- Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology
- Oxford Library of Psychology
- About the Editors
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Memoriam: Remembering C. R. Snyder: A Humble Legacy of Hope
- Preface
- A Case for Positive Psychology
- Positive Psychology: Past, Present, and Future
- Positive Emotions
- Classifying and Measuring Strengths of Character
- Positive Psychology Applications
- Positive Psychology Within a Cultural Context
- Stopping the “Madness”: Positive Psychology and Deconstructing the Illness Ideology and the DSM
- Widening the Diagnostic Focus: A Case for Including Human Strengths and Environmental Resources
- Toward a Science of Mental Health
- Modeling Positive Human Health: From Covariance Structures to Dynamic Systems
- Positive Ethics: Themes and Variations
- Resilience in Development
- Positive Psychology for Children and Adolescents: Development, Prevention, and Promotion
- The Positive Youth Development Perspective: Theoretical and Empirical Bases of a Strengths-Based Approach to Adolescent Development
- Aging Well in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities
- New Territories of Positive Life-Span Development: Wisdom and Life Longings
- Subjective Well-Being: The Science of Happiness and Life Satisfaction
- Flow Theory and Research
- Positive Affectivity: The Disposition to Experience Positive Emotional States
- The Social Construction of Self-Esteem
- Coping Through Emotional Approach: Emerging Evidence for the Utility of Processing and Expressing Emotions in Responding to Stressors
- The Positive Psychology of Emotional Intelligence
- Emotional Creativity: Toward “Spiritualizing the Passions”
- Creativity
- The Role of Personal Control in Adaptive Functioning
- Mindfulness Versus Positive Evaluation
- Perspectives on Time
- Optimism
- Optimistic Explanatory Style
- Hope Theory
- Self-Efficacy: The Power of Believing You Can
- Problem-Solving Appraisal and Psychological Adjustment
- Self-Determination
- Curiosity and Interest: The Benefits of Thriving on Novelty and Challenge
- Courage
- Relationship Connection: A Redux on the Role of Minding and the Quality of Feeling Special in the Enhancement of Closeness
- Compassion
- Adult Attachment Security: The Relational Scaffolding of Positive Psychology
- Empathy and Altruism
- Forgiveness
- Furthering the Science of Gratitude
- Love
- For Richer … in Good Times … and in Health: Positive Processes in Relationships
- What's Positive About Self-Verification?
- Reality Negotiation
- Humility
- The Motive for Distinctiveness: A Universal, but Flexible Human Need
- A Role for Neuropsychology in Understanding the Facilitating Influence of Positive Affect on Social Behavior and Cognitive Processes
- Toward a Biology of Social Support
- The Central Role of the Heart in Generating and Sustaining Positive Emotions
- Toughness
- Family-Centered Positive Psychology
- Positive Schools
- Positive Psychology on Campus
- Positive Workplaces
- Positive Institutions, Law, and Policy
- Meditation and Positive Psychology
- Spirituality: The Search for the Sacred
- Sharing One's Story: On the Benefits of Writing or Talking About Emotional Experience
- Benefit-Finding and Growth
- Making Sense of Loss, Perceiving Benefits, and Posttraumatic Growth
- Happiness, Resilience, and Positive Growth Following Physical Disability: Issues for Understanding, Research, and Therapeutic Intervention
- The Promise of Sustainable Happiness
- Meaning in Life
- The Future of Positive Psychology: Pursuing Three Big Goals
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
Applied positive psychology is concerned with facilitating good lives and enabling people to be at their best. It is as much an approach as a particular domain of inquiry. As shown throughout this chapter, positive psychology has applications that span almost every area of applied psychology and beyond. In clinical psychology, counseling and psychotherapy, applied positive psychology builds on the traditions of humanistic psychology and Carl Rogers' client-centered therapy. It challenges the dominant assumptions of the medical model and promotes a dimensional, rather than dichotomous, understanding of mental health and mental illness. Beyond the alleviation of psychopathology, applied positive psychology has also seen the development of specific happiness-increase interventions, including counting one's blessings, using signature strengths, and paying a gratitude visit. In education, applied positive psychology has been used to promote flow in the classroom, as well as harnessing children's strengths to aid their learning and development. Forensic applications of positive psychology are represented by the good lives model of offender management, which focuses on the adaptive satisfaction of human needs. In Industrial Organizational (I/O) psychology, positive psychology applications are represented throughout work on transformational leadership, employee engagement, positive organizational scholarship, positive organizational behavior, appreciative inquiry, and strengths-based organization. In society, more broadly, applied positive psychology is shown to influence the development of life coaching and the practice of executive coaching, while population approaches are being explored in relation to epidemiology and the promotion of social well-being. Having reviewed these diverse areas, the chapter then goes on to consider the theoretical basis for applied positive psychology; the questions of who should apply positive psychology, as well as where and how; and whether positive psychology applications could be universally relevant. The chapter concludes by considering what the future of applied positive psychology may hold and suggesting that the discipline has the potential to impact positively on people throughout the world.
