A review of the Journal of Positive Psychology

After reading the Journal of Positive Psychology for several weeks, I feel capable of doing a review of the journal as a whole. It is interesting now to read articles on the same topic but from other publications for my psychology class, as I often find myself wishing that the article was written differently. To do a review of this journal, I will employ Linton et al.'s framework to guide my discussion.

Structure: The structure of this journal takes that of a lab report. Most of the articles I choose to read were primary research which has a very formal structure. One thing I really enjoyed about the articles was that they were effective in communicating points without taking 30 pages to do so. The articles were generally fairly short, which made them readable, but more importantly, publish-able.

Reference: The literature review section of the articles were chalk-full of references. They were written in a way that took a very scientific approach rather than the approach of the humanities. I could read a 30 page article, write one sentence about the article (which may have not even been their main point) and then at the end of the sentence cite them as a source (Carroll 2010). This is very different than the approach taken in the humanities which really investigates each sentence at a individual level when citing it in another document. This is very similar to the building block illustration used in class, especially because positive psychology is a relatively new field with limited research.

Language: Often the same group of 5 articles is cited and then the current article will tangent from there. This is very different than other research which has been fully explored and several hundred documents have been written, for example on the effects of PTSD. This is one of the reasons I found reading the Journal of Positive Psychology interesting, because I haven't been exposed to the information before. Disagreements between psychologists are definitely real, and there are papers written solely to dispute one another, however in this journal the articles didn't do much counter-talk of other theories or researchers. This is likely due to the the age of the field. In time, this counter-talk will continue but the goal will be to keep it method/idea/theory based rather than researcher based.

Tech Writing Invades

One fundamental element of positive psychology is the idea of the subjective well-being. This is the question that asks, all things considered, how good is your life right now? This is different from happiness as an affect (emotion) which lasts very temporarily. This is also interesting because something that could make you happy might not be the best choice for your overall subjective well being. I have found this to be true whenever I make spur of the moment decisions that come to bite me in the butt later on down the road. We all have our share of tales to tell regarding decision making based on happiness rather than subjective well-being, but the principle at the end of the story is often the same. 

As indicated above, different wordings of similar states can evoke very different responses. If someone is very sick one day and you ask them how happy they are, a miserable result would likely follow the question. However, if on that same day you asked them how good their life is overall, they would likely look past the temporary sickness and answer accordingly. Veenhoven argues that there are four distinct categories of happiness that should be considered in order to have a complete view. These include; livability of environment, life-ability of the individual, external utility of life and inner appreciation of life. 

While the psychology of this article is interesting, I think for the purposes of this class it is more appropriate to discuss the issue this article is getting at- word choice. This document is about technical writing and knowing your audience. You must know what to ask in order to know how to get the response you are looking for (contextually, not subjectively). This article reminds me of the methods classes I have taken and created my own experiments in which we refined the questionnaire time and time again to make sure that the questions were unbiased and evoking the proper response. Even within the discipline of psychology, technical writing is playing a huge role.  

Veenhoven, R. (1999). The Four Qualities of Life Ordering Concepts and Measures of the Good Life. Journal of Happiness Studies, 1, 1-39.

You've Got a Friend In Me...

This seems fitting as Toy Story 3 came to Redbox yesterday.

This article looks at the relationship between happiness and friendships. One important element of this study was that it controlled for personality, as personality has strong ties to happiness levels. Nueroticism is inversely correlated with happiness while extroversion is positively correlated with happiness. The study used the Big 5 as indicator of personality, then controlled for those tendencies. After controlling for personality, the researchers hypothesized that it friendships would have a relationship with happiness. The friendships were studied in terms of closeness and conflict. In addition, the length of the relationship was studied.

The findings of this article are not surprising, as the basic finding was that quality of friendships was more important than quantity. Most people could tell you this without conducting a scientific study, but their other results were significant and (to me) interesting. Relationships which have high levels of companionship, meaning that you enjoy spending time together and doing several activities together brings greater life satisfaction. Another finding is that friendships in which one person can gain self-validation, either positive or negative, is one likely to increase their happiness level. In layman's terms, people like to spend time with friends and when their friends opinion of the person and their own opinion of themselves match.

What do you think is most important in friendships? Which of your friends makes you happiest? Why do you think that is? (As a side-note, these questions are all rhetorical- don't feel obligated to answer them, just food for thought.)

Demir, M. Weitekamp, L. (2006) I am so happy cause today I found my friend: Friendship and Personality as Predictors of Happiness. Journal of Happiness Studies 8:181-211

Stressed? Happy?

On a scale of 1-10, rank (to yourself) how stressed you are currently.

On a scale of 1-10, rank (again, to yourself) how happy you are currently.

I think it is first important to define stress and happiness so that we are all on the same page. Stress is defined as periods of time when people respond to environmental stimuli psychologically, biologically and behaviorally in such a manner that the situation calls for greater resources than the person has available. Happiness can be defined several ways, but some of the components of happiness include perceived subjective well being, how engaged the person is and how meaningful the person finds their life. Many studies of happiness look to alleviate stress to very low levels when trying to increase ones happiness. 

In a study done by Nelson and Schiffrin, the hypothesized relationship was an inverse relationship between happiness and stress. After conducting studies on 100 college students using ten self-report tests. After conducting all of the research, the results showed that there was in fact a linear, inverse relationship between stress and happiness.

