Where Barbara Ehrenreich and I agree – we’re both trying to separate wheat from chaff. We just differ on what we think is wheat and what we think is chaff.”
—
—Positive psychology researcher Martin E.P. Seligman, PhD, on his differences with Barbara Ehrenreich, author of “Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.” Ehrenreich says positive thinking does little good in the long run and can even do harm.
The New York Times, Dec. 30
Check out more awesome quotes here.
Why You Should Be Nice To People At Work »
A bit of unexpected wisdom from Miss J. Alexander, a runway model coach that is best known for his appearances on America’s Next Top Model, on why you should be nice to people on the job:
The worst habit a model could have is not being polite to the people that they’re working with, and not respecting them or the job.
Some girls come into the job and don’t have a nice attitude towards the people that they’re working with. When you create great harmony at work, everyone gets the job done. I think a model should be able to come in and feel comfortable and make people feel comfortable around her.
** HEADSLAP **
I have never once thought about trying to create great harmony at work. I’ve tried to be nice to balance my tendency to be scarily analytical, but the scope of my ambition was merely to put individuals at ease. A greater harmony, though, is what I think we all seek on the job, which is the precursor of the flow state where everything’s going great and humming along. Must reflect on this more.
Notes & Thoughts -
So I only recently figured out anything about “America’s Next Top Model” and unfortunately there isn’t a huge amount of information out there that really seems to back up the idea that being nice creates a more pleasant organizational culture and/or any sort of real increases in performance. (If you’re interested, “being nice” is probably most similar to the OCB or organizational citizenship behaviors literature in Industrial-Organizational Psychology - basically, doing nice things around the office that are NOT part of your formal job duties.)
Today, Try to Be a Little Less Positive, Will You?
Our Nancy Cooper talks to Barbara Ehrenreich about how thinking positive has ruined us all:
So, what’s wrong with being happy at work?
Ehrenreich: Well, it’s wonderful to be happy. Optimism sometimes is justified, but what has happened in the American business culture has been some kind of staggering retreat from reality. I always assumed that corporate culture was rational because of my background in science and in journalism, but what I began to understand in the 1980s, 1990s, and throughout this decade was that the business culture had become unmoored. The idea of being the CEO went from being someone who had mastered the business to being someone who was a charismatic figure. Some business writers started to talk about the corporation more like a cult.I remember reading one of these crazy books on attraction—about how you can get what you want by wishing it. One of blurbs on the back was written by a guy who worked for the company that held my retirement funds. That scared me. It’s clear that the build-up to the financial meltdown involved real denial and people acting on the idea that it’s bad to have negative people around.
How has this emphasis on positive thinking changed workers’ daily lives?
It means artificial smiling and artificial cheer. It’s a strain on people emotionally; the effort of managing the appearance of one’s emotions is work. It means not asking the hard questions you think about asking. When people have been criticized for being negative at work, very often what that means is that they asked too many questions. I always thought asking questions was a good thing.I am 45th in line for this book at the NYPL. I can’t wait.
(Actually I can because I have approximately 1 million books to read before then…)
Therapy 32 times more cost effective at increasing happiness than money | Eureka! Science News »
Research by the University of Warwick and the University of Manchester finds that psychological therapy could be 32 times more cost effective at making you happy than simply obtaining more money. The research has obvious implications for large compensation awards in law courts but also has wider implications for general public health. Chris Boyce of the University of Warwick and Alex Wood of the University of Manchester compared large data sets where 1000s of people had reported on their well-being. They then looked at how well-being changed due to therapy compared to getting sudden increases in income, such as through lottery wins or pay rises. They found that a 4 month course of psychological therapy had a large effect on well-being. They then showed that the increase in well-being from an £800 course of therapy was so large that it would take a pay rise of over £25,000 to achieve an equivalent increase in well-being. The research therefore demonstrates that psychological therapy could be 32 times more cost effective at making you happy than simply obtaining more money.
Governments pursue economic growth in the belief that it will raise the well-being of its citizens. However, the research suggests that more money only leads to tiny increases in happiness and is an inefficient way to increase the happiness of a population. This research suggests that if policy makers were concerned about improving well-being they would be better off increasing the access and availability of mental health care as opposed to increasing economic growth.
The new research paper, entitled “Money or Mental Health: The Cost of Alleviating Psychological Distress with Monetary Compensation versus Psychological Therapy” is published online this week at: Health Economics, Policy and Law.
This research helps to highlight how relatively ineffective extra income is at raising well-being. The researchers further draw on two striking pieces of independent evidence to illustrate their point - over the last 50 years developed countries have not seen any increases to national happiness in spite of huge economic gains. Mental health on the other hand appears to be deteriorating worldwide. The researchers argue that resources should be directed towards the things that have the best chance of improving the health and happiness of our nations - investment in mental health care by increasing the access and availability of psychological therapy could be a more effective way of improving national well-being than the pursuit of income growth.
The research also has important implications for the way in which “pain and suffering” is compensated in courts of law. Currently the default way in which individuals are compensated is with financial compensation. The research suggests that this is an inefficient way at repairing psychological harm following traumatic life events and that a more effective remedy would be to offer psychological therapy.
University of Warwick researcher Chris Boyce said:
“We have shown that psychological therapy could be much more cost effective than financial compensation at alleviating psychological distress. This is not only important in courts of law, where huge financial awards are the default way in which pain and suffering are compensated, but has wider implications for public health and well-being.”
