
to optimize one’s phenomenology.

With respect to personality theory, flow can be seen as a dimension
on which people differ—some people are lucky enough to
experience flow every day, whereas others may never or almost
never experience it.

Personality research indicates that the more frequent experience of
flow is positively correlated with an internal locus of control and a
strong sense of autonomy.

Internal Locus of Control:

Belief that individuals have control over their
own actions and outcomes.

External Locus of Control:

Belief that external factors or luck dictate
one’s fate.

Key difference between internal vs external locus of control:

Internal locus sees self as main influencer, while
external locus attributes greater power to outside forces.

Impact: Internal locus linked to higher well-being and life success.

Autonomy: freedom from external control or influence; independence.
Autonomy is strongly linked to an internal locus of control.