flashcards for the positive approach
(32 cards)
What is the myers and diener methodology and procedures?
literature review on hapiness - 1980’s and 1990’s - flood of research looking at sense of wellbeing
What were the interviews and questionaires (methodology and procedures)
measuring happiness considering a person’s sense of own happiness or wellbeing - subject well being
Interviewing people using a closed question - “How satisfied are youn with your life as a whole these days?” Are you very satisfied/ not very satisfied/not at all satisfied
Multi item scale - number of questions related to hapiness - quantative measure to represent hapiness
What is observation(this is for the methodology and also the procedures)?
disovering what people are doing - reporting what they are doing at selected times - use beepers reminding to send a message of saying what they are doing or thinking - way to sample behaviour
Whar are correlations(this is for the metholodology and the procedures) ?
understanding hapiness - consider what factors co var with it - some may contribute to hapiness whereas others may be the consequence - not clear on the cause and effect - eg: someone with high SWB may have more of a positve aprraisal of life events - other way around they may see events as happy creating a high SWB
What are the reviews (this is for both of the methodology and procedures)?
review of other research - research reffered to based on multiple studies - some reviews some are metal analysis (multiple studies to give broarder conclusion of the topic)
What are the findings of this research?
Is hapiness related to age? survey 170,000 people all ages - 16 different countries - no differences - all ages equally happy - 80% life satisfaction (inglehart 1990)
different factors affecting hapiness at different ages - social relations and health become more important with age (hezog et al 1982)
People experiencing crisis but not particular age (mcrae and costa 1990)
Is hapiness then related to gender (this is part of the findings ) ?
Ingleharts survey of 16 different countries - 80% men and 80% women were fairly satisfied with life - persons gender accounting for 1% of there global wellbeing (haring et al 1990)
Women are twice as vulnerable to men to depression (Robins and reiger 1991)
Is hapiness related to race or culture? ( this is part of the findings)
African americans report they are nearly twice as happy as europian americans (dierner et al 1993 )
Differences between countries - 10% reported happy portugal 40% netharlands - Inglehert 1990)
Individualistic cultures report greater SWb than collectivistic cultures - individualistic - people more concerned with there needs whearas in collectivistic people focus on the groups needs
Is hapiness then related to money (this is then part of the findings)?
1993 survey 75% American college students selected “being well off financially” as a life goal and 39% for 1970 (astin et al 1987)
Diene et al had found the correlation of +12 between income and hapiness
People who are rich do not report greater hapiness - forbes rich list survey 37% were less happy than average american (Diener et al 1995) - winning the lottery people only report brief hapiness increase (argyle et al 1986)
lack of importance of money does not apply to situations where people are poor - in bangledesh a more poor country, people with money report higher SWB than those without money - affluence increases happiness but to point - a ceertain level of comfort being reached increased wealth makes little difference
What is the happy people?
people happier than others even though there are those ups and downs - costa et al found that people who were happy in 1973 were more happy than the people within a decade later
What are the traits of happy people (this is further part of happy people?
High self asteem - they like themselves and agree with statements like “ I have good ideas”
Sense of personal control - people who feel empowered rather than helpless do better at school, cope better with stress are typically happier
Optimism - they agree with this statement “ when I undertake something new, I expect to suceed”
Extraversion - people who are more outgoing are happier with other people and also when alone
What is the work and the flow of happy people?(this is further part of happy people)
work affects happiness - people who are out of work less happy than people who are out of work - sense of perosnal identity that ones life matters , and sense of community
However, work can be stressfull and then can cause unhapiness - Mihaly came up with “flow” - extent to which we become caught up in an activity so other things are mattering less - used beepers to measure what they were doing and whether they were happy - they were hapiness engaging in a mindful challenge
What are the relationships of happy people (this is further part of happy people)?
for some people relationship create more stress and unhappiness than happiness - Jean paul satre said that “hell is other people “hell is other people”
Benefits of relationships outweighing the strains - people naming several close friends are healthier and happy people that can’t name friends - Burt et al
Married people are happier than non married people - results being 39 versus 24 (lee et al) in meta analysis of 93 studies reoprt similar happiness levels for marriage and non marriage
What is the faith of happy people?(this is further part of happy people)
In north america and europe religious people report higher hapiness levels - people with a “spiritual commitment” were twice as likely to say they are very happy, happiness is alsso associated with strengths with religious affliation and frequencey of worship attendence
What are further the conclusions for this research?( the importance to adaptation)
effects of the positive and negative events fasde over time - winning the lottery only experience those short term increases of hapiness - people going through pyschological trauma recover there hope and hapiness like people who are in concentration camps - longitudinal study - only events in last 3 months influence SWB - human cappacity to adapt to the life circumstances
What is cultural world view(this is also part of the conclusions?
