The Pros And Cons Of Positive Psychology

Positive psychology is what it says. It is a social and intellectual movement within the discipline of psychology that focuses on human strengths and how people can flourish and be successful. Positive psychology pursues three main “legs” on which the field stands. Positive subjective experiences (good moods, happiness, and love), positive individual traits (character strengths and virtues), and positive institutions (families, schools, & supportive work environments). Moods are “global, pervasive responses to experiences”. Being in a good mood has several beneficial effects. It makes people more agreeable, more helpful, and better decision-makers. Positive moods can promote creative solutions and faster thoughts, which in turn promote, positive emotions rather than negative ones. Positive emotions elicit nonspecific action tendencies that lead to adaptive responses (e.g., helping people in need when we are happy), and promote thought-action tendencies (e.g. children become imaginative when feeling joy). Thus, “the broaden-and-build model proposes that positive

Freud’s theory states that human nature is viewed in a very negative way, while positive psychology is more optimistic. With Positive psychology, motivation comes from trying to fulfil certain needs and by doing this, the personality develops. Freud’s theory believed differently, it claims that motivation comes from the wants of the id- usually sexual in nature. Both approaches give different views on how the personality develops. Psychoanalytic theorists would suggest that development occurs through stages between infancy and adulthood due to psychosexual development. To contrast this view, the positive approach believes that the personality will continue to develop throughout the life until they reach a point where self-fulfillment is