Seligman et al on Happiness - Article Example

Review of Seligman et al on Happiness In the article by Seligman, Parks and Steen the problem d was that since WWII psychology has been solely focused upon curing the mentally ill and the other two original objectives, making ordinary people’s lives better and learning to understand genius and talent, have fallen by the wayside. Following WWII there were many people with psychological problems and there was money to help resolve them, so psychologists concentrated upon healing the sick. However, he felt that psychologists should be making people’s lives better, not making them just less bad.

Doctors treat the physically ill, but they also work on prevention to help people stay well. Seligman thought that this should be a renewed target. Seligman et al decided to research happiness to see if psychology could help people become happier rather than simply eliminating sadness which lessens pain, but does not make anyone happy. By reviewing the literature, Seligman et al defined happiness as having three components: (i) pleasure (or positive emotion); (ii) engagement; and (iii) meaning.

He discarded positive affectivity as more related to inherited traits than anything individuals do to boost this. Seeking gratification is the second route, but these are short lived, even when they are based in something very positive. Gratifications do not necessarily bring positive emotions. The third route to happiness was chosen as the one most likely to respond to treatment, because it provides more permanent happiness, and it generally the major component in the lives of those who are naturally happy.

It draws on the same strength as positive emotions from gratification, but it is aimed at belonging to a community or serving a cause, and it gives meaning to our lives. From this literature review it was decided to test whether psychology could help people to become happier. Seligman mentions an ongoing study of all three types of happiness by testing interventions with placebo control groups, and he posted a web url (www.authentichappiness.org) in the article, but he gives no ingo=formation in the article about how participants are chosen , other than that it is random.

However, no mention was made concerning the size or demographics of the sample, nor of the first two types of interventions that are being tried in this study. He wrote that the participants were tested for levels of happiness before the intervention, directly after, then one week , one month and three months later. However, he does not say how they were tested, so we have no way to assess the validity of these tests. All we can do is know that there is a difference before and after, as measured by whatever method he is using.

He reports he effects were lasting, that is that people following the method described were still measured as happier three months later. He describes the last intervention as being used for the third type of happiness, calling it “the good life intervention? It required that, “individuals record, every day for a week, three good things that happened to them each day and why those good things occurred.” Even three months later individuals were happier by the same method as used before the experiment, while the placbo group showed no such results.

Seligmann noted that these studies paralleled the random-assignment, placebo-controlled experiments for medications and psychotherapy outcomes in the literature. That is, similar studies using drugs or therapy have been done and showed no such results. However, in this experiement these were simple actions that participants were required to do , not involving drugs or even much time, yet they increased happiness, while other treatments simply decreased pain and sadness. While this study was interesting, not enough information was presented to support it and little information about the actual research was given.

The testing method was not disclosed and the analysis was completely absent except for a perfunctory conclusion of success. In fact, little was said about the actual research until the very last part of the article. No discussion was done of selecting participants, no discussion of the demographics or even if the demographics of the sample and the control were matched, and no information about what kind of assessment was used. Most of this article is background information leading up to a very short description of the research which is seriously lacking in useful information.

As research it has interest, but little value due to the poor way in which it was documented and reported. It is possible that there is more information available on the website, but that seems like it is a slick sales tactic to get more traffic to the site and not real research reporting. References Martin E. P. Seligman_, Acacia C. Parks and Tracy Steen Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania, 3701 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, US the history of the problem as stated by the author(s) and tell why the problem is important?

State the experimental hypothesis(es and/or problem is important? Briefly describe the methodology used in the study. Specifically, how were the subjects selected? How was the data generated fromthe study analyzed? What were the results of the study? Based on the result(s) generated from the study, what conclusions were reached by the author(s)?