Positive Psychology: The yearbook study

College yearbook photos are a gold mine for positive psychology researchers. It is a fact that smiling on demand for a photographer is easier said than done. Some of us break into a radiant smile while others pose politely. The first is called a Duchenne smile, is genuine. The corners of the mouth turn up and the skin around the corners of the eyes crinkles like crows feet. The muscles that control this movement are exceedingly difficult to control voluntarily. The other smile the Pan American smile, named after the smile of flight attendants in tv ads produced by the now defunct airline, is a forced or fake smile. Psychologists trained to categorize smiles in photographs studied 141 senior class photos and then tracked the level of happiness as expressed in marital and life satisfaction at ages 27, 43, and 52, Approximately one half were Duchene smilers. Astonishingly the women with the Duchenne smile were more likely to be married, stay married and experience more personal well being over the thirty year period than those with the Pan American smile.

Psychology has traditionally focused its attention only on the negative aspects of life, simply because only the negative aspects of life are problematic. Out of every one hundred published journal articles on sadness only one is published on happiness.

This text seeks to answer the following questions.

  1. Why has evolution endowed us with positive feelings? What are their function and consequence of these emotions, beyond making us feel good?
  2. Who has positive emotions in abundance, and who does not? What enables these emotions and what disables them?
  3. How can you build more and lasting positive emotion into your life?

Gratification Vs Pleasure

            Being with friends and watching and entertaining program on tv is pleasurable, however the satisfaction of it fades very quickly. On the other hand the exercise of kindness toward another person in need is a gratification rather than a pleasure. A gratification calls on you to rise to the occasion and meet a challenge. The exercise of kindness creating gratification is a selfless act that results in a happiness that is more fulfilling and longer lasting than a mere pleasurable experience.

            To understand well being we also need to understand personal strengths and the virtues. This is the second topic of this book. When well being comes from engaging our strengths and virtues, our lives are imbued with authenticity.

Feelings are states of momentary occurrences that need not be recurring features of a personality. Traits, in contrast to states, are either positive or negative characteristics that recur over time and different situations, and strengths and virtues are the positive characteristics that bring about good feelings and gratification. Traits are abiding dispositions whose exercise makes momentary feelings more likely. Feelings are the momentary emotional response to perception.

Positive Psychology selected 24strengths out of an enormous number of traits to research. The criteria used to select these 24 strengths are as follows:

  1. They are valued in almost every culture.
  2. They are valued in their own right, not just as a means to an end. (ie organizational skills is a means to increased efficiency)
  3. They are malleable.

While psychology may have ignored virtues Philosophy and Religions have paid close attention. These six core virtues are esteemed in all major religions and philosophies.

  1. Wisdom and knowledge
  2. Courage
  3. Love and humanity
  4. Justice
  5. Temperance
  6. Spirituality and transcendence

When we examine these six core virtues we will see that other important virtues are subsets of these six core virtues. It is important to note that the reader will identify the presence of some of these virtues, but not all of them in their self. It is the authors premise that we should not spend more time trying to improve our weaknesses then we spend developing our signature strengths.

In the 90’s Seligman discovered that teaching 10-year old children skills of optimistic thinking and action cuts the rate of depression in half during puberty. What progress there is in the prevention of mental illness comes from recognizing and nurturing a set of strengths, competencies, and virtues in young people such as future mindedness, hope, interpersonal skills, courage, the capacity for flow, faith and work ethic. Unfortunately building strengths and preventative treatment has only received lip service from the medical community mainly because you cannot bill for these services. Positive psychology is not concerned with treating deficiencies but in developing strengths. Positive psychology is more closely aligned with education than the practice of medicine.