Category: Positive Psychology

  • Strengths and Weaknesses

    Are you aware of your personal strengths and weaknesses? In this article we’ll look at:

    • The distinction between strengths and weaknesses, and why it may be more important to focus on strengths.
    • How to identify your strengths and weaknesses
    • How to manage and work around your weaknesses when focusing on your strengths

    “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” This is probably the most hated interview question, but apart from the enjoyment of watching us squirm while trying to answer it, there’s a good reason employers might want to ask it; it could allow them to fit you into a role in which you could use your personal strengths, and has minimum focus on your weaknesses.

    Alas, this doesn’t tend to happen – Gallup report that 68% of employees don’t get to use their strengths on a daily basis! The thinking seems to be that there’s a global characteristic called ‘talent’, and if employers can find people with ‘talent’, they can train them to do whatever job is necessary – after all, they’re ‘talented’!

    However, talent doesn’t work like that; there are many possible talents that a person could have. When we see someone who does well in their profession, we generally call them talented; but in fact they usually have just focused on their natural strengths, and minimised their weaknesses. There are plenty of examples: the genius artist who lives like a slob; the expert computer programmer with no charisma; the incredible athlete who has no skill with numbers. You wouldn’t hire the first person to be your interior designer, the second to lead your sales team, or the third to do your taxes, yet they are all talented.

    So, ‘talent’ is not defined by being a whizz in everything you do. It’s a case of finding activities that require your strengths but not your weaknesses, and developing your expertise in these areas.

    Your strengths

    How do you find out what your strengths are, so that you can use and develop them? There are several ways, the best one will depend on your personality. If you are reflective and perceptive, you might want to try self-reflection. If you think you’ll find this difficult, you could take a questionnaire. These questionnaires are not the flimsy little tests you find in popular magazines; they are empirically validated measurements based on a great deal of research. The main ones at the moment are the Values In Action model and the StrengthsFinder model. A new model, Realise2 has recently entered the fray too and looks interesting. Here are the strengths from the former two models:

    StrengthsFinder

    Achiever
    Activator
    Adaptability
    Analytical
    Arranger
    Belief
    Command
    Communication
    Competition
    Connectedness
    Context
    Deliberative
    Developer
    Discipline
    Empathy
    Consistency
    Focus
    Futuristic
    Harmony
    Ideation
    Includer
    Individualization
    Input
    Intellection
    Learner
    Maximizer
    Positivity
    Relator
    Responsibility
    Restorative
    Self-Assurance
    Significance
    Strategic
    Woo

    VIA

    Wisdom and Knowledge
    Creativity
    Curiosity
    Judgment, Open-Mindedness, critical thinking
    Love of Learning
    Perspective, wisdom
    Courage
    Bravery
    Perseverance, industriousness
    Honesty, authenticity, integrity
    Zest
    Humanity
    Capacity to Love and Be Loved
    Kindness, generosity and nurturance
    Social Intelligence
    Justice
    Teamwork
    Fairness
    Leadership
    Temperance
    Forgiveness & Mercy
    Modesty & Humility
    Prudence
    Self-Regulation, self-control
    Transcendence
    Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence
    Gratitude
    Hope, optimism, future-mindedness
    Humor
    Religiousness & Spirituality

    More information on these models can be found in this comparison between VIA and StrengthsFinder article. Once you’ve identified your strengths, next you’ll need to know what to do with them.

    Weaknesses

    Weaknesses can be identified in the same way: self-reflection or questionnaires. If you take the questionnaires, this time, of course, look at the bottom section of your results. Note that the StrengthsFinder model does not report your weaknesses; only your top strengths, so you’ll have to use the VIA questionnaire to figure out your weaknesses in this way.

    The next question that arises is, if we’re better of focusing on our strengths, then what do we do about our weaknesses? Do we just ignore them? The answer will depend entirely on the situation. You should avoid trying to develop your weaknesses if you can, by outsourcing or finding technical solutions if possible. There’s more information on how to work around weaknesses here.

    Recommended Reading:

  • What to do with your Strengths

    Short Version

    1) Find ways to use strengths more in your life
    2) Look for supplementary knowledge on using these strengths in the domains you have chosen
    3) Practice the activities that use the strengths and/or get training in them

    Long Version

    lego strong man hammer

    Alright.  So you understand that a strength is a part of your brain that’s more efficient than other parts, like broadband is to dial-up.  And you agree with me that life is easier when you stick to your strengths.  Potentially, you can do anything you set your mind to, but it’s going to be a better experience if you set your mind to something that employs your strengths.  Also, you’ve figured out what your strengths are through either self-reflection or questionnaires.

    Now what?

    The next step is to blend your strengths into your life, and get over the obstacles that come up as you do so.  As I imply above, I’m assuming you’re sold on the idea of doing this; if not, re-read the links above to review the benefits, do some further reading through the books I mention or on the web, and ponder the issue further.  If you’re still not convinced, then move along: there’s nothing more to see here.

    If you’re still with me, let’s start with…

    Strengths and Career

    You probably spend between 30 and 50 hours per week working.  Most visitors to Generally Thinking are from the UK and US, so you’re probably near the top end of that scale too; congratulations if you’re not.  In any case, career seems like a good place to start.

    You’ve got two possibilities:

    1) Rearrange your present work so that it involves your strengths
    2) Switch to work that does involve your strengths

    Which of these you do, is up to you.  I suppose it depends on how much you like what you’re doing now balanced against how much you want to fit your strengths into your career.  If your current career doesn’t appear to make use of your identified strengths, don’t immediately conclude you’re miscast, because using option 1 you might later find yourself a good fit.

    Rearrange

    Here you have to discover what strengths you are currently using, then see if you can add the other ones into your role.  Your position might employ one or two of your strengths really well, then it’s a matter of finding ways to add the others in.  If you can’t find ways to add any of your strengths in, you’re currently going against the grain.  You should consider what’s keeping you doing this, and consider Option 2.  If your current role is temporary or a stepping-stone job, you’ll still enjoy it more if you can rearrange the way you do it around your strengths.

    “You might have to get a bit creative, to blend your strengths into your career.”

    The various books on strengths offer basic examples on how to rearrange, such as a cashier with the strength of social intelligence, who started engaging customers more in conversation at the checkout.  If I described how to use every strength in every possible role, I’d be about 80 when I finished this article, so you’ll have to get a bit creative.  But since Gallup discovered that successful people find ways to do this, it’s potentially worth the effort.

