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