3 Reasons Life is Worth Living From Positive Psychology
For decades psychologists were almost exclusively concerned with alleviating mental distress. No bad thing of course - psychological knowledge has contributed to great strides in the treatment and understanding of mental illness. But to only study pathology, damage and weakness in humanity is to leave out half the picture. What about human strengths, human virtues and human excellence - surely these are worth studying too?
In the last few decades the positive psychology movement has recognised this need for research into what makes us happy, what makes us excel and how these things might be enhanced. Acknowledging this important movement, over the coming weeks PsyBlog will be looking at some of the research emerging from this area. We start with three reasons life is worth living to whet your appetite.
1. Evolution drives us towards happiness.
Imagine humans had never discovered sport. The idea of 'sport' is a concept that has evolved over human history to mean a particular type of competition that's a bit like war, but in which (generally) no one dies (this analogy applies better to some sports than others!).
Now think about writing, or cooking or cinema or many other things that most of us enjoy doing or consuming. These were not invented in their totality by one person - they evolved. Each started off in relatively primitive guises and have now evolved to their current state of sophistication. And they'll certainly go on evolving from here.
The 'ideas' involved in each of these pursuits have been technically referred to as 'memes'. Like a gene, only for ideas. The meme, therefore, is a unit of cultural information that travels from one person to the next, living in the mind from where it can mutate and replicate or die out.
What I'm driving at is that effectively, over time humans have naturally selected memes that tend to bring about maximal experience, and we will continue to do so (Massimini & Delle Fave, 2000).
Each of us then plays a part, however small, in evolving new and engrossing forms of maximal experience.
2. Optimism is good for you
The British national character is pretty cynical and I sometimes think optimism is viewed as a form of mental illness. British people like to say things like: "If I imagine the worst then I won't be disappointed". Oh dear. It's not just the British that are down on optimism - many people often think optimists are unrealistic and self-deluding.
Conversely much of the research on optimism suggests how good it is for you: it may protect us from illness, it puts us in a better mood; while optimists are more likely to be successful and to persevere at a task. There's even a fantastic series of studies showing that people higher in hope and optimism are more likely to seek out unfavourable information about their disease. So not only do they expect a better outcome, they're actually better informed.
3. The search for excellence
Human excellence comes in many forms. It can refer to how well children do in school, especially those who are gifted. Indeed, unlike the stereotypical view of gifted children as outcasts and freaks, research is finding they are frequently well-adjusted and enjoy supportive family environments.
It can apply to the creativity of artists which can be spurred by the most unusual of circumstances. Simonton (2000) finds that the creativity of artists may be enhanced in the aftermath of nationalistic revolts against oppressive regimes.
Finally, research has recently been revived into that most ancient of virtues: wisdom. Some fascinating findings are currently coming out of the 'Berlin wisdom paradigm'. Amongst these are that high levels of wisdom appear to be rare, wisdom appears in late adolescence and early adulthood and age doesn't seem to be the sole, or even main, requisite for wisdom.
More to come...
And if this taster of what positive psychology is all about doesn't make you feel optimistic, then do not fear, my task has only just begun! In future posts I'll be taking a closer at more positive psychology research.
If you can't wait until then, check out the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania which has loads more to keep you going.
This post is largely based on research reported by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) [Word Doc, 87Kb].
References
Massimini, F., & Delle Fave, A. (2000). Individual development in a bio-cultural perspective. American Psychologist, 55(1), 24-33.
Seligman, M. E., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology. An introduction. American Psychologist, 55(1), 5-14.
Simonton, D. K. (2000). Cognitive, Personal, Developmental, and Social Aspects. American Psychologist, 1, 151-158.
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What a refreshing article. I would love to read more articles like this that focus on positive issues and "good news". Enough of the depressing, negative, doom & gloom we get from newspapers, television, magazines and now the internet.
Kudos and Bravo!
There is also plenty of research (start at the Ignobels web page) which shows that optimists are actually much _less_ successful than pessimists; they merely _think_ they are more successful because they lack the mechanisms for recognising and evaluating success.
The wisest men in history, from Solomon to Tolstoy, have all been self-doubting pessimists, and in evolutionary terms this makes much more sense. You can most easily understand happiness by viewing it as a reward mechanism that's gone wrong, and "positive psychologists" are merely the most extreme expression of this malfunction.
Happiness,optimism,excellence all above these seem will due to a happy emotion and abundant property.Are they positive? If one keep happy every moment,I believe he or she is just suffering a intense mental pain,because of lose the idea of what is happy.
Surely "happiness" is just the absence of unhapiness, in the same way that sanity is the absence of madness ?
Personally I can't stand mindless optimism of the "cheer up worse things happen at sea" kind..
Intersted in the evolutionary advantage of pessemism, as in self presrvation through risk avoidance ?
I admire positive psychology for showing us how to discover and explore our strengths,but a well-lived life is not about finding "happiness", at least not to my thinking. It's about having a realistic view of the world, and a realistic view includes the so-called "negative" stuff.
I don't consider myself an optimist, but I also don't consider myself a pessimist. I try to be as aware and balanced as possible, as much as I can, realizing that I'm human and will not be balanced all of the time.
I think true optimism is as misguided as true pessimism. Both are unrealistic and only take into account one side of the picture.I think all this striving for "happiness" is really unhealthy and misses the point entirely.
Really glad to see this post. Thanks.
I agree with a lot of the other comments. Positive Psychology does study sadness and anger and pessimism as well. Positive Psychology, as Tal Ben-Shahar says, is the permission to be human - the good and the bad.
I'd say also that another reason life is worth living is that positive emotions actually motivate us and we grow (this is related to your reason 3 - excellence).
Senia Maymin
Editor, Positive Psychology News Daily
Keep in mind that positive psychology was a response to the traditional research oriented on the negative (problems) and so forth.
An interesting story about how the field got started: Mike Czikszentmihalyi, an avid swimmer, was taking a rather lengthy swim in Hawaii (during the APA conference there, I believe), and fan into some trouble trying to get back to shore (something about a reef in the way). Anyway, he makes it back, barely, in sorry shape, and Seligman comes across him and gets him some help. They talk on the way, and the seeds of positive psychology are planted.
My favorite topic in the field is Mike's notion of flow and creativity. That optimal point when one is completely engrossed in what they are doing -- I think it's safe to say that we've all been in that "zone" -- we lose track of time, we are completely engaged in whatever activity we are doing...
It is an area of research that I'm seeking to expand upon, delving into the cognitive implications of flow.
As for optimism, I guess the only thing I can say is to expand on what I wrote in the previous post (about middle-aged men): We are all pretty much delusional (Just World Phenomenon, Attribution Bias, Self-Serving Bias, and so on), but the optimists are just more annoying, generally speaking (although I must concede that I have no research to cite on this last point :-)
Thanks for all your comment - fascinating.
One thing is worrying me though, there seems to be a bit of optimist-abuse appearing here from some commenters :-)
Apparently optimists 'lack mechanisms for evaluating success', are 'mindless' and 'annoying'.
Which all makes me somewhat nervous to admit that yes I'm an optimist.
Luckily, as I'm an optimist it's all water off a ducks back to me...
Life is not worth living.