    The other day I was reading interviews with two rock-band front-men, Rivers Cuomo of Weezer, and Tim Wheeler of Ash.  Here’s an example of two people in the same role, unconsciously fitting their strengths into it.  Rivers is shy, introspective, and did an English Literature course at Harvard.  He’d probably show up strengths like intellection, analyse or learner.  Tim seems more charismatic and confident, he parties a lot and might have the strengths of Woo and Positivity.  Both are the primary songwriters for their respective bands, so their biggest strength will surely be Arranger, or the VIA strength Creativity.

    But they seem to lever their other apparent strengths into the mix too: Rivers analysed songs by the Beatles, Nirvana and other bands, and created a file called “The Encyclopaedia of Pop”.  He then extrapolated a songwriting framework from this analysis, which he uses to write his songs.  Tim writes upbeat and positive songs, drawing inspiration from things like sunshine and having a good time.  Both of them are very successful, with multiple platinum selling albums.

    Switch

    Option 2 is easier from the point of view of fitting your strengths in, but harder in that you’re making a big change, which most people don’t find easy.  If it’s time to make a change, then looking at your strengths, it should be fairly easy to draft up ideas for roles which involve them.

    “Switching careers makes it easier to use your strengths, but most people don’t find change easy.”

    For example, looking at my own readout in the last article, my strengths were based around learning, curiosity, critical thinking, and forward thinking.  So I’m suited perhaps for something like research, where all of these come into play, and also something like writing or blogging, so I can make extra pocket money by writing about what I learn, and of course learn more about it in the process.  Hmm, what a coincidence, this happens to be the direction I’m heading in.  Don’t say I don’t practice what I preach!

    What strengths can’t tell you is the field you could go into – Gallup’s research did not indicate a relationship between fields and strengths.  For example, you could play the role ‘journalist’ in any number of fields: science, politics, celebrity gossip, and so on.  Strengths offer guidance on the role – not the field.

    Managing Expectations

    Remember, your aim is to look for ways to make more use of your natural and spontaneous ways of responding to the world.  You’re not searching for something that you’re already a master at!   Excellence will come later.  Faster, but still later.

    This is an important point to remember, which Marcus Buckingham makes clear in Now, Discover Your Strengths.  What if you arrange your whole life around your strengths, and then still don’t find the good life?   You’ve already given it your best shot, and with your strengths, no less!  Buckingham says “When the cause of failure seems to have nothing to do with who we really are, we can accept it.”  I’ve already drilled into you that your strengths are an enduring part of you, so what kind of torment would partner this kind of failure?  Buckingham suggests the fear of this could put you off trying.

    “It seems more sensible to deal with a wounded ego than to not bother trying anything.”

    If you never give it your best shot, you’ve always got an excuse, haven’t you?  Like the would-be suitor in a nightclub who acts like a little strange when talking to the attractive girl; a little bit too cocky, a little bit exaggerated.  If the girl turns him down, it’s not him she’s rejecting, it’s the act.  His ego and pride are protected, safe and sound.  But of course what he gains in ego-protection he loses in effectiveness.

    I think the parallels here are similar.  To me, it seems more sensible to find ways of dealing with a wounded ego than to not bother at all.  There’s all kinds of ways out there that offer to do that; meditation, cognitive behavioural therapy, progressive exposure, and so on.

    To bring up a final question for this section: is feeling a certain way really a good reason not to do something?  I had this idea when thinking about Steve Olson’s article on procrastination.  I’m not talking about safety and survival instincts; if you feel a dark alley is unsafe, that definitely is a good reason not to walk down it.  I mean more benign decisions.  There’s a lot going on in this culture – more people around than our brains are really designed to cope with, then there’s media, bills, careers; a whole cacophony of expectations placed on us.  How would you know whether a certain feeling you have should be trusted, like you would with the dark alley, or when it comes from something that you’ve arbitrarily integrated from the outside, with no particular relevance to you personally?  I don’t know the answer to this, so please let me know if you do.

    Add skills and knowledge

    Using the strengths more in your life is a road to happiness, more engagement, and all sorts of other benefits.  It’s also a road to greater performance – a better chance of reaching excellence in your chosen field.  But as we’ve just seen, you still need to hone your strengths further, by deliberately practising them, and also by adding in skills and knowledge.

    “To get ‘consistent, near-perfect performance’, you need skills and knowledge, as well as talent.”

    The reason for this is summed up in Gallup’s definition of a strength – to achieve “consistent, near perfect performance”.  In fact, Gallup define a strength as a strength only after the skills and knowledge have been appropriated.  They call them ‘talents’ prior to this; I’ve just used the term strength for convenience, and to compare models.  To get this level of performance, you may need to focus your efforts on one or more strengths, like the rockstars I mentioned above, who apparently focus on creativity, and use the other strengths to support this effort.  This was an easy choice for me too, as three of my top five strengths are mental/reflective, so it was obvious that this is the place to focus.

    The skills and knowledge you pick up will be experiential as well as deliberately researched or taught.  Some things you simply can’t get except through hands on practice, other things you can get from a book or trainer.  Our rockstars above may have had knowledge training in the form of music theory, skills training through tuition and practising scales, but their unique style of guitar playing and song-writing, that can only come through hands on practice – allowing their brains and nervous systems to end up with pathways and connections, causing them to respond to a guitar and to music the way they do.  There’s really no way of getting around this.

    This just about wraps up this series on strengths, barring a couple of loose-ends to tie up (managing weaknesses, for one).  Thanks for reading, hope it’s been useful!

    Recommended Reading:


    [Lego Strength image by Coldpants]

  • Leadership strengths

    Strengths-based approaches to work and life are popular these days; particularly in how personal strengths can improve leadership, as better leaders mean better experiences for employees, more productivity, and more money (or other bottom line).  But a key question is, do leadership strengths exist?  Are there strengths that all leaders share?  If so, what are they?  And if not, how can the current perspectives on strengths create better leaders?

    What makes a good leader?

    “Good Leader” seems to be a fluid concept, depending very much on the context.  Strengths-based approaches to leadership argue that good leadership isn’t a matter of having a specific set of “leadership strengths,” but rather, it’s a matter of leveraging the strengths a leader already has in a way that gets the job done.  This isn’t to say that certain skills and abilities aren’t required by most, if not all leaders; it’s just that there isn’t one particular ‘mould’ that a person has to fit into to be a leader – they come in all shapes and sizes.

