Positive Psychology has been instrumental in promoting wellbeing science in the modern era. However, there are still ways in which positive psychology interventions and positive education programmes can be improved to achieve more robust and sustained effects. One suggested method is to make wellbeing more salient and tangible through the use of objective tools that assess the relationship between psychological and physiological wellbeing, and enable wellbeing status and change to be seen. With the addition of an interdisciplinary team, as well (...) as technology-enabled and pedagogically sound learning tools and approaches, the potential for positive outcomes and impact increases exponentially. Monitoring wellbeing progress in this way can provide evidence, motivation and belief in positive psychology and wellbeing interventions. This can lead to engaged learning, sustained benefits and systemic impact. Positive psychology needs to strategically extend on the emerging work in this field to help everyone, including policy makers, notice and value wellbeing. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a global threat to physical and mental health worldwide. Research has highlighted adverse impacts of COVID-19 on wellbeing but has yet to offer insights as to how wellbeing may be protected. Inspired by developments in wellbeing science and guided by our own theoretical framework, we examined the role of various potentially protective factors in a sample of 138 participants from the United Kingdom. Protective factors included physical activity, tragic optimism, gratitude, social support, and nature connectedness. (...) Initial analysis involved the application of one-sample t-tests, which confirmed that wellbeing in the current sample was significantly lower compared to previous samples. Protective factors were observed to account for up to 50% of variance in wellbeing in a hierarchical linear regression that controlled for a range of sociostructural factors including age, gender, and subjective social status, which impact on wellbeing but lie beyond individual control. Gratitude and tragic optimism emerged as significant contributors to the model. Our results identify key psychological attributes that may be harnessed through various positive psychology strategies to mitigate the adverse impacts of hardship and suffering, consistent with an existential positive psychology of suffering. (shrink)

In this review of the central tenets of hope theory, we examine the meta-theoretical, theoretical, and methodological foundations of the literature base. Our analysis moves from a broad examination of the research landscape in hope theory across disciplines, to a deeper investigation of the empirical literature in university students. This review highlights the significant impact of this body of research in advancing our understanding of aspects of thriving characterized by hope. However, we also evidence several limitations that may impede the (...) advancement of the next wave of growth in this field. To address these limitations, we argue for an interdisciplinary approach to expanding the meta-theoretical, theoretical, and methodological horizons, enabling a more dynamic systems approach to the study of hope. Drawing on the intersection of positive psychology with systems thinking, we describe a methodological approach that enables a deeper examination of the processes and interactions through which hope emerges, using an analysis of the lived experience of young people. It is proposed that this research agenda will bring to life an alternate story about the resourcefulness of our youth through their own voice, enabling us to leverage this in the design of more effective strategies to facilitate hope in the future. This research agenda provides a roadmap that will provide alternative methodologies that address the current limitations in the field of hope research and, importantly, can provide fuel to spur on the acceleration of the next wave of research and practice in the field of positive psychology more broadly. (shrink)

In “Well-Being and Pluralism” (2021), Polly Mitchell and Anna Alexandrova defend conceptual pluralism about well-being. Conceptual pluralism about well-being holds that there are multiple, irreducible concepts of well-being that are employed in different contexts, all equally legitimate as concepts of well-being. Moreover, “Conceptual pluralism about well-being entails that there is no single essence which characterises all and only instances of well-being.” (Mitchell and Alexandrova, 2021, p. 2422) Conceptual monism about well-being, on the other hand, holds, at a minimum, that there (...) is some essence that unites all legitimate uses of ‘well- being’. In this paper, I will argue that there is a version of conceptual monism about well-being, the network theory of well-being defended by Michael Bishop in his book The Good Life (2015), that can secure all of the benefits of Mitchell and Alexandrova’s conceptual pluralism, namely accommodating the wide range of uses of “well-being” in the sciences of well-being and in ordinary language. Mitchell and Alexandrova’s argument for pluralism depends on the inability of a monistic theory of well-being to account for this diversity of conceptions of well-being and the diversity of instruments used to measure well-being in the sciences. Bishop’s network theory, like Mitchell and Alexandrova’s pluralism, is designed to accommodate the scientific study of well-being. Because of this, it avoids the pitfalls of traditional, monistic conceptions of well-being despite its monistic credentials. I conclude with two novel arguments for the network theory. (shrink)