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Martin Seligman: Positive Psychology

Heather A. Woody

June 12, 2013

Southern New Hampshire University

Dr. William Barter

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Psychology for so long was based in the concepts of finding out what’s wrong

with people, rather than how to make you more happy. It dealt with the misery that

individuals were suffering from in their mental illnesses and had very little interventions

or ways of determining where the misery came from and how to make you less miserable.

The field of psychology has changed over the last ten years drastically, now centering on

measuring with rigor things like alcoholism and depression (Seligman). So what is the

ways in which psychology has turned into being a positive science?

Positive psychology, according to Seligman, is one that is now more centered on

the strengths that we as humans have rather than the weaknesses that we are all so aware

of (Seligman). As psychology has dealt with the lives of the mentally ill it is now turning

into concepts of how to make everyone’s lives for fulfilled through nurturing the genius

and those with high talents. Evidently those individuals that are happy, and express their

abundance of happiness, are more social beings. Although the data surrounding this

finding is more correlational than it is causal, there is an efficacy and effectiveness to the

studies regarding what actually make people happier longer; social abilities.

But it goes beyond that really, there is more to it than just being social. For

example, you have Tom. Tom is a successful man he works very hard at the stock

exchange everyday, time practically stops for Tom while he is in his mode of working.

Tom is also a very successful golfer and does it often. He also experiences this somewhat

stopping of time while he is golfing. But Tom is almost 50 and is still single, he has yet to

meet the love of his life and apparently he admits that most women state that he is boring

and dry. So therefore in Tom’s example he would be apart of the good life, the life of

engagement that shows that he has a pleasure and a flow. He is capable of flow in his
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work and in his enjoyment in life (golf). Although love was not apart of his “Good Life,”

Tom is consistent in the things that he does therefore he is at a medium point of

happiness in his life.

The different forms of “happy” that Seligman describes is the pleasant life and the

meaningful life. The pleasant life is one that can be representative of the movie star, or

the individual that won the three hundred-twenty million-dollar lottery. These people’s

lives are pleasant simply because of the things that they can obtain in order to amplify the

particular pleasures that they indulge in. But, there are of course three drawbacks to this

positive life: heritability, habituates, and the inability to be malleable (Seligman). The

meaningful life mainly of being aware of your strengths then utilizing them for a larger

cause, as well as to being apart of something that is greater than you (Seligman).

It seems that positive psychology is turning around the thoughts that began

psychology. Using what we know about being miserable and turning that into a

motivation to find out what makes people happy in the long run. The happiness does not

stop only with those that suffer from mental illness but also the “average” or “normal”

individual, making them more fulfilled in their lives. It is important to see that the full life

out weighs the empty life and that the extent of the pursuit of pleasure you need all three

different portion’s of Seligman’s positive psychology.

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Works Cited

Seligman, M. (Graphic). Retrieved from

http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.html