When I read this article, I thought the research was going to be more in depth and talk about the curvature of the relationship, as other research shows that a small level of stress will spur productivity. This can arguably lead to increased happiness, if looking at happiness as per the construct of the meaningful life. 

Schiffrin, H., Nelson, S. 2010. Stressed and Happy? Investigating the Relationship Between Happiness and Percieved Stress. Journal of Happiness Studies. 11:33-39

fleeting happiness

In our constitution, we have the right to pursue happiness. Research done on happiness lately all agrees that the definition of happiness includes overall life satisfaction. This can be problematic as sometimes one may rate their own life as very satisfying and very unsatisfying at other times. We all do this, for example if we choose to go play all weekend instead of studying for our exams: in the moment we are likely to be very satisfied with our life choices but a couple days later when we are suffering because of it, we are likely to be unsatisfied. Researchers have linked this research to the potential life choices one can make. One example is as follows: if a couple decides to have a child, they will sacrifice almost everything and say that it was well worth it, but on the other side if they remain without children they are likely to assert that children are too many sacrifices. The article goes through a series of examples to prove the 'diagonal happiness theory' while looking at regret, possible life choices in personality and in directions and comparing different options.

To bring this idea back to something that we all can relate to, was anyone else close to going to another school? I almost went to Furman. Thinking about myself now I cannot imagine going to Furman as it is way too small and very limiting. I also think about how I would be a slightly different version of myself if I went to Furman because of my social surroundings. I could, based on the 'diagonal happiness theory' make a chart based on myself and these options to see which college I would prefer. Currently, I feel like Clemson is the ultimate place for me to call home, as I really do love it here.

Does anyone else have a similar story of weighing possible personality differences and life circumstances?


Bykvist, Kristler. 2010. Happiness in a Flux? The Instability Problem. Journal of Happiness Studies. 11:553-565

song lyrics

Have you ever thought to yourself, "How is it that I can remember every word to every song on the radio but can't seem to remember this simple definition?" Often, especially on long nights of studying, I think the same thing. Often times, I think that there seems to be a song to fit every situation.

Although I have spent quite some time thinking about the prevalence of songs and importance of music in my life, I never have looked at the general sweeping trends in terms of songs. This study in the Journal of Happiness Studies looked at song lyrics, presidential speeches and blogs to determine if some time segments were more happy than others.

I found the coding for the study especially interesting, as they used a ANEW coding scheme which found a SD of common reactions to the given word. Words scoring high were coded as positive and low scoring words were negative. In order for this study to work, the researchers had to be sweeping through large amounts of texts. The songs and blogs were of particular interest to me because they're things that I deal with daily.

The findings show that the happiness of songs decreased continually starting in the 60's but ever since 2005 blogs have been getting continually more happy.

This article begs the question "are we a product of the environment we live in or are we creators of the environment?"

At times, I think we are both.

Dodds, P., Danforth, C. 2009. Measuring the Happiness of Large-Scale Written Expression:Songs, Blogs and Presidents. Journal of Happiness Studies. 11:441-456

im starting to feel like a real psychologist

In all of my classes i am now only reading primary source research articles from journals that have been peer reviewed. At first I didn't know what to make of it as reading a textbook can be  boring but some articles can be pretty tricky. After some practice, I think I actually prefer the articles.

I've chosen to read out of the Journal of Happiness Studies for the remainder of the semester.

Today's article: How do High School Youths' Educational Experiences Relate to Well-Being? Towards a Trans-Disciplinary Conceptualization

I chose this article because I have been working with youth ever since High School when I started volunteering with Middle School students. I have always viewed adolescence as something that could be very positive, as I feel like it was for my life, but all too often it is viewed very negatively and as a period of life to be fixed.

One thing I like about this article is that it combines theory from several disciplines to give a framework within to work to view youth as good instead of viewing them as a problem. On top of the multi-disciplinary approach, it organizes the research into seven testable areas all in relation to well-being. The seven are as follows: having, being, relating, thinking, feeling, functioning, and striving. To help conceptualize these seven items without reading the entire article, you can fill in this basic sentence "how does well-being relate to how one ..." thinks. 

To inform you further (and not bore you) I will focus on one of the seven topics and go into more depth about what the research argues. I find this to be particularly applicable to college students, so I will focus on the functioning aspect of well being. The questions posed asks how well being relates to how one spends their time. One focus of study was how an individual spends his/her time and it was found that participating in structured activities chosen on his/her own not only develop social relationships but also several other qualities such as initiative. Another focus of the research was regarding the quality of time spent. It is critical to understand the role of choice in the presence of a teen being at a given location. Involvement is not simply enough, the teen must want to be there and want to go consistently for there to be any positive results.

One practical application of this idea has to deal with teens going to church youth group. Some parents believe that regardless of the teen's interest that they should go and at least be involved. Other parents don't want to force their kids to be there if they aren't interested. Having grown up in the Bible Belt myself, I can easily recall people who were at youth group because they had to and others because they wanted to and how drastically different their experience was.

 Soutter, A., Gilmore, A., Steen, B. 2010. How do High School Youths' Educational Experiences Relate to Well-Being? Towards a Trans-Disciplinary Conceptualization. Journal of Happiness Studies