Additional Views

*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:

  • Positive psychology is the study of positive human experience, 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 complimenting 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

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*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 come 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 

 

Flow:

  • 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 vs. External Locus of Control:

  • 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: internal locus sees self as main influence, while external locus attributes greater power to outside force

    • 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