    There are two major models of strengths – StrengthsFinder and Values in Action. If you’re a follower of the ‘strengths movement’, you’ll be familiar with at least one, if not both of these; if not, you can find a comparison here: Values in Action Vs StrengthsFinder.

    The StrengthsFinder Perspective

    Gallup’s work on leadership strengths is found in the book Strengths-Based Leadership.  They conducted thousands of interviews to create the Strengths Finder model, and they didn’t find any one strength that all leaders shared.  But, they did find that the most effective leaders invested in their own strengths – and the strengths of their team.

    Why aren’t certain strengths more common among good leaders?  It could be because of leadership styles.  Research identified four common styles: executing, influencing, relationship building, and strategic thinking.  The 34 Gallup strengths are linked up to these categories, and the style of leadership you’re likely to use is related to which of these categories your personal strengths are in.  This is why good leadership is more a matter of using your own strengths, as opposed to fitting the mould of a mentor, or stereotype.

    But this line isn’t so concretely drawn, as they found a few more interesting things:

    • Followers look for trust, compassion, stability and hope from a leader
    • Leaders understand their followers’ needs
    • Leaders create teams based on people who have strengths that compliment their own, as I briefly mentioned in strengths and weaknesses.

    So while no particular StrengthFinder strength is necessary, leaders do need to know their own strengths and weaknesses well enough to form a team around them, and they also need the necessary perceptiveness to understand their team members’ needs.

    The Values in Action Perspective

    The VIA model views the ability to lead as a strength in itself.  They measure leadership one-dimensionally, rather than scoring you on different theoretical aspects of leadership.  And it’s done through self-report, so your leadership strength is reflected by your answers to questions about how often you lead, your opinion of yourself as a leader, and your opinion of your friends’ opinions of yourself as a leader, and so on.

    This is a bit open to error, just as all self-report measurements are, but based on the Gallup findings it might be the most accurate way to do it.  I only found one study looking at the VIA strengths of leaders, which compared CEOs with their employees.  You can get a pdf from the University of Zurich’s website.  The results are below, hopefully they won’t mind me copying this graph here:

    As you can see, there’s very little difference between the strengths of CEOs and employees, which the Gallup research would predict.  There were a few differences though – CEOs were higher in ‘open-mindedness’, ‘bravery’, and ‘leadership’, but lower in ‘kindness’ and ‘appreciation of beauty and excellence’.

    (You may notice other differences on the graph, but these weren’t ‘statistically significant’, which is jargon basically meaning the scores are too close together to know if the slight difference was a fluke finding or not).

    Although these differences seem to go against the StrengthsFinder results, they don’t really.  As I know Gallup reached their conclusions through interviews, so it would have been qualitative research and open-ended questions.  So they wouldn’t be able to pick up subtle differences like the VIA questionnaire would.  Also, this study only looked at one type of leader – CEOs, a very distinctive type, which might attract people with a particular leadership style.

    With the graph showing such similarities between CEOs and employees, the general idea that there’s no specific leadership strengths holds up here too – at least based on this one study, and exluding ‘leadership’ itself obviously.

    So what makes a good leader, from a strengths perspective?

    • You don’t need any leadership strengths per se, but you need to know and invest in the strengths you do have (which you might do through self-reflection or questionnaires).
    • You must know your weaknesses, and shape your team to compliment them.
    • Finally, be perceptive enough to understand the needs of your team.  Individual needs, you’ll have to work out yourself, but generally speaking people tend to look to leaders for trust, compassion, stability and hope.

    Although this field is quite well researched, it’s not without critics.  So if you’re interested, you should look into the field further and see if you think it’s worth trying out.  The book Strengths-Based Leadership would be a good place to start, and there are also some good blogs that deal with strengths and leadership, like Clifton Strengths Blogger, and The Practice of Leadership.

    Recommended Reading:

     

  • Does Happiness Lead to Success? Part 3: Health

    This series is discussing the idea that not only does success bring happiness, but happiness also brings success.  Previously, we found that happiness helps people to have better careers and better relationships.  Today, we’ll see that they also have better health, too.

    The authors of the paper put the question this way: “Is happiness associated with superior physical and mental health?”  I like the sound of that!  Superior physical and mental health – that has a nice ring to it, that’s definitely something I want.  In fact, that’s what I want on my gravestone: “Here lies Warren Davies. Had superior physical and mental health.”

    As with the previous two articles, I’ll show some of the findings from cross-sectional/correlational studies first (comparing happiness with health at one point in time):

    Mental Health and Happiness

    • Happier people have fewer symptoms of psychopathology (eg., depression or schizophrenia)
    • The absence of positive emotion is a distinguishing feature of depression
    • Happier people are less likely to suffer from social anxiety or phobia
    • Happy people are less likely to use drugs
    • Unhappy teens are more likely to show delinquent behaviour

    Physical Health and Happiness

    • Happy people have smaller allergic reactions
    • In one study, positive mood was associated with fewer visits to the hospital, less medication use, and other positive outcomes in people with sickle cell disease
    • Optimism is associated with less pain in ageing war veterans
    • Optimistic women are less likely to deliver low-birth weight babies

    Just like before, the above findings can only tell us that “happiness” and “superior physical and mental health” tend to occur together in people.  They can’t tell us what causes what, because measurements were only taken at one point in time.  Plus the mental health findings are pretty obvious – no one’s getting a Nobel Prize for those discoveries!

    So, here are the longitudinal study findings to save the day (studies trying to find out if more happiness now means better health later):

    • Happiness measures taken from 5,000 people were reliable predictors of how many days were missed due to illness, and days spent in hospital, over the next five years
    • People with higher positive mood had lower incidences of stroke 6 years later
    • Happy hockey players experience fewer sports-related injuries over the ensuing season
    • Happier people were found to be less likely to die in automobile accidents (!)

    There are a few more findings, but you get the point.  No doubt good health is a source of happiness, but interestingly, happiness is a source of good health and a long life too.  I’ll look at the reasons this might be in the next article, but it appears there are both direct and indirect effects.

    So now you know the different ways that happiness can improve your success in life, as well as the the other way around.  Generally speaking, happier people do better at work, earn more, have more friends, are luckier in love, and enjoy better health.

    In the next article we’ll look at how happiness is thought to bring these benefits. By the way, you can find more info on health and happiness here.