“Often the importance of money for improving our well-being and bringing greater happiness is vastly over-valued in our societies. The benefits of having good mental health, on the other hand, are often not fully appreciated and people do not realise the powerful effect that psychological therapy, such as non-directive counselling, can have on improving our well-being.”
Source: University of Warwick
Positive Psychology News Daily » Relationships Matter in Our Schools »
“We must look for what is good in an organization before we move forward. Where the organization wants to be is based on higher moments of where they have been.” David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney
Schools are complex environments with many factors and relationships, as well as people with different values, purposes, and ways of making meaning.
The Appreciative Inquiry process, developed by David Cooperrider andDiana Whitney, is a positive way to incorporate change in an organization that focuses on the “high moments” of people and which values this complexity. AI can help people develop healthy relationships by mobilizing and building high quality connections between students and students, teachers and teachers, teachers and students, parents and students, and teachers and parents.
When affirming past and present strengths, appreciative people are open to potential and possibilities. This leads parents, teachers, administrators, and students toward a shared strengths-based model that opens dialogue and further inquiry.
Appreciative Inquiry is made up of four component parts:
- Discover—uncover the good that already exists
- Dream—envision what might be
- Design—dialogue about what should be
- Delivery—innovate what will be
Two Examples of Appreciative Inquiry in Action
Example 1: Nancy McKinnis, a leadership instructor at Culver Girls Academy, wanted her juniors to formulate a vision for following year when they would be senior leaders. Instead of asking them to identify the problems they needed to fix, she had asked them reflective discovery questions such as “When have you felt best about the dorm?” Nancy observed that by celebrating the best of who they are, students could better dream, building their vision of what the dorm and its residents could be like. Within their goals and objectives existed solutions to the very adversities that would have previously been defined as problems. In fact the students came up with similar goals to the ones adults were already thinking about.
Example 2: I was asked by the superintendent of a north central Indiana public school to facilitate a modified AI process with his administrative team. The A-team was made up of members of the school committee, the elementary and junior/senior high school principals, athletic director, transportation director, custodial-facilities, chief financial officer, and director of technology. We had some productive discovery conversation about their strengths-of-action (Strengths Finder 2.0). In fact, two school committee members had an epiphany when they realized how one’s strength of “competition” appealed, or didn’t appeal to the other’s “harmony” when dealing with hot-button issues.
We were in the design state of setting a goal of “upgrading facilities.” Several participants echoed concerns that realizing this goal may be difficult because it requires asking for taxpayer’s money from residents who haven’t had children in the system for years. A pause came across the group, and after what seemed to be an eternity, one of the school committee members, who had been relatively quiet for most of the session, declared: “To reach this goal we need to develop better relationships with them, just like we are doing with each other today. We need to have smaller open-forums to carry on the discussion.” At this moment, the head nods were going up and down, where before some were going side to side. We were launched into the delivery phase.
Appreciative Inquiry is not magical, but by following the process, it provides a different pro-active angle of vision for school stakeholders to rise to the occasion by bringing out the best in each other.
References
Appreciative Inquiry Commons, a sources of materials and discussions on the practice of Appreciative Inquiry.
Cooperrider, D. and Whitney, D. (2004) Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Cooperrider, D., Whitney, D. and Stavros,J. (2008). Appreciative Inquiry Handbook, 2nd Edition (Book & CD) . Brunswick, OH: Crown Publishing, Inc.
Ludema, J., Whitney, D., Mohr, B., & Griffin, T. (2003). The Appreciative Inquiry Summit: A Practitioner’s Guide for Leading Large-Group Change. San Francisco: Berrett-Kohler.
Orem, S., Binchert, J. & Clancy, A. (2007). Appreciative Coaching: A Positive Process for Change (Jossey-Bass Business & Management). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Rath, T. (2007). StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths. New York: Gallup Press.
![There is a non-color version in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning.
fuckyeahpsychology:
hammerito:
rubitues:
zolora:
everythinginthesky:
Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.
[…]
Csíkszentmihályi identifies the following nine factors as accompanying an experience of flow:
Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high.
Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.
via dailymeh
This is what happens to me when I’m writing or when I’m really into a drawing. Especially the distorted sense of time—hours go by in a flash. I forget to eat. I don’t hear or notice other things, either.
It just happened to me, in fact. Uh, in class. While I was writing instead of paying attention.
Whatever, I’m sure the lecture was really boring.
The only class I’ve ever had that has covered this is Sports Psych, which makes me skeptical of the research.
That said, I’ve never looked at the research, so I’ll just nod and say that this is interesting.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Challenge_vs_skill.jpg)
There is a non-color version in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning.
Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.
[…]
Csíkszentmihályi identifies the following nine factors as accompanying an experience of flow:
- Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high.
- Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
- A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
- Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
- Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
- Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
- A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
- The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
- People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.
via dailymeh
This is what happens to me when I’m writing or when I’m really into a drawing. Especially the distorted sense of time—hours go by in a flash. I forget to eat. I don’t hear or notice other things, either.
It just happened to me, in fact. Uh, in class. While I was writing instead of paying attention.
Whatever, I’m sure the lecture was really boring.
The only class I’ve ever had that has covered this is Sports Psych, which makes me skeptical of the research.
That said, I’ve never looked at the research, so I’ll just nod and say that this is interesting.
