Positive Psychology Resources

If, like me, you’re studying positive psychology, or if you’re keeping up with the field for personal or professional reasons, you will find the following links useful.  They are great for finding new information and opinions, and especially for getting hard-to-find journal articles in PDF:

Positive Psychology Search

– The Google of positive psychology

Positive Psychology News Daily

– Great site, regular updates.  Written mostly by current and former positive psychology students.

Friends of PP

– Very good email list.  Very frequent emails, so DO NOT sign up to this with your usual email address!

Authentic Happiness

– This is where to find all the questionnaires for happiness, character strengths, and so on.

Researchers and Labs

Places to find journal articles and in-press papers of researchers.  Most researchers have a webpage, but I’ve only included those you can get papers from.  The topic areas are not exhaustive, they’re just to give an idea of the main research interests.   Some are not ‘positive psychologists’ as such, but their work overlaps.  I haven’t found everyone, but will update as I find more.  If you know any more, please leave a comment with a link.

Robert Biswas-Diener

– Well-being, strengths, coaching; this is the guy that travelled the world studying happiness in various cultures.

Richard Davidson

– Mindfulness meditation, emotion, neuroscience, neuroplasticity, general brain stuff; this is the guy that did the brain scans of trained Buddhist monks.

See also: Lab for Affective Neuroscience (Wisconsin)

– The lab that the above guy is the head of.  Lots of stuff here.

Edward Deci / Richard Ryan

Self-determination theory – very comprehensive site, probably all you will need on this topic.

Ed Diener

– Subjective well-being/happiness and related topics.  One of the main researchers into well-being.

Barbara Fredrickson

– Positive emotions, happiness, she came up with broaden-and-build theory.

Compassion Lab (umich)

Jane Dutton et al “We are a group of researchers working in business schools who strive to create a new vision of organizations as sites for the development and expression of compassion. “

Gallup Research Reports

– “Gallup experts and senior scientists are continually analyzing Gallup data and sharing their findings with fellow academics, researchers, and opinion leaders.”

Daniel Gilbert

– Useful site to stumble on, click “writing” for papers, his blog is also good.

Jon Haidt

– Morality.  See both the ‘Research and Publications (Full List)’ and ‘Positive Psychology Stuff’ sections.

Barbara Held

– A philosophical psychologist with some interesting critiques of positive psychology.

Todd Kashdan

– Well-being, abnormal psychology, mood, anxiety.  Author of “Curious?”

Marcial Losada

– “Interaction dynamics and productivity of business teams.”  Discovered the ‘Losada Line’; the 3:1 ratio of positivity to negativity that effective teams display.

Sonja Lyubomirsky

– Happiness, positive emotions.  She wrote the popular book “The How of Happiness”

Barry Schwartz

– If you’re not spoilt for choice already, here are Schwartz’s papers. (scroll down for the ones with pdfs; older papers only).

Martin Seligman / Positive Psychology Centre

– Positive Psychology’s founder, Martin Seligman runs this centre. Hover on ‘PPC research’ for papers.

Ken Sheldon

– Goals, motivation, psychological needs, plus many other topics. Lots of papers available here.

Michael Steger

– Meaning and quality of life.

Heather Urry / Emotion, Brain and Behaviour Lab (Tufts University)

– “Studying the brain and body correlates of emotion, from reaction to regulation”

VIA Institute

– Values In Action model of strengths homepage.  For some reason they only offer abstracts, but it’s a good starting point.

Leave a comment, if you know any more.

If all of this means nothing to you:

What is Positive Psychology?

One answer: What is positive psychology?

Another answer: What and Why is Positive Psychology?

Some good blogs on positive psychology:

http://www.centreforconfidence.co.uk/pp/emilysnews.php

What About Non-Academics?

The above sources are journals/technical papers.  If that’s not your cup of tea, try the following books (full disclosure: all are Amazon affiliate links):

And the following sites:

Comments

15 responses to “Positive Psychology Resources”

  1. Sarah Avatar
    Sarah

    You should add Dr. Todd Kashdan, as his research and latest book is taking positive psychology into some interesting, new directions.

    http://www.toddkashdan.com

    http://mason.gmu.edu/~tkashdan/

    1. Bren Murphy Avatar

      Hi Warren, thanks for your great work – a resource we keep referring to in our studies.
      Thanks,
      Bren Murphy
      Personal Coaching Sydney

  2. Warren Davies Avatar
    Warren Davies

    Done. Thanks Sarah.

  3. Irene Cross Avatar
    Irene Cross

    Thank you!!!!
    Irene

    1. Warren Davies Avatar
      Warren Davies

      Irene,

      You’re welcome!!!!
      Warren 🙂

      Rivka,
      My pleasure, thanks for the comment.

  4. Rivka Caroline Avatar

    Thanks so much for taking the time to compile this. Great stuff.

  5. mohinder Avatar
    mohinder

    Warren wrote : “Richard Davidson

    – Mindfulness meditation, emotion, neuroscience, neuroplasticity, general brain stuff; this is the guy that did the brain scans of trained Buddhist monks.”

    His site looks quite dull, dry and too academic for me (i.e I can’t be arsed reading it!)

    Can you give me a brief run down of what they found from the scans or some pointers to site with more accesible info(now that I would be interested in reading!)

    1. Warren Davies Avatar
      Warren Davies

      Mohinder!

      Quite right, his site is 100% academic. Dull and dry; unless you are an academic, in which case it’s golden and sparkly.

      Of course I can. Basically, certain areas like those concerned with attention were larger/had more activity in the monks, presumably due to the massive amounts of meditation they do. But I’ll write up a run down of the findings something this week.

      Warren

  6. mohinder Avatar
    mohinder

    Cheers buddy!

    Being sometimes somewhat an arm-chair psychologists with the occasional practical application (as required 😉 thats much appreciated!

  7. TONI DAVIES Avatar
    TONI DAVIES

    DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT A ARMCHAIR PSYCHOLOGIST IS ,AND WHAT DO THEY DO

    1. Warren Davies Avatar
      Warren Davies

      SOMEONE WHO ISN’T A PSYCHOLOGIST BUT ACTS/GIVES ADVICE AS THOUGH THEY ARE.

  8. The Emotion Machine Avatar

    Excellent compilation of resources! I am glad to see that Positive Psychology is getting the public recognition it deserves. It is about time scientists look at the factors that contribute to happiness, success, and well-being.

    1. Warren Davies Avatar
      Warren Davies

      Thanks very much!

  9. Dr. Judy Krings Avatar

    Viewing these resources is like getting every gift you ever wanted only to realize there are always more gifts to open.

  10. Nicole@Life Coaching Courses Avatar

    Great list. Would add Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his work on “Flow.”
    .-= Nicole@Life Coaching Courses´s last blog ..Life Coaching Model – Why It’s Important =-.

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