Personality and health, subjective well-being, and longevity

Personality traits can be employed to guide understanding of trajectories to health and longevity, but long-term longitudinal study and multifaceted assessment of healthy aging are crucial. Following up on the life span study initiated by Lewis Terman, we assessed 4 validated factors of personality in young adulthood in 1940, constructed a multifactor measure of participants' healthy aging in 1986, and collected death certificates through 2007 (to determine longevity) on a sample of 1,312 Terman participants (732 men). Neuroticism predicted worse physical health and subjective well-being in old age and, for women, higher mortality risk, but for men, neuroticism predicted decreased mortality risk. For both sexes, extraversion predicted old-age social competence, whereas conscientiