Lomas, Hefferon, & Ivtzan argue that this framework promotes wellbeing in an integrated way. While we could talk about applying positive psychology interventions to specific domains like education or health that often represents only part of the picture that relates to a specific context.
Addressing wellbeing through a multidimensional model, on the other hand, takes into account the functioning of a whole person and can be applied to any area of life.
Working with the Mind to Make Life Better
Subjective domain, where research in positive psychology has been most rapidly growing, is the root domain because psychology predominantly concerns itself with subjective experience.
Subjective domain is also an area where most constructs pertain to mental health. Positive psychology conceptualizes wellbeing in mental health as a presence of the triad of following elements: pleasant life and subjective wellbeing (SWB) (Seligman, 2002), engagement and flow (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) and meaning, also referred to as psychological wellbeing (Riff, 1989).
This domain also includes other desirable psychological qualities like emotional intelligence (Salovey, & Meyer, 1989) and hope (Snyder, 2000) as well as negative construct like sadness (Wong, 2011) and depression (Lyubomirsky, 2009).
The four phenomenological strata when working with the mind to make life better and examples of associated interventions are as follows:
- consciousness and conscious awareness can be increased through exploring PPIs related to the development of awareness and attention like meditation and mindfulness (Kabat-Zin, 2003), and even cultivating ‘higher’ levels of consciousness as those that related to spirituality sometimes referred to as “awareness +”
- embodiment and embodied sensations can be developed through body awareness therapies (Gard, 2005)
- emotions and emotional intelligence can be addressed through interventions that increase compassion (Neff, & Germer, 2013) and gratitude (Emmons, & McCoullough, 2003)
- cognitions can be influenced positively through narrative restructuring exercises (Pennebaker, & Seagal, 1999) and methods that combine emotions and cognitions like the emotional intelligence interventions (Nelis et al., 2009)
From the perspective of Applied Positive Psychology, the subjective domain has the largest number of interventions.
Cultivation of attention and awareness are key to most PPIs and can be trained through meditation as a form of self-regulation practice that brings mental process under greater voluntary control, as well as many mindfulness-based practices that cultivate phenomenal awareness of sensory experiences, body position, and internal sensations, and access awareness, phenomenal experience being used for reasoning and rationally guiding speech and action.
IPPs like meditation can also be effectively used to train focus and prime executive function and behaviors of the mind to stop the mind from wandering, through:
- switching and disengaging from distractions,
- selective redirecting of focus back to the meditative objects like breath, smells, mantras, images, and sounds,
- cultivating neutral of positive attitude through loving-kindness meditation
- form and physical posture through meditative movement like yoga.
Other IPPs of mindfulness training open awareness to unfolding experience and non-judgmental paying of attention on purpose in the present moment. Examples include mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and its adaptations into mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), as well as various other treatments like awareness training programs (ATP) (Nakamori, 2011) and Buddhist-derived interventions (BDI) (Shonin, 2013).
The effectiveness of these interventions can be measured through the Mindful Attention and Awareness Scale (Brown & Ryan, 2003).
“If a desired goal state is elevated alpha amplitude (i.e., the meditative state of relaxed alertness), simply instructing people to ‘make the water calm’ can produce the desired effect.”
Lomas
Finally there are novel mindfulness-based treatments for smoking cessation (Bowen & Marlatt, 2009); the treatment of eating disorders (Dalen et al., 2010); multiple sclerosis (Mills & Allen, 2000); PTSD-related sleep disorder (Nakamura et al., 2011); people with learning difficulties and/or conduct disorders (Singh et al., 2003); and for chronic heart failure (Sullivan et al., 2009).
Embodiment and embodied sensations consist of human experience of the body, the use, and management of it, and are increasingly recognized as a pathway to wellbeing (Hefferon, 2013). Body awareness can be developed through body awareness therapies (Gard, 2005) as well as yoga (Sawni & Breuner, 2012), Tai Chi (Yeh et al., 2004, p. 541), Pilates, body scan meditation and MBSR, which was developed for people with chronic pain (Kabat-Zinn, 1982).
Yoga has been used as a clinical intervention to alleviate mental health problems like depression (Khalsa, 2007) and Tai Chi has been used with an older population to prevent falls (Voukelatos et al., 2007). Attending to our embodied experience is good for us outside of clinical scenarios as well and has been linked with physiological and psychological wellbeing (Mehling et al., 2009).
Cultivation of positive emotions through the application of positive psychology interventions is not just about feeling good, but it is meant to develop greater emotional management skills. We want to cultivate meta-emotional skills so we can reflect on emotions, which in turn provides for effective coping strategies that can help us deal with either the stressor, one’s reaction to it, or even the tendency to avoid stressors altogether.