    This series was based on the below paper published in Psychological Bulletin by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King and Ed Deiner – three big names in positive psychology.  It was a huge effort, they analysed 225 studies with over 275,000 participants in total!  All three researchers have books out so if you like the stuff in these articles, stick their names into Amazon and see if there’s something you like!

    Apart from the side-splitting humour, all the points in this article came from this reference.  If you’re looking for the original studies, get the pdf of the above reference and do a Ctrl+F (or Apple+F) to search for the finding you’re looking for.  Then find the study in their reference list.

    Recommended Reading:


    References: (1) Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Deiner, E. (2005). The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success? Psychological Bulletin, 131/6, 803–855

  • Does Happiness Lead to Success? Part 2: Love and Relationships

    This series is discussing the idea that not only does success bring happiness, but happiness also brings success.  Last time we found that happiness helps people to have better jobs and earn more money; today we’re going to see whether they enjoy better relationships too. I’ve already written articles on happiness as it relates to marriage, and social relationships, so I’ll just add a few extra findings today.

    Romance, Marriage and Happiness

    • One of the strongest findings in happiness research is the positive correlation between social relationships and happiness
    • Happy people tend to have more friends and more social support
    • Happy people are more satisfied with the friends they have and less prone to jealousy of other people
    • On the other hand, loneliness has a negative correlation with happiness, and a positive correlation with depression
    • Happy people are good for society – they spend more time volunteering

    More Evidence

    Just like last time, the above evidence in cross-sectional, which means you can’t determine from it what is the cause and what is the effect.  You need longitudinal evidence for that – studies that track a variable over time.

    Although studies tracking happiness and relationships over time are sparse, there are a few.  One paper reported that happier people received more emotional and tangible assistance from others, over a year after the happiness measures were taken.

    In terms of romance, it’s a two-way street  – if you’re happier, you’re more likely to find a partner and get married, and when you get married, you receive a boost in happiness that lasts over the long term.   For example, college yearbook entries for a sample of women were analysed for how much positive emotion they conveyed.  Amazingly, this could be used to predict how satisfied they were with their marriages, 31 years later!

    These findings fit into the authors’ theory that happiness is a signal to expand as well as a result of successful expansion – it’s a kind of dry way of putting it, but when you get married you effectively double your resources.  You pool tangible possessions, money, you both have access to more emotional support, meet new people from the other family and so on.  So it makes sense that marriage would bring happiness.  Oh yeah, plus there’s all the love, sex and mushy stuff too.  Let’s not forget that.

    So far so good for the theory – happiness can be a cause of social and romantic success, not just a result of it.  Next time we’ll ask whether happiness improves our health.

    This series was based on the below paper published in Psychological Bulletin by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King and Ed Deiner – three big names in positive psychology.  It was a huge effort, they analysed 225 studies with over 275,000 participants in total!  All three researchers have books out so if you like the stuff in these articles, stick their names into Amazon and see if there’s something you like!

    Apart from the side-splitting humour, all the points in this article came from this reference.  If you’re looking for the original studies, get the pdf of the above reference and do a Ctrl+F (or Apple+F) to search for the finding you’re looking for.  Then find the study in their reference list.

    Recommended Reading:


    References:

    (1) Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Deiner, E. (2005). The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success? Psychological Bulletin, 131/6, 803–855

  • Does Happiness Lead to Success? Part 1: Work

    Let’s look at happiness from a different perspective.  Most people see happiness as a response to good things happening; a natural assumption to make, considering that when good things happen, it makes us happy.  But the evidence is piling up that happiness is also a cause of good things happening.  And by ‘good thing’, I don’t mean that people smile at you more because you’re cheerful, or some other pleasant but ultimately feebly benefit.  I mean a better career, more chance of finding love, better resistance to disease, and many other things.

    How is happiness supposed to bring success?

    road_to_success

    Happiness is a signal that things are going well.  You’re safe, you have access to the resources you need, and you’re making progress towards your goals – life is good.  When things are good, it makes little sense to put walls around you and carefully guard everything you have (a hallmark of ‘negative’ emotions).  It’s a better time to expand, take on new goals and challenges.

    Imagine you’re really rich.  A multi-millionnaire if you like.  Someone comes to you with a proposal for an investment.  It’ll cost you £10k, and it’s risky, but the return could be pretty good.  Do you do it?  Probably!  £10k is small change to you, you wouldn’t even notice the loss.  That’s an extreme example, but basically it’s a similar principle with happiness.  It encourages a person to expand, because the mind thinks opportunity is knocking.  Therefore happy people should get more success, because their emotional state essentially makes trying to succeed more appealing.

    Now the researchers in this field aren’t saying that the direction of causality is only from happiness to success.  This wouldn’t even logically follow.  If you got some success, your resources and abundance would increase, which according to this theory is one of the reasons you get happy in the first place!  So if it’s true that happiness contributes to success, it can only be true that success contributes to happiness as well.  So you could get a kind of upward spiral (though other things, like adaptation, complicate the matter).

    This series of posts is based on a huge analysis done in 2005 (1), see the footnotes for more information on the researchers.  They pulled together a huge amount of evidence together to see if this perspective on happiness holds up, and find that it does in three areas: work, love and relationships, and health.  Here we’ll look at work, but first let’s make sure we know what we’re talking about.

    What do they mean by ‘happiness’?

    The definition of happiness in this study was slightly different to the one normally used in studies (life satisfaction or subjective well-being, see what is happiness?).  The definition here, is the experience of frequent positive emotions, and less frequent (though not completely absent) negative emotions.

    Why this different definition?  Because in this framework, it’s positive emotion that leads us to pursue new goals and opportunities in the moment – rather than how pleased we are with life generally.

    So technically they are saying that success comes from from a happy state, not a happy disposition, but, a person with a happy disposition will be in a happy state more of the time.

    What is success?

    What do you think success is?  You might see success as lots of money and a family.  A man in the Mursi tribe of Ethiopia might see success as living to the age of thirty and marrying a woman with a 10″ ceramic plate in her lip.  So success means to do well relative to the goals valued by the society you’re in.

    As this study was done in the US, the researchers decided to use work, love and health as the markers of success.

    Work

    If you’re reading this from anywhere outside of a Western culture, let me assure you, we love to work!  Well, most people complain about work, but they still get up at 7am every morning to do it.  There’s very little I’d choose to get out of bed for at 7 in the morning, and yet I’ve woken up at that time and earlier, thousands of times, to go to work.

    “Most people complain about work; but still get up at 7am every morning to do it!”

    Work gets a bad rep, but it’s pretty normal human behaviour; even back in hunter/gatherer times we had to, well, hunt and gather.  We assume we did anyway, based on the tools and other goodies we’ve dug up.  I’ve never actually met a 40,000 year old person so I don’t really know for sure, but it’s a safe bet.  Work is just the name given to activities which allow people and groups to build their resources.  In modern life, we get tokens called ‘money’ in exchange for work, which we can exchange for the work of other people.  Work also (potentially) allows us to do something meaningful, and produce the things our society needs.

    Plus, as we live in a meritocracy, the better we are at work, the more we produce for society, the more money tokens you get and the more good stuff we can exchange them for.  That’s one of the reasons we want to do well at work.  So are happy people more successful at work than their unhappy colleagues, generally speaking?

    Happy Workers are Successful Workers

    happy_workers

    Here are some interesting findings about happiness in the workplace. Happier people:

    • Are more likely to get job interviews
    • Are more likely to receive positive evaluations once on the job
    • Are more productive
    • Handle managerial roles better
    • Have less ‘job burnout’
    • Tend to be more satisfied with their jobs
    • Earn more money

    It seems clear that happiness and success go hand-in-hand at work.  But these are all correlational studies, and you’ve probably heard the catchphrase “correlation does not mean causality.”  In other words, they may go together but we don’t know which is the cause and which the effect, or whether both are an effect of something else altogether.

    So more evidence is needed.  The next step is longitudinal evidence.  This is where something is measured at time 1, then something else (or the same thing) is measured at time 2.  In this case, the researchers looked for studies that measured happiness first, then symptoms of success months or years down the line.

    They found a few.  For example. after a job interview, happier people are relatively more likely to get a second interview three months down the line.  In another study, people with more positive emotion at age 18, were more likely to be financially independent, and generally doing well in their career.  The researchers also found that doing well in their career made the participants happy too – so the link between happiness and career is a two-way street, as expected.

    Happy people also earn more money tokens!  One study found that happier Australians were more likely to receive an income increase in the near future, compared to their less happy mates.  A similar result was found with a Russian study panel.  Yet another study found that students who were more cheerful in their first year of study were earning more money some 16 years later.

    In other words, more happiness now = more money and better career later.

    So, in terms of career and money, it seems that happiness is not just a consequence, but also a cause.  The idea that happiness causes success gets some support from the workplace.  Next time, we’ll look into love and relationships.

    This series was based on the below paper published in Psychological Bulletin by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King and Ed Deiner – three big names in positive psychology.  It was a huge effort, they analysed 225 studies with over 275,000 participants in total!  All three researchers have books out so if you like the stuff in these articles, stick their names into Amazon and see if there’s something you like!

    All the points in this article came from the reference below.  If you’re looking for the original studies, get the pdf of the above reference and do a Ctrl+F (or Apple+F) to search for the finding you’re looking for.  Then find the study in their reference list.


    Recommended Reading:

    References:

    (1) Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Deiner, E. (2005). The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success? Psychological Bulletin, 131/6, 803–855

    Images:

    Roads and ‘Success’ by Toban Black, Happy Workers by fauxels.

  • The impact of 9/11 on American character

    Let’s have some fun and pick apart a paper (try saying “pick apart a paper” 10 times fast!)

    The question is, did 9/11 impact the character of Americans? I mean that personally not just in political attitudes towards this or that. It’s a tough question to answer empirically.

    “What do you mean by character?” is the obvious first hurdle. Peterson and Seligman (2003) had a go, using their VIA model. They have a website, authentichappiness.com, where people can take a VIA self-report strengths test. I’ve discussed this model previously, here’s an overview, and here’s a comparison to another model of strengths. Your interest in the rest of the article will depend on how suitable you think that tool is to answering this question. It’s pretty new and quite easy to pick it apart (see the previous posts and comments).

    So, thousands of people log in to that site and take the strengths test, giving the researchers a good opportunity to compare the results pre and post 9/11. First they looked at the 30 days before compared with the 30 days after 9/11. They found an overall difference, and then narrowed down to look at individual strengths. This is a part I’m confused about. There are 24 VIA strengths in this model, but they used a p value of .01. Surely they should have used .05 / 24 = .002? I’ve looked through the paper several times and can’t see a justification for using .01, it seems pretty arbitrary.

    Anyway, using .01 they found significant differences for the strengths of gratitude, hope, kindness, leadership, love, spirituality and teamwork. Kind of interesting, teamwork makes sense, maybe you’d expect a drop in things like hope straight after a terrorist attack.

    When testing longer time periods, they stuck to the strengths that were significantly different in the month immediately after “For the sake of convenience”. Here are the results (this is a composite measure of the strengths identified in the first analysis which they name “Theological Virtues”):

    At first glance 9/11/01 is clearly separating this increase. But how big is the difference? Effect sizes are not reported in the paper. As you can see in the graph, the difference is from about 3.7 to 3.8. What does it mean to be .1 higher in a combination of gratitude, hope, kindness, leadership, love, spirituality and teamwork? Does that mean anything in real terms, or does the difference only exist statistically? Even then, the exact p value is not given, in favour of “ps < .05". So we're back to .05 now, even though they say they tested each of the pre to each of the post time-points (12 tests), and presumably the ps are between .01 and .05 otherwise why not say < .01, or less than .001? We should also note that the sample sizes are massive - 4510 participants overall, which cannot help but contribute to lower p values, regardless of real-world effects. Anyway, even if this result was correct, maybe it isn't truly representative of the nation. As I mentioned, these results were from people who found the website (not a controlled sample). "Walk-ins" you might say. Another explanation is, after 9/11, people with more hope, leadership, gratitude etc., were more inclined to seek out and complete questionnaires of this type. I started by asking whether 9/11 affected the character of Americans. The answer is, "Who knows?" Saying that 9/11 gave Americans more gratitude, hope, kindness, leadership, love, spirituality and teamwork is a nice story, but I don't think these results really show that. Reference: Peterson, C.,&Seligman, M. E. P. (2003). Character strengths before and after 9/11. Psychological Science, 14(4), 381-384.

  • Battle Of The Strengths: Values In Action Vs StrengthsFinder

    These two dominant models of strengths are slightly different in concept.  Gallup’s Strengthsfinder is more workplace-oriented, helping people to do better in their careers and organisations to work better.   Perhaps performance-oriented is a better term.  Values In Action (VIA), which we looked at in depth earlier, is character-oriented, helping people to achieve virtue.