Keywords: applications, future, positive psychology, theory
P. Alex Linley, Centre for Applied Positive Psychology, Coventry, UK.
Stephen Joseph, Psychology, Health & Social Care, Faculty of Social Sciences, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
John Maltby, School of Psychology, University of Leicester
Susan Harrington, School of Psychology, University of Leicester.
Alex M. Wood, School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester
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- Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology
- Oxford Library of Psychology
- About the Editors
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Foreword
- Memoriam: Remembering C. R. Snyder: A Humble Legacy of Hope
- Preface
- A Case for Positive Psychology
- Positive Psychology: Past, Present, and Future
- Positive Emotions
- Classifying and Measuring Strengths of Character
- Positive Psychology Applications
- Positive Psychology Within a Cultural Context
- Stopping the “Madness”: Positive Psychology and Deconstructing the Illness Ideology and the DSM
- Widening the Diagnostic Focus: A Case for Including Human Strengths and Environmental Resources
- Toward a Science of Mental Health
- Modeling Positive Human Health: From Covariance Structures to Dynamic Systems
- Positive Ethics: Themes and Variations
- Resilience in Development
- Positive Psychology for Children and Adolescents: Development, Prevention, and Promotion
- The Positive Youth Development Perspective: Theoretical and Empirical Bases of a Strengths-Based Approach to Adolescent Development
- Aging Well in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities
- New Territories of Positive Life-Span Development: Wisdom and Life Longings
- Subjective Well-Being: The Science of Happiness and Life Satisfaction
- Flow Theory and Research
- Positive Affectivity: The Disposition to Experience Positive Emotional States
- The Social Construction of Self-Esteem
- Coping Through Emotional Approach: Emerging Evidence for the Utility of Processing and Expressing Emotions in Responding to Stressors
- The Positive Psychology of Emotional Intelligence
- Emotional Creativity: Toward “Spiritualizing the Passions”
- Creativity
- The Role of Personal Control in Adaptive Functioning
- Mindfulness Versus Positive Evaluation
- Perspectives on Time
- Optimism
- Optimistic Explanatory Style
- Hope Theory
- Self-Efficacy: The Power of Believing You Can
- Problem-Solving Appraisal and Psychological Adjustment
- Self-Determination
- Curiosity and Interest: The Benefits of Thriving on Novelty and Challenge
- Courage
- Relationship Connection: A Redux on the Role of Minding and the Quality of Feeling Special in the Enhancement of Closeness
- Compassion
- Adult Attachment Security: The Relational Scaffolding of Positive Psychology
- Empathy and Altruism
- Forgiveness
- Furthering the Science of Gratitude
- Love
- For Richer … in Good Times … and in Health: Positive Processes in Relationships
- What's Positive About Self-Verification?
- Reality Negotiation
- Humility
- The Motive for Distinctiveness: A Universal, but Flexible Human Need
- A Role for Neuropsychology in Understanding the Facilitating Influence of Positive Affect on Social Behavior and Cognitive Processes
- Toward a Biology of Social Support
- The Central Role of the Heart in Generating and Sustaining Positive Emotions
- Toughness
- Family-Centered Positive Psychology
- Positive Schools
- Positive Psychology on Campus
- Positive Workplaces
- Positive Institutions, Law, and Policy
- Meditation and Positive Psychology
- Spirituality: The Search for the Sacred
- Sharing One's Story: On the Benefits of Writing or Talking About Emotional Experience
- Benefit-Finding and Growth
- Making Sense of Loss, Perceiving Benefits, and Posttraumatic Growth
- Happiness, Resilience, and Positive Growth Following Physical Disability: Issues for Understanding, Research, and Therapeutic Intervention
- The Promise of Sustainable Happiness
- Meaning in Life
- The Future of Positive Psychology: Pursuing Three Big Goals
- Index