Integrative models of emotional intelligence conceptualize EI as a global ability. Mayer and Salovey’s (1997) schema, for example, conceptualizes EI as comprising four hierarchical branches:
- emotional awareness and expression
- emotional facilitation of thought and the ability to generate emotions
- understanding emotional patterns
- strategic management of emotions.
EI synthesizes cognition and emotion. For example, Nelis et al. (2009) devised a four-week intervention program that focused on emotional understanding.
It included explanations of the key concepts and role-play to illustrate the importance of EI in week one.
Session two involved identifying emotions, especially in other people through decoding facial expressions and empathic communication.
Session three dealt with expressing and using emotions to solve problems, and session four covered emotional management in the form of theoretical group discussions around coping strategies and their effectiveness, meditative mind-body exercises and role-play activities.
Another emotional self-awareness intervention was developed to reduce pain in people with fibromyalgia and combined mindfulness exercises with education, written emotional disclosure about stress and gradual re-engagement (Hsu et al., 2010). From an integrated perspective, consciousness techniques worked well when combined with emotional disclosure, cognitive tasks of writing and behavioral practices.
There are also well-known methods like Loving-Kindness Meditation that have proved to be effective in clinical (Johnson et al., 2009) and non-clinical contexts (Fredrickson et al., 2008), and less well-known forgiveness cultivating methods like Japanese psychotherapeutic technique of Naikan (Yoshimoto, 1972).
Last but not least, there is a large number of PPI that focus predominantly on cognition, and many of them like gratitude journal or three good things are about noticing or reminiscing about positive events.
From an APP perspective, these are PPIs that help promote or reconfigure thought patterns to enhance wellbeing as in simply reflecting on one’s best possible future self (King, 2001) or better yet connecting these future selves to current school engagement (Oyserman et al., 2002).
“Stories we tell about our lives are not necessarily those lives as they were lived, but those stories become our experience of those lives.”
Frankl
Other PPIs in this category involve deeper reflection on one’s life and self-identity. Collectively referred to as cognitive restructuring exercises, these interventions are beyond positive thinking and aim at generating a deeper reflective process toward an enhanced sense of meaning in life and even posttraumatic growth (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004).
Notable interventions include intervention for bereavement to be conducted by a clinical psychologist (Ando et al., 2010), for cancer patients (Garland et al., 2007), life review therapy (Davis, 2004) and reminiscence activities designed for older people (Cook, 1998).
From an APP perspective cognitively focused PPIs we can also promote goal achievement as Sheldon et al.’s (2002) goal training program where participants first listed personal goals and then rated their reasons for pursuing them differentiating between: extrinsic, introjected, internalized, integrated, and intrinsic as defined by self-determination theory of Deci & Ryan (2000).
Although APP is a psychological domain, other domains also influence well-being and need to be explored to address the whole person. These include the quadrants of individual-objective (the body/ brain), collective-subjective (culture) and collective-objective (society).
Working with the body and brain to make life better
Individual objective domain can be termed as positive health and refers to the application of positive psychology interventions to physical health, exercise and risk behaviors, as well as their relationship to wellbeing through the mind/body connection and NCC neural correlates.
We can conceptualize a mind-body relationship as either subjective mental states influenced by physiological outcomes (psychosomatic) or as physiological processes enabled by particular mental states (somatopsychic) (Hefferon, 2013). Some of the common PPIs here are exercise, nutrition, and artistic self-expression.
From the APP perspective, we can encourage people toward regular exercise by offering countless benefits of physical activity that include enhanced self-perception and self-esteem (Fox et al., 2001), cognitive functioning (Hillman et al., 2008) and SWB (Reed & Ones, 2006).
We also know a lot today about protective effects of exercise on physical and mental health and have shown that it can reduce the risk of and ameliorate the impact of diverse health conditions, including type-2 diabetes (Colberg et al., 2010), cardiovascular disease (Vuori, 1998), some cancers (Thune et al., 1997), depression (Hoffman et al., 2011) and anxiety (Herring et al., 2010).
Nutrition has also been found to affect wellbeing. Blanchflower et al. (2013) observed an association between intake of fruit and vegetables and psychological wellbeing (PWB). Ford et al. (2013) found correlates between a Mediterranean diet and positive affect, and today we have treatments for eating disorders like “mindful eating and living” (Dalen et al., 2010) and school-based obesity prevention programs (Williamson et al., 2007).
Many forms of self-expression have been implicated in wellbeing: art and beauty can induce positive mental states, namely aesthetics (Kivy, 2009), dance as exercise and a form of self-expression can bring on positive emotions (Hefferon & Ollis, 2006) and complex emotional state of awe has also been shown to have a profound effect on wellbeing (Keltner, & Haidt, 2003).
