《Positive Psychology 3》.docVIP

Positive Psychology – Lecture 3 Good morning, everyone. This semester has started, officially today. Glad to see you here. Just a couple of announcement and also hi to the extension school students. Last time we say hi to New Zealand. Today we are saying hi to Ireland. In terms of sectioning for the undergrads and graduate students here, youll get an email from Sean Achor tomorrow. And youll put in your section preference. We are sectioning this weekend. So it will be important that you submit your top preferences. And next week we are starting. Last time, if you remember the question that we ask, the guiding question was why positive psychology? And I mentioned three reasons, Why we need it as an independent field as opposed to just being well, let’s do some studies on happiness, on relationships as it is always being done? The reason why we need positive psychology is to shift the pendulum from the 21:1 ratio that we have today: for every one study on depression or anxiety, we have 21 studies on-- sorry, for one study on happiness or wellbeing, we have 21 studies on depression and anxiety. We want to shift the pendulum slightly. And I mentioned three reason why we want to shift this pendulum despite the fact that there are rising levels of depression around the world, that anxiety has become epidemic globally— on college campuses in United States, China, Australia, UK. Despite that fact, I argue that we need to shift the pendulum and do more positive research‖, or in other words, research that focuses on what works. And the reason is— the first reason that we gave and we are just finishing up is because the question that we ask, whether its the research questions that we ask, or the questions that we ask of ourselves, or our partners, matter. And if our only questions, or primarily our questions are what is not working? What is the problem? Why are so many kids failing as a result of their circumstances? If we only ask these questions, we will miss, l