Positive Psychology: Evolution, Philosophical Foundations, and Present Growth

Abstract

Positive Psychology (PP) is a developing subdomain of psychology that has emerged as important field of inquiry in past 18 years. Significant development in PP is primarily because of overwhelming responses received from scholarly community to call of president of American Psychological Association (APA), Martin Seligman in 1998, who after realizing that postWorld War II psychology is mainly focused on the diagnosis, treatment, and scientific study of mental illness (Gantt & Thayne, 2014, p. 186), made a call to scholarly community to focus its attention to features of human existence that makes life worth living. Thus, contemporary PP movement, even though is of relatively recent origin, has grown remarkably in less than over two decades. Numerous PP related publications including popular books, scholarly journals, and handbooks have come up and publication of PP related articles in thejoumals of other fields such as education, public health, social sciences, management, sport sciences, business is growing steadily (Rusk & Waters, 2013).The purpose of this paper is to develop understanding of evolving subdomain of psychology PP, trace its philosophical foundations, explore its linkages with other subdomains of psychology, especially, existential psychology and humanistic psychology and map its growth in recent past. This paper first attempts to give answer to a basic question What is psychology?and presents overview of its historical development. Then it attempts to explore philosophical foundations of PP as well as its linkages with two sub-domains of psychology existential psychology and humanistic psychology. Finally, it provides overview of emergence and growth of PP in past 18 years.What is Positive Psychology?During initial years of development, there was lack of understanding among scholarly community what exactly PP is and for many people it sounded like 'a panacea for many modem ills' (Linley et al., 2006, p. 5). In broadest sense, as Sheldon and King (2001) suggest, PP is a call to psychologists to stretch their frame of references while looking psychological issues as a narrowly focused negative aspects of human lives to amore open and appreciative perspective regarding human potentials, motives, and capacities (p. 216).As PP drew wider attention of scholarly community, many definitions of PP appeared in literature. Seligman, Steen, Park and Peterson (2005) labeled PP as an umbrella term for study of emotions, character traits, and enabling (p. 410). Sheldon and King (2001) view PP as scientific study of ordinary human strengths and virtues, whereas Sheldon (2011) states that it also aims at discovering and promoting factors that allow individuals and communities to thrive. Seligman and Cskiszentmihalyi (2001) in their one of most cited articles on PP published in American Psychologist define PP in following way:The field of psychology at subjective level is about valued subjective experiences: well-being, contentment, and satisfaction (in past), hope and optimism (for future); and flow and happiness (in present). At individual level, it is about individual traits: capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent, and wisdom. At group level, it is about civic virtues and institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship: responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, moderation, tolerance, and work ethic (Seligman & Cskiszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 5).Another widely cited definition of PP is definition put forward by Gable and Haidt (2005) which states that positive psychology is study of conditions and processes that contribute to flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups, and (p. …