In addition to positive health (Seligman 2008), objective wellbeing interventions also include research of biological basis of pleasure (Ryff et al., 2006), positive affect and prefrontal cortex activation (Davidson, 2000), neurofeedback (Hammond, 2005) and dance therapy.
Neurofeedback, as a non-invasive intervention that can improve wellbeing and brain functioning, is beginning to be used as a form of behavioral therapy (Moss, 2009, p. 656). Johnston et al. (2010) piloted an fMRI neurofeedback therapy for developing emotional regulation and Gruzelier et al. (2013) used neurofeedback with children to enhance attention, music creativity and wellbeing.
But we don’t live in a vacuum and according to World Values Survey (Helliwell & Putnam, 2004), the most important values are rooted in culture and society: relationships, income, work, social capital, and health.
Working with the social capital to make life better
Collective-subjective domain and its interventions are about relationships and shared culture with its values and meanings, otherwise understood as social capital. Here positive psychology is applied to areas of positive relationship science (Fincham, & Beach, 2010), family-centered positive psychology (Sheraisan at al., 2004), positive organizational scholarship (Cameron at al., 2003), and positive education (Seligman, 2009).
Collective-subjective domain also encompasses positive psychology activities in couples therapy (Kaufman, & Silberman, 2009) and positive parenting, not to mention interventions in settings like schools, combinations of home and school programs and finally clinical and community interventions. See above discussion of applied positive psychology in health, educations and the workplace.
Working within society and institutions to make life better
Collective-objective domain are material and structural aspects of social networks like socioeconomic processes. Seeking to make life better is not just about the mind or even individual but all aspects of life.
So we must consider political, cultural and socioeconomic factors and even structural factors like education or economic opportunities and how they affect wellbeing. This domain is about institutions and environments as well as impersonal processes that make wellbeing possible; e.g. employment.
According to Well-Being for Public Policy by Diener, Lucas, Schimmack, and Helliwell (2009) we currently have several well-being findings that are relevant to policy in areas of the environment, health and longevity, the social context, and work and income.
Collective-objective domains like social services can benefit from community interventions like well London Project and global institutions can be made well by policy level interventions like UN’s analysis of subjective wellbeing measures across the globe and using it for macro-policy recommendations.
At this level measures like subjective wellbeing (SWB) are considered as a barometer for social progress instead of GDP. There is also the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI), and the World Bank’s quality of governance index. Finally, extending wellbeing to our environment and societal sustainability are exemplified by interventions like the Happy Planet Index.
Future Directions of Applied Positive Psychology
As GDP in modern industrialized societies has tripled over the last 50 years and can now satisfy the basic needs of their citizens, our needs have evolved into seeking a fulfilling life. But our levels of happiness have not increased accordingly.
This discrepancy explains why wealth has not eliminated societal problems. And so positive psychology posits that we should take wellbeing into account when measuring life satisfaction and progress of humanity and shape our policies to reflect the same (Donaldson, 2011).
Measures of wellbeing are important not only because they are democratic but also because they represent how values of modern society have changed from surviving to thriving. People want engagement, fulfillment, and happiness.
Finally, people with high levels of wellbeing are essential to the effective functioning of society as people who experience a lot of negative feelings make for unstable societies prone to political conflict.
Research in positive psychology had amassed evidence that happy people have better social relationships, are more likely to thrive and work and have better health and longevity.
While it could be argued that progress in these areas causes wellbeing and promotes better relationships, healthier families and more friends, and that happy people are also more successful at work, and engage in healthier behaviors, there is more evidence that applying positive interventions to those areas of life actually causes wellbeing (Donaldson, 2011).
We know today that happy people experience higher levels of self-confidence, leadership ability, warmth and sociability and can confidently say that subjective wellbeing has benefits on the individual level.
There is also mounting evidence that promoting wellbeing through the application of positive psychology is good for societies in areas of health and longevity, social capital, pro-peace attitudes and income allowing us to conclude that wellbeing is important to psychological and social health (Donaldson, 2011).
While the LIFE model is great for discussing Applied Positive Psychology in general and the major areas of research highlight the approaches to specific scenarios, our intention for future articles will be to divide the discussion of Applied Positive Psychology into functional areas of application like work, health, and education, in order to provide our practitioners with more clearly defined set of applications relevant to their areas of expertise.
For deep dives of specific approaches like cultivation of positive emotions or developing character strengths please refer to the specific categories in our blog where you can find the theories, research, interventions and specific applications of these core areas of research.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the first who articulated what positive psychology is, has now given it a new mission: to integrate systematically and scientifically what has been found across time and space to be best about people and what constitutes a good life.
He argues that there are boundless opportunities this new image of humanity presents to applied positive psychologists and declares this new perspective in psychology a promise of a rewarding life for those who choose to pursue it (Donaldson, 2011).
What our readers think
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hi
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Thank you.
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