‘Positive psychology’ — remember the name.

As a current master’s student in Positive Psychology and a former Strategy Consultant at Deloitte, I hope to illustrate how the evolution of this field could profoundly impact the personal and professional development of fellow business professionals (and beyond).

Here’s 3 questions I’ll cover:

1. What is ‘positive’ psychology? It’s not like there is a ‘negative’ psychology, right?
2. How is the field developing? (Ironically, it hasn’t all been rosy)
3. But I’m a busy corporate worker, how can positive psychology help me?

1. What is ‘positive’ psychology? It’s not like there is a ‘negative’ psychology, right?

‘Positive psychology’. You’ve probably heard of both words in isolation, but together they might be leaving you pondering.

To understand the significance of the pairing, we must first understand the history of psychology itself.

Compared to other disciplines like medicine, psychology is relatively young, having only distinguished itself as an offshoot of ‘philosophy’ in the late 1800s (Lumin Learning, n.d.). At its inception, psychology’s mission was to:

1. Treat mental illness.
2. Help people’s lives be more productive and fulfilling.
3. Identify and cultivate outstanding talent.
   (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000)

However, as the early-mid 1900’s became coloured by World Wars, psychology became myopically focused on mission #1 in repairing damage (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

This narrowed focus on ‘illness’ may have been reinforced by the humanity’s ‘negativity bias’ (Gable & Haidt, 2005). For example, think about how one rude comment from a co-worker can have you spiralling all day. This bias is thought to be pro-evolutionary to avoid anti-social or damaging experiences, however this old hardware may not always best serve our modern lives (Baumeister et al., 2001).

Hence, because of such war and bias, psychology’s missions ‘to make life more fulfilling’ and ‘to nurture talent’ were largely put to the foreground. In fact, between 1967-1998 it was found that:

For every article on positive emotion there were 21 articles on negative emotions (Myers, 1999)

As the late 1900’s brought greater economic and political stability, psychologists turned towards ‘prevention’ by building competency through strength-based approaches, however it soon became apparent that the disease model over the last 50 years failed to advance this knowledge (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

Although some progress had been made a decade following the war in ‘humanistic psychology’, pioneered by Abraham Maslow’s ‘self-actualisation’ research, humanism’s focus on overly qualitative methods to observe ‘the whole person’ led its reputation to suffer (Alex Linley et al., 2006). As a result, a more rigorous, quantitative empirical evidence base was missing (Clay, 2002; Froh, 2004).

This led to Seligman’s 1998 Presidential Address at the American Psychology Association, calling for research in ‘Positive Psychology’.

Positive psychology is the study of the conditions that contribute to the flourishing of people, groups and institutions (Gable & Haidt, 2005).

Seligman hoped that this would aid prevention efforts and re-orient psychology back to its forgotten missions, helping us better understand what makes a life well-lived (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

2. How is the field developing? (Ironically, it hasn’t all been rosy)

Only two decades young, it is natural that positive psychology has experienced some growing pains. Four key shifts are currently required to further progress:

Four key shifts in Positive Psychology

I) From Overemphasising the Positive - To A Balanced Model

In its infancy, positive psychology received criticism for focusing too heavily on positive emotions and ignoring the benefits of negative ones (Wong, 2011).

Interviews with corporate workers found interpretations of ‘positive psychology’ to be centred around “increasing positive emotions” and “being optimistic” (Rolls, 2024).

However, positive emotion might not always be desirable. For example, being overly optimistic when making a promise to a client could lead the team to working late nights. Hence, pessimism may be useful in providing a grounding sense of reality.

Positive psychology must therefore seek to better understand the ‘co-valence’ of emotions (Lomas et al., 2015). In doing so, it must assimilate into ‘traditional psychology’ to create a more comprehensive understanding of the spectrum of human emotions in promoting wellbeing.

II) From Imprecise Language – To A Clear Taxonomy

To research wellbeing, one must be able to define and measure it. This itself is a complex task.

Interviews with corporate workers revealed that many describe wellbeing as a sense of “balance” across mental, physical, social areas, and “making trade-offs when needed but generally keeping all the balls in the air” (Rolls, 2024).

Although ‘balance’ is important, wellbeing has further complexities. For example, a Manager may find their work meaningful, have strong peer relationships at work, yet feel like they are held back by their pessimistic mindset and an autocratic boss.

In fact, there is no one agreed upon definition for wellbeing, with a host of sub drivers / measures developed (Wong, 2011), for example:

• ‘Psychological Wellbeing’ as a measure consists of self-acceptance, positive relationships with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, a feeling of purpose and meaning in life and, personal growth and development.
• ‘Subjective Wellbeing’ however, consists of evaluations of a person’s life satisfaction and experiences of positive vs negative affect.