    First of all, I should say that StrengthsFinder doesn’t measure something Gallup calls ‘strengths’.  They measure ‘talents’, which are defined as natural ways of thinking and behaving, and by adding skills and knowledge, they say talents can become strengths, which they define as consistent near-perfect performance.  Since SF talends and VIA strengths are the same thing, I’ll just call talents strengths for consistency.

    Given these basic conceptual differences, I wondered whether their respective questionnaires would return slightly different results. If you look at the list of strengths below, you’ll notice there are overlaps, but maybe these labels aren’t measuring the same psychological constructs. Maybe ‘Positivity’, measured with the workplace in mind is different to ‘Optimism’ measured with virtue in mind.  Here’s the list of strengths in each model:

    StrengthsFinder

    Achiever
    Activator
    Adaptability
    Analytical
    Arranger
    Belief
    Command
    Communication
    Competition
    Connectedness
    Context
    Deliberative
    Developer
    Discipline
    Empathy
    Consistency
    Focus
    Futuristic
    Harmony
    Ideation
    Includer
    Individualization
    Input
    Intellection
    Learner
    Maximizer
    Positivity
    Relator
    Responsibility
    Restorative
    Self-Assurance
    Significance
    Strategic
    Woo

    VIA

    Wisdom and Knowledge
    Creativity
    Curiosity
    Judgment, Open-Mindedness, critical thinking
    Love of Learning
    Perspective, wisdom
    Courage
    Bravery
    Perseverance, industriousness
    Honesty, authenticity, integrity
    Zest
    Humanity
    Capacity to Love and Be Loved
    Kindness, generosity and nurturance
    Social Intelligence
    Justice
    Teamwork
    Fairness
    Leadership
    Temperance
    Forgiveness & Mercy
    Modesty & Humility
    Prudence
    Self-Regulation, self-control
    Transcendence
    Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence
    Gratitude
    Hope, optimism, future-mindedness
    Humor
    Religiousness & Spirituality

    The bold headings for the VIA are the virtues, the strengths below them are the routes to expressing that virtue.  These categories were not empirically determined, although there are arguments as to why they’re distributed as such.

    “The VIA strengths are meant to be positive and wholesome; StrengthsFinder is all about performance.”

    The first thing you’ll notice is that there are more strengths in the StrengthsFinder, but the second thing you’ll notice is that the VIA model has no compunctions about grouping similar strengths under one label.  Most of the time they are similar, but some of them I feel might be better off  separated.  For example, ‘hope’ and ‘optimism’ are similar but not quite the same thing; hope accepts the possibility of failure where as optimism is almost dismissive of failure.  And ‘future-mindedness’ is put under the same label, even though if you were future-minded and pessimistic, your forward thinking nature could be called a strength but it wouldn’t be picked up as well by the VIA questionnaire.

    The VIA strengths are (primarily) meant to be positive and wholesome, to not have potential to detract if not used or attract jealousy when they are.  If more people exercised these strengths, the world would be a better place, both for the individuals and the people they affect.  This is kind of the point.

    StrengthsFinder is (primarily) about performance, becoming more effective and more productive.  This does not mean you can’t be virtuous with the StrengthsFinder strengths or effective with VIA: it’s just worth keeping in mind the intentions of the models when you’re deciding which one to use either for your self or in applied settings.

    For example, I’ve argued elsewhere that it’s a good idea to stick to your strengths, on the basis that maybe we can’t “Do anything we set our minds do,” and even if we can we have to take the quality of the journey into account, and it’s less satisfying against the grain (though to be fair the experimental evidence is still a little thin).  But with the VIA model based on building character, you might find something like love or honesty at the bottom of your profile.  It seems incorrect to say to someone “Forget being honest; it’s not your strength so you might as well just lie to people!”

    If your aim is to improve your performance in some domain, it might make more sense to go with StrengthsFinder or use common sense when interpreting your VIA profile; focus on the top strengths, but be aware there might be benefit in developing weaknesses of character while there’s possibly less benefit in developing performance-based weaknesses.

    As I said before, there is a lot both models agree on.  Ultimately, it’s impossible to know whether the strengths listed in both models relate to the same things without looking at both questionnaires, and doing a dedicated study and analysis – which hasn’t been done as far as I am aware, because the Gallup StrengthsFinder is copyrighted intellectual property.  But I expect they are very close, so out of curiosity I did my own experiment; I took both tests to compare the results.

    I went to the Authentic Happiness site to take the VIA Inventory of Strengths, then the next week I took StrengthsFinder 1.0, using the code from a Now, Discover Your Strengths book.  The Authentic Happiness website stores your results, so I intentionally didn’t look at them after I’d finished so as not to unconsciously influence my answers to the StrengthsFinder.

    With a sample size of 1, my experiment is flawed, but still, the results were pretty interesting.  These are my profiles:

    My VIA Strengths

    Curiosity and interest in the world – You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.

    Love of learning – You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.

    Hope, optimism, and future-mindedness – You expect the best in the future, and you work to achieve it. You believe that the future is something that you can control.

    Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness – Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind.

    Caution, prudence, and discretion – You are a careful person, and your choices are consistently prudent ones. You do not say or do things that you might later regret.

    My StrengthsFinder Strengths

    Harmony – You look for areas of agreement. In your view there is little to be gained from conflict and friction, so you seek to hold them to a minimum.

    Intellection – You like to think. You like mental activity. You like exercising the “muscles” of your brain, stretching them in multiple directions. This need for mental activity may be focused; for example, you may be trying to solve a problem or develop an idea or understand another person’s feelings.

    Futuristic – “Wouldn’t it be great if . . .” You are the kind of person who loves to peer over the horizon. The future fascinates you. As if it were projected on the wall, you see in detail what the future might hold, and this detailed picture keeps pulling you forward, into tomorrow.

    Learner – You love to learn. The subject matter that interests you most will be determined by your other themes and experiences, but whatever the subject, you will always be drawn to the process of learning.

    Focus – “Where am I headed?” you ask yourself. You ask this question every day. Guided by this theme of Focus, you need a clear destination. Lacking one, your life and your work can quickly become frustrating.

    I have to say, these are pretty accurate for me.  Curiosity and love of learning are probably my main drives, tempered by my caution and critical thinking.  So I’m curious about the world and how it works, but I don’t go jumping in caves just to see what’s in them, and you won’t find me at tarot card readings.  I also like to know as many facts as possible before making a decision, and get a both sides of a story.

