Positive Psych

Happiness

50% genetics, 40% internal state of mind, 10% circumstances Is there an evolutionary reason for happiness: by approaching positive things we are more likely to survive. Food makes us happy, we eat we survive

Universal meaning of happiness

Across 54 nations they rate the character strengths the same. They all see gratitude, happiness, and hope the same way we do.

Dr. Martin Seligman, Founder (authentic happiness)

Aim was to lastingly change your life to "lifelong happiness"over the last 20yrs he's developed research proven ways to make you happy. Follows ppl over a long period of time, some get the intervention (experimental condition) of happiness, and others get the placebo (control group) . If the ppl in the intervention stay happier then cause and effect is proven. Take what you're good or bad at and actively reframe your own life to make more of those incidents. How can you put more of what makes you happy into your life?

What is the pleasant life?

As many as pleasures you can. Drawbacks include: 50% heritable and not very modable, the usual tricks do not work about increasing positive emotions do not work It habituates rapidly- the first tast is 100% by the time you get to the 6th it's gone. Not very malable Nuture? Low positive affectivity

According to the Ted Talk by Dr. Duckworth, a good way to build 'grit' in people is developing a "growth mindset" which is defined as:

Belief that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can change with your effort

Evolutionary purpose of honesty (nature)

Biology/genetics determines personality. We evolve inside a social group, naturally. In this setting it is sometimes easier to lie than tell the truth. Evolution mechanism survive spread

Good Character:

Caring-caring for others (forgiveness, kindness, gratitude, love, spritituality) Self-control-control of self (honesty, judgment, perserverance, prudence, self-regulation) Inquisitiveness-being curious and open of the world around you (appreciation of beauty, curiousity, creativity, love of learning, perspective)

The prerequisite for perseverance is

Challenge

What is a gratitude visit

Close your eyes, remember someone that did something enormously important in a good direction that you didn't properly thank, must be alive. Your assignment is to write a 300 word testimony and deliver it face to face. And what happens is both ppl are both happier and less depress?

What is flow?

Common trait that stops time people it is distinct from pleasure in that pleasure has raw feels, there is thought and feeling you know it's happening. But during flow you cannot feel anything you are one with the thing being concentrated on. These are the characteristics of the good life We think that is the recipie for success. Recrafting your life to use your top five strenghs Take your highest strenghts and recraft work, play and love to use them as much as possible, more asorbtion and more flow

Major findings on courage/bravery

Courage can be considered a mediator between personality and coping strategies

How to grow grit?

Develop a fascination (find the questions & things that fascinate you) Daily improvement (aim to improve yourself everyday; make it a habit) Greater purpose (seek connections beyond themselves). Growth mindset (Core belief in abilities can grow)- believing you as a person can change over time.

Evolutionary purpose of honesty (nurture)

Experiences determines personality. what is happening to us right now that is making us honest or dishonest

Fixed Mindset v. Growth Mindset

Fixed; avoid failure, desire to look smart, avoids challenges, stick to what they know feedback and criticism is personal they don't change or improve.

In order to treat pathology, rather than focusing on the problem, Peterson suggesting doing what?

Fostering strengths in a strengths-based approach

Three ways to be happier

Have a beautiful day, Gratitude visit, Recrafting/injecting the characteristics strengths and good things into your life. The talking AND the doing.

Honesty -as-truthfulness

How you are with others, how honest you are with others.

Honesty-as-authenticity

How you see yourself, being honest with yourself

Growth mindset:

I can do better next time, desire continuous learning, confront uncertainties, embracing challenges, not afraid to fail, put lots of effort to learn, feedback is about current capabilities, learn, grow, evolve. I believe that my intelligence

Measuring Zest

I look forward to each new day; I cannot wait to get started on a project; I want to fully participate in life, not just view it from the sidelines

opposition

If you eliminate this, you'll be more honest, brave and increase opposition

how to know thyself

Incongruence occurs when there is a mismatch between any of these three entities: the ideal self (the person you would like to be), your self-image (the person you think you are), and the true self (the person you actually are). Selfesteem suffers when there is a large difference between one's ideal self and self-image. Anxiety and defensiveness are common when the self-image does not match the true self.

How does the dopamine reward system work?

It regulates your behavior by making you feel good when you achieve a goal, It rewards those things necessary for survival, Dopamine floods your body and mind with a rush of satisfaction and reward

Which are the most prevalent character strengths in human beings in descending order are...

Kindness***, Fairness, Honesty, Gratitude, Judgment

The central element of "Honesty"

Know thyself, self reflection, introspection

the puppy experiment

Meaning we are likely born with innate character traits. Humans, animals, lines can all be measured as personality, by taking our perception (nature)

What is the third path

Meaning- knowing your highest strengths to belong to and service something larger than what you are.

types of brave acts

Physical, Psychological (internal), moral (social)

things into your life. The talking AND the doing. The OG Framework of Happiness:

Pleasure- little time and little happiness (being part of something bigger than yourself, Passion-medium amount of time and medium amount of time, flow and engagement (time flies), Higher purpose meaning-lots of time, but lots of happiness (being a part of something bigger than yourself.

The least prevalent character strengths in human beings are...

Prudence, modesty, and self-regulation...We're really kind but love telling people about it.

Disadvantages on research regarding bravery

Scare attention in psych literature, retrospective narrative, definition of the matter is subjective, memory & pos. bias

beautiful day

Seligman-he easiest ways to make yourself happier over a long period of time is to focus on yourself. By helping yourself first you free yourself up to help other people and design your perfect day to execute it.

