Right - for people who haven’t had a chance to take classes in or read some of the books of positive psychology, the field is presented generally as one big smiley face. Jordan Silberman wrote a great article describing exactly this conundrum in ositive Psychology in the Media: One Ninth of the Field.

That’s interesting about those people potentially operating from a neutral point - yes, potential - I’d need to look at that article more closely.

And furthermore, the above definition - while, yes, for an egghead like me who likes digging deep into the details - the above definition is about WHAT positive psychology studies… so because people choose to engage in their lives, perhaps we should study engagement and flow… so that description above about the neutral is more about what topics does pos psych study, and I’d say the answer is many - awe and elevation as well as sadness and fear.

I’m enjoying this discussion.

And that’s the branding problem for positive psych!!!!!

I keep thinking of an early piece of research by Sonja L that suggested that happy people don’t spend a lot of time reflecting on what they do - they are engaged in their lives. So based on your definition these people are operating from neutral.

Here are some links to Ellen Langer’s research:

• Ellen Langer’s book Mindfulness (1990) on Amazon
• Toward a Mindful Psychological Science: Theory and Application (Spring, 2000, Journal of Social Issues)
• The Langer Mindfulness Scale and the Langer Lab

Wayne, as for “positive,” I used to wonder about that too. Then one day, many people in a class asked Martin Seligman about this, and as part of his answer, he noted that he had addressed this concern in his book Authentic Happiness. Wayne, I don’t know if you have the same version of it that I do. There are several points where it especially emphasizes that “positive” does not mean smiley, good, happy, etc. Here are a couple of examples:
* p.7 “This book will talk about why hedonism fails and what this might mean for you. So Positive Psychology is about the meaning of those happy and unhappy moments, the tapestry they weave, and the strengths and virtues they display that make up the quality of your life.” Tal Ben-Shahar says similarly that positive psychology is the permission to be human, which includes both good and bad things.
* The footnote in the “Positive Feeling…” chapter. In my book, the footnote references the sentence on page 6 that starts ‘So it may come.’ The footnote describes positive, negative, and neutral, and emphasizes that positive psychology is about the choice: what would people choose on the plus or preferred state (for events, emotions, reactions, etc.)? So sometimes, as in after death, people would choose sadness, and so sadness becomes a component of positive psychology. What would people freely choose - if zero is being indifferent to choosing or not and negative is people not choosing this event, this option, then ‘positive’ by this definition means those actions, events, emotions that people choose - which would absolutely include non-good events.

Thoughts?

My best,
Senia

MRI research shows that people high on mindfulness have lower amygdala activity. As soon as people take the judgement out of what they do they are generally happier.

And this is the problem with PP - the word positive is a huge value judgement.

I have been playing with PP for about 6 years now - my partner was in one of his vanguard classes.

We have now removed the word positive from everything we do as many people will invariably think to themselves “I’m not positive” despite the fact that there is so much more to PP than being positive.

Interesting about your thought about neutral. I think Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener’s upcoming book will shed light on some of that.

Additionally, a couple of our authors, Jordan Silberman and Miriam Ufberg, especially write a lot on mindfulness.

Have you seen Ellen Langer’s research on mindfulness, and have you heard Barb Fredrickson speak about some of her new studies? I can link to some of the Ellen Langer things if you like.

Best,
S.

As an aside I did a seminar with Chris Peterson which was titled North of Neutral and my big question is what is wrong with neutral.