culutural atitudes predispose people to interprit lifes differently - some cultures construct the world as being kind and friendly whearas others emphasise on those negative emotions of anxiety and guilt
What is values and goals (this is also part of the conclusions)?
people with high SWB - they have goals - other factors only matter if they are relevent to your goals like money - this is why money matters more in less affluent countries and less in more affluent countries as of it not being seen as relevant to there specific goals
What is the future(this is also part of the conclusions?)
hapiness is not predictable from age, gender or affluence - does not appear to be associated to race and culture - people who are happy have close friends, religious and enjoy work - pyschologists can help build the world to enhance people wellbeing
What are the evaluation for the methodology and the procedures for the Myers and Diener research?
Data collected for SWB is subjective - when someone reports they are happy they is no way of challenging thagt or confirming it - questionaires - socially desirable answers - want to appear in good light - socially desirearibility scores correlate reasonably with hapiness socres - people representing as happy giving there socially desirable answers - friends rating happiness of same people - ratings correlate with the target individuals social desirablility scores- confirming the validity to the original scores - we can trust subject scores of hapiness
Findings are correlational - cannot assume particular factor causes hapiness - interviening variables - marriage and happiness due to other things rather than just the relationship - they may have more cash than people who are single
We do not need to know the direction of the relationship - if we were looking at married research shows happy people are more appealing to marriage - it could be that happiness could then further be making marriage more likely
Western samples - american researchers so conducted most of the research within the USA - roots of happiness being different in other cultures - like when comparing collectivistic and individualstic cultures - it could be that coolectivistic culturess are happy but they just dont express it as hapiness - comes from the group success rather than the individual
What further are the ethical and then the social impications of the Myers and Reiner research?
little risk of harm because behaviour not manipulated - it is possible people who are unhappy may not be welcoming to be asked about there hapiness and may feel more depressed after being asked about there sense of wellbieng - so they must be sensitive to the participants and debrief them apropriately
Ethical guidlines - british pyschological society - advise them to practice in the boundaries of there compatence - this means that they should not try and help someone who might, for example discuss depression during debriefing - pyschologists duty to then reccomend the proffesional help
Some research classed as “socially sensiive” - more likely to think positives or negatives about certain groups - such as culture within a particular way - myers and diener draws conclusions of hapinesss about particular cultura; groups - portugal 10% and in the netherlands it is 40% - inglehart - this will lead to the people assuming that all the portugese people they meet will be unhappy and you are more likely to then be meeting a dutch person that is more happy
What is further the 3 components to mindfullness?
gaining control of thoughts, meditation and mindful breathing and informal practice of mindfullness
What are some strengths for the positive approach?
A strength would be that they have free will - developing there signature strengths and have control over there own wellbeing - seen in the use of the therapy mindfullness - encouraged to become more aware of there feelings and emotions - this is strength because they may feel like they are being empowered to then be able to improve there wellbeing
Another strength would then end up being that it uses scientific methods to investigate ideas - seligman randomly allocating participants to 5 different exercises to then improve there wellbeings - placebo and control version - and then measuring the hapiness - this is then considered as being a strength because it adds credibility and support to key concepts of approach - more funding and then be able to adopt this more widely within the society
What are then some weaknesses which could then end up being considered for the positive approach?
For a weakness for this approach you could then end up be talking about how if you are putting indivduals too much responsibility then further on there hapiness it could then mean that you could then end up feeling worse (Held 2002)
Lyubomirsky et al. (2005) they said that genetics play an important role in influencing hapinness - myers and diener finding evidence that has more of a higher impact like relationships - weakness because it makes it more difficult to then be identifying the causes and then make the treatments become considered as then being more difficult - the approach being considered as holistic (thinking of everything as being a whole)
What are the main components to mindfulness?
gaining control of thoughts, meditation and mindful breathing, informal practices of mindfullness