How to delay gratification

Strategic use of distraction (not looking at the marshmellow), Cognitive transformation (change your thinking, marshmellow as a fluffy white cloud), Repeating the contingency (repeating the reward "If I wait, then i'll get two)

Marshmallow Test

The children who delayed gratification, not only perservered in that moment and received the second marshmellow ended up having: and generally better scores in a range of other life measures. Long-term behavior predicted your behavioral, emotional, and self control responses to later on in life. The obstacle is internal, allows him to master himself.

When does grit matter most?

The correct answer is: In personally meaningful and challenging contexts

According to Dr. Mayer, our ability to understand and know ourselves is partially dependent upon our memories. Semantic memory is:

The long-term storehouse that contains our general knowledge

What are the three different happy lives?

The pleasant life-as much pos emotion as you possibly can and the skills to amplify it and learning the skills savoring mindfulness to amplify them Engagement-work, parenting, leisure, and life stops for you Meaningful

What is the 'critical inner voice'?

Voice that instructs you to self-protect by telling you things like you can only be accepted if you say the right thing or don't really reveal yourself

how personality could influence character traits?

When you're high on honesty-humility are more likely to be reciprocal altruism and fairness. Personality creates character. the areas where you score highly define your character. Once you know a personality, you can predict character traits. ex.= shy temperment introverted personality character trait:high social intelligence or low on humor

Integrity/Authenticity/Honesty

a character trait in which people are true to themselves, accurately representing their true self, both privately and publicly.

zest and vitality

a combination of the physical sense and the psychological sense of feeling well. Zest is about to exhibiting enthusiasm and feeling energized.

Zest

and/or enthusiasm in your life. Defined as: living life with a sense of excitement, anticipation, and energy. Your attitude determines your happiness.

Persistance

continuing toward your goal, in spite of obstacles

The relationship between courage and fear

courage is distinct from fearlessness, in that individuals act despite feeling fear.

Personality and Bravery

encourages you to be courageous and courageness determines how people cope . The personality traits are antecedents of courage because they can promote or impede courageous behaviours that give the necessary push to action. 2. A person assesses his or her ability to cope with the stressful situa- tions effectively (in a self-directed way) or ineffectively (through self-avoidance), and this may be mediated by the person's resources and then by the successful assessment and courage that drives the person to perform the action.

Zest and hope

exist across all of board!

Four subsets of emotionality

fearfulness (low), anxiety (low means little stress), Dependence (low), Sentimentality (high)

Baby in the road

heroism was measured by assessing bravery. It found that you need 20-30% but not more than 80% of risk to get to heroism, willing and noble and you need less risk.

The character strengths most highly linked to pleasure was:

humor, zest, hope, EQ, love gratitude

What were Seligman's results of their study

i you have all three you have the full life, if none than empty. Does productivity follow the same pattern, yes. Pleasure contributes the least, meaning is the strongest along w/ engagemnt...pleasure is the whip cream

PERMA (the new framework of happiness)

incompasses the old and adds two Positive emotions, feeling good (pleasure) , Engagement, finding flow (passion) Relationships, authentic connections (NEW!), Meaning purposeful existence (higher purpose) Achievement, sense of accomplishment (NEW!) In order to have happiness, you need all five ,This is what happiness is that people refer to.

Defining features of bravery

intentional (willingness), worthy goal (nobility), difficulty involved (risk). All must be present for this trait to exist.

Research regarding bravery support

modern society is risky, developing and implementing is useful for influencing the choice of overcoming risk to create effective coping strategies.

The Big Five

openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism (OCEAN). With a possible 6th answer, honesty. How we see us, it is so engrained in us that we project it onto inanimate objects.

Grit

passion (the most important part)+ perseverance (self-control). She found that it's not only good to have grit, but it is detrimental to not have grit it predicts failure. It requires more than self-control

what predicts how people cope with life's challenges

persons high in neuroticism engage in passive and mal- adaptive ways of coping, whereas persons high in extraversion engage in active coping strategies and seek social support. individuals high in conscientiousness engage in planning and active problem-solving and refrain from passive, maladaptive coping

The definitions of courage include all of the following, except:

presence of coping strategy. This trait includes: Intentionality of actions, known risks, and action in spite of known consequences.nobility of purpose

Self-control

regulating yourself (emotions, thoughts, behaviors, impulses, attention, etc) in the moment . Continuing toward your goals

Persistence

regulating yourself over an extended period of time

The character strengths most highly linked to meaning is

religiousity, hope, zest, curiousity, perspective. connecting to something higher to you is your quickest chance at happiness

What are the three aims of positive psychology?

should be as concerned as strength as with weakness, As interested in building the best things in life as repairing the worst, Concerned w/ making the lives of normal ppl fufilling and with genius by nurturing high talent and healing pathology

Character traits

smaller units of a total personality is the current debate

personality and coping

that it's not your personality influences how you cope, but personality influences how courageous and brave you are. Bravery is the lynchpin between these two things.

What the courage block (bravery, honesty, perserverance, and zest) all have in common

the WILL to accomplish your GOALS, in the face of OPPOSITION

Bravery

the essential virtue for confronting adversity. Without it, people do not respond with strength, coping, or confronting the challenges in life. With it, people can engage in the very behaviors (exercising your will to follow your goals) that create change in your life

Angela Duckworth

the strongest predictors of the future, Where talent counts once, efforts counts twice

According to the neuroscience of perseverance, dopamine is considered

what keeps people motivated to persevere and achieve, "reward molecule", positive feeling you get when you accomplish a goal

The charater strengths most highly linke to FLOW/ENGAGEMENT

zest curiousity hope, and perserverance