    My StrengthsFinder results propose harmony, which is true, I’m the “can’t we call get along?” type, and focus which is also accurate as I’m more of a ‘choose a destination and go there’ person than a ‘go with the flow’ type, which is probably where the futurism comes from.  Harmony also apparently covers looking for harmony between ideas as well as within groups.

    So, it seems you now have me at a disadvantage; you know so much about me, and I know so little about you.  All I know is that odds are, you live in the UK or US, are viewing this site with Microsoft Internet Explorer, and will stay here for 5-15 minutes before you move on.  Doesn’t seem quite fair…

    Anyway, the strengths that appear in each output are very comparable. The outputs are roughly the same, but flipped. Look at it this way:

    strengthscomparison

    In most cases, the questionnaires results have equivalents.   You could make a case that ‘Hope and Optimism’ is similar to ‘Focus’, but it’d be a weak one; focus is more about getting to a certain place in the future rather than having a time-perspective pointing that way most of the time.  ‘Caution’ and ‘Harmony’ have no equivalent, although my 6th strength on the VIA list is ‘Forgiveness and Mercy’, which is similar to Harmony.

    Even though this proves nothing generally, maybe both questionnaires are measuring similar things. It also makes it easier to recommend one; if they are measuring similar things, go for the VIA at Authentic Happiness – it’s free. If you want to try StrengthsFinder, you’ll need a code from the book StrengthsFinder2.0 to take the latest version of the test (my results above came from version 1.0).

    If you do take one of the tests, I dare you to put your results in a comment.  I’ll feel less exposed. 🙂

  • Happiness and music

    Music has a remarkable ability to conjure up strong emotions in people.  It can cheer you up, bring you down, and in the case of boybands, cause severe anger and disgust.  And it’s old; some scientists believe music even predates language, this based on flute-like instruments dug up in France, believed to be over 50,000 years old.  But music is a bit of an evolutionary puzzle.  It’s hard to think of any survival value it may have brought us; a niche it filled better than any other human faculty.  So why do we love music so much?  What’s going in inside our skulls when we hear music we enjoy?  What music makes the best pick-me-up?

    Happy music = Music you like

    Starting with the latter question, there are a few ways to figure out scientifically what happiness-inducing music might be.  The first would be to give people a CD containing music of different varieties, and measure their happiness before and after a week-long listening binge.  This hasn’t been done yet, to my knowledge.  The second way would be to hook people up to devices that measure their physiological state, and play them different types of music to see what happens.  A few studies like this have been done: here’s an example.

    PET scan

    Music-lovers were given a PET scan while they listened to one of their favourite pieces of music; something that gave them the “chills,” or “shivers-down-the-spine.”  One participant chose Barber’s Adagio, which, rather freakishly, my itunes just started playing as I write this.  Fair enough, I happen to be listening to The Most Relaxing Classical Album of All Time (classical music is the only type that doesn’t distract me from writing), but still…

    Back on track.  When you listen to music, it’s processed in brain areas associated with, among other things; language, memory (short- and long-term), and emotion.  But when that music is something you really like, something that gives you chills, the brain areas involved in pleasure and reward light up too. (1)

     

    These reward circuits turn on when you eat, have sex, or do pretty much anything that’s naturally rewarding.  They are also activated directly by many drugs, which is partly why these drugs are so addictive.  In this study, brain activity when the music was played was similar to that of euphoria and pleasant emotions.  The areas the music activated are crammed with opioid receptors (eg., endorphins).  In fact, another study found that blocking these opioid receptors with a drug called naloxone reduces the chills people get from music. (2)

    But this is definitely all happening through music to your own taste – when the participants listened to ‘control’ music, that they didn’t choose themselves, there was less brain activity in these areas and fewer reports of chills.  So using music to bring pleasure and happiness requires a knowledge of your own personal tastes.

    Music and Happiness

    These internal goings on are all very interesting, but “music you like makes you happy” doesn’t really satisfy as an answer.  It’s obvious: of course the music we like makes us happy.  That’s why we like it.

    Does Jazz Flute make you happy?

    What we’re really asking is, what type of music, on average, brings out the most positive emotion in people.  Accounting for taste is easy – you just average it out with large enough sample sizes, and look at the trends in the data.  This is how psychology studies are typically done.  It’s not a ‘hard’ science like physics, so researchers drown out individual differences with big sample sizes.

    So, what’s the utilitarian approach to happiness music?  If you had a group of people, and you want to make the group a little happier overall, what’s your best bet?

    happy_baby_headphones

    Well, some studies compared different aspects of music with emotion and physiological responses.  Although there were some connections, for example, up-tempo music in a major key evoked similar responses to positive emotions, and consonant music was rated more pleasant than dissonant (3), as one paper pointed out, “this [preference for consonance] presumably indicates that listeners have internalized the tonal rules of music in their culture and react to violations of these rules.” (2, p383)

    So for now at least, we might be stuck with the subjectivity answer.  There is some evidence that our musical tastes may be innate, for example, 4 month-old babies seem to prefer consonant to dissonant music (4), but the evidence doesn’t seem conclusive.  What I really wanted, but didn’t find, was a study comparing the effects of different genres on various emotions.  Does jazz flute make you happy?  Does emo make you depressed?  Do boybands make you want to puke?  Big questions, but apparently, scientists have not yet considered them a valuable addition to the knowledge base.

    Music and Memories

    As mentioned earlier, listening to music activates brain areas associated with memory.  I’m sure you have some songs that remind you of the good times – a holiday, a particular person, a bar you used to like going to.  Memories work by association, and when you hear these songs the brain areas associated with the memory turn on too, sometimes bringing back feelings along with the memories.

    In How to be Happier, I mentioned a study on reminiscence.  It’s a strange thing to consider, but people who spend 10 minutes or so per day reminiscing about good memories of the past, became more satisfied with their life in the present.  Some participants were asked to use items to aid their reminiscence; trinkets from the past that ‘brought back memories’.  I don’t see a reason that music couldn’t do the same thing.

    Music and People

    As I’ve said before, building social relationships is among the biggest – if not the biggest – things people can do to become happier.  So by extension, music will make people happier if it’s part of some social event. This will include live music, playing music in a band, or anything that involves other people as well as music.

    What kind of music can make you happier?