Ensuring clear language and methods for measurement is a key focus for positive psychology in its next wave (Wong, 2011).

III) From Western Bias – To A Global Orientation

Positive psychology’s western beginnings also brought bias.

The aforementioned ‘overemphasis on positive emotion’ may be attributed to western origins where positive states like excitement are highly valued, compared to Eastern cultures which value lower arousal states like tranquillity (Tsai, 2007).

Western cultures also tend to focus on the individual, often excluding broader socio-cultural factors that influence wellbeing (Kim et al., 2018).

Interviews with Australian corporate workers found a large majority saw positive psychology as techniques relating to your individual “mindset” rather than also acknowledging how broader group and institutional cultures shape wellbeing (Rolls, 2024).

To broaden our conceptualisation of human flourishing a global outlook is needed. There is already some evidence of progress, with 96% of positive psychology articles coming from westernised countries in 2008, compared to 70% in 2018 (Kim et al., 2018). However, there is still a way to go.

IV) From Academic Research – To Real World Applications

While the breadth of research is the field has been expanding, there's a need for a deeper understanding of real-world applications and their long-term effects (Oades & Mossman, 2017).

For example, although research on the benefits of compassion training for leaders has grown, most has only been short term studies conducted in healthcare domains (Dodson & Heng 2022).

Broader applications of research will be critical to the future practicality of this field.

Overall, these four key shifts pose an exciting future for positive psychology. A future where the complexity of emotions is understood across a diverse socio-cultural landscape and where interventions are both rigorously defined and deeply practical.

3. But I’m a busy corporate worker, how can positive psychology help me?

Positive psychology will be an increasingly important discipline for corporate workers facing a complex and rapidly evolving business landscape.

Here’s three examples of how it may help individuals confront this change:

I) Enhance meaning derived from work

Work is becoming an increasingly significant part of our lives. Populations are ageing, retirement ages are extending, and younger generations are demanding more meaning from work (Dutton & Wrzesniewski, 2013).

The reality is not every job task is going to be fun. Yet, finding meaning in the mundane is a skill that can be cultivated.

For example, I was often tasked to lead our daily team ‘stand ups’. Rather than ease in by talking about the weather, I would ask each person to share one thing they were grateful for. In this way, task related ‘job crafting’ by designing one's job tasks to better suit personal needs / goals, has been shown to cultivate meaning, along with gratitude being shown to increase positive affect and optimism (Dutton & Wrzesniewski, 2013; Cortini et al., 2019).

Although team members sometimes called it ‘corny’, after persisting I often found it was something they looked forward to. From this, I built a brand for promoting wellbeing in my workplace which added to my job satisfaction.

II) Better manage burnout

The pace at which we work is faster than ever, with COVID and hybrid working increasing demands to be ‘always on’ (Even 2020; Mazmanian et al., 2013).

Evidence suggests taking microbreaks of up to 10 minutes that involve physical activity, social interaction or exposure to green spaces can significantly attenuate job stressors (Albulescu et al., 2022; Benchimol-Elkaim et al., 2024).

Personally, the office ping pong table has been my saving grace. Although sometimes others saw me to be ‘slacking’, my improved productivity to deliver outcomes allowed me to feel confident justifying my game time.

III) Better navigate complexity

Gone are the days of obtaining one job for 50 years. Technology is disrupting the way we work and making the future more ambiguous.

To tackle this, interventions like mindfulness (i.e the practice of focusing awareness on the present moment) have been shown to improve ‘uncertainty adaptability’ by inducing calm and widening attention to aid in flexible decision making (Johnstone & Wilson-Prangley, 2021).

As a strategy consultant, daily mindfulness was a significant contributor to my own ability to help executives navigate complexity on strategic projects. Although sometimes I got weird looks from my team members when I would meditate in the corner chair during lunch, a growing awareness for self-care following COVID-19 has reduced stigma. Although I still wouldn’t dare to do it on client site!

These are just some of the ways in which positive psychology can help us thrive in an increasingly complex world.

Conclusion

The emergence of positive psychology has been pivotal in understanding what makes life worth living. As with any nascent discipline, it has experienced some growing pains, yet the next wave of a more balanced, global, consistent, and practical evidence base will break exciting new ground. The relevance of this discipline for corporate workers has never been greater, as the business landscape becomes increasingly complex.

Implementing positive psychology practices in my life has greatly improved my performance and fulfilment. As this discipline grows, I hope to share more of the insights that I learn along the way.

Thank you for reading.

Reference list

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