    • More than any specific type of music, music that’s to your own taste is most likely to bring pleasant emotions
    • Songs that bring back happy memories may also work, if you reminisce while listening
    • Live music will also work, if you take your friends along with you
    • Failing all the above; if you’ve been exposed to western culture: consonant, up-tempo music in a major key, is the best choice

    References:

    (1) Blood, A. J. & Zatorre, R. J. (2001). Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion. PNAS, 98(20), 11818-11823

    (2) Goldstein, A. (1980). Thrills in response to music and other stimuli. Physiological Psychology, 8, 126 –129.

    (3) Blood, A. J., Zatorre, R. J., Bermudez, P. & Evans, A. C. (1999). Emotional responses to pleasant and unpleasant music correlate with activity in paralimbic brain regions. Nature neuroscience, 2 (4), 382-387.

    (4) Trainor, L. J., & Heinmiller, B. M. (1998). The development of evaluative responses to music: Infants prefer to listen to consonance over dissonance. Infant Behavior & Development, 21, 799–806.

    Images:

    PET scan by Muffet

    Rockin’ Baby by Beaukiss Steve

  • Flowers = Happiness? The emotional impact of plants

    In positive psychology, most theories of positive emotion have focused on discovering their relative costs and benefits to humans. These theories, to a greater and lesser degree, see positive emotions as being evolved adaptations to our environment. Greater mood brings wider though-action repertoires, allowing us to build our resources (1), they regulate our motivation to work towards goals (2), and when in the right balance with negative emotions, provide optimal conditions for mental health (3).

    But all life on Earth is intertwined; could it be that our positive emotions exist not only for our own benefit, but to the benefit of other species, too? Researchers Haviland-Jones, Rosario, Wilson and McGuire (4) argue that they do. What species could be manipulating our positive emotions to their advantage? Could it be the intelligent dolphin? Man’s best friend, the dog? Or perhaps our closest cousin, the chimpanzee?

    Nope. It’s the simple flower!

    flowers_happiness
    Do these flowers cheer you up?(Credit: Per Ola Wiberg)

    The logic behind this argument is that there is an evolutionary ‘niche’ open for species that can elicit emotional rewards in mammals. The first step towards testing this idea, is to establish an emotional connection between humans and flowering plants; something romantics have known for centuries!

    In a series of studies, Haviland-Jones et al report that:

    • When women were given flowers, they always responded with a ‘real’ duchenne smile, and reported more positive moods three days later.
    • When men or women were given a flower, they responded with a duchenne smile and engaged in more prosocial activities (compared to control conditions of being given a pen or nothing).
    • Flowers given to elderly people resulted in more positive mood and improved episodic memory!

    The researchers also reported other “unusual emotional displays that they were unprepared to measure,” (4, p122), including:

    • Hugs and kisses.
    • Invitations to participants’ homes for refreshments.
    • ‘Thank you’ cards and letters – some with photographic evidence of the continuing beauty of the bouquet.

    As they sum up – “In many years of studying emotions, we have never received hugs and kisses, thank you notes or photographs, not even for candy, doghnuts, hats, gift certificates, or direct monetary payment; flowers are different.”

    blue_daisy
    What about this one? (Credit: Flowery *L*u*z*a*)

    These findings are difficult to account for using the theories under the positive psychology umbrella. The emotion does not seem to be relevant to a goal process, or related generally to receiving a gift. And why would the presentation of flowers bring a broadened thought-action repertoire? Perhaps something to do with Fredrickson’s cognitive maps; as flowering plants were part of our ancenstral environment, could their presence trigger a positive emotion to allow greater awareness and therefore knowledge of the environment?

    Haviland-Jones et al suggest three better explanations:

    1) Learned associations between flowers and happiness from positive social events

    Possibly true, but typically the socialisation of positive emotions and flowers is specific to women, and the studies also found effects in men. Additionally, learned associations do not account for the prevalence and meaning given to flowers cross-culturally. Still, this can’t be ruled out without studies in cultures that place little or no significance on flowers – if there are any.

    2) Evolutionary food association

    Rather than a positive social event, perhaps flowers are associated with potential foraging success – as they signal the current or future availability of nuts and fruits; nutritionally dense foods.

    3) Flowers evolved as human mood enhancers

    Perhaps the sensory aspects of flowers directly influence positive human moods. This reaction to flowers would be expected without learning an association between flowers and happiness, but would make learning such an association easier.

    How could this all be working? Emotional processing occurs in a specific part of the brain, based on certain ‘rules’ applied to the input to this area. Over vast periods of time, and where it is in their interest, organisms attempt to access the ‘rules’ of other organisms and adapt to them. It’s a kind of evolutionary cold war, all happening through the trial and error of natural selection, without any conscious or deliberate direction (an important point).

    Flowers have adapted to our preferences in a number of ways, it seems. We have a preference for symmetry, we have a preference for certain colours, and we may also have a preference for certain smells. These preferences all evolved for specific purposes (pattern recognition, to distinguish between high- and low-protein leaves, etc), but because they are general preferences, we would not necessarily need to be exposed to a flower to be attracted to it – it is configured in a way that our brain ‘likes’, which triggers the release of chemicals that result in our positive emotions.

    happiness_flowers
    I’m kind of limited in the range of pictures I can provide you with in this article. Here are some more flowers. (Credit: o b s k u r a)

    This may be serendipitous though, because the smells, colours and shapes of flowers may have evolved to attract the birds and insects with which their cross-species pollination efforts are usually associated. Either way, this configuration appears to be beneficial to the plants; for many species of plants, humans are the main agents of seed dispersal, even those that have no nutritious or medicinal value. They have discovered the secrets of our positive emotional response mechanisms, and have adapted themselves to exploit it. We’re being manipulated!

    Although this idea is far from confirmed, and there are a lot of unanswered questions, the theory does provide an interesting angle on positive emotions that we maybe don’t consider in positive psychology. When we think of the purpose of positive emotions, we immediately think “How do they benefit us?” But for a fuller picture of the role of positive emotions, we might have to think about how they benefit other species, too.

    References:

    (1) Fredrickson, B. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218-226.

    (2) Carver, C., & Scheier, M. (1990). Origins and functions of positive and negative affect: A control-process view. Psychological Review, 97(1), 19-35.

    (3) Fredrickson, B., & Losada, M. (2005). Positive Affect and the Complex Dynamics of Human Flourishing. American Psychologist, 60(7), 678-686.

    (4) Haviland-Jones, J., Rosario, H. H., Wilson, P., & McGuire, T. R. (2005). An Environmental Approach to Positive Emotion: Flowers. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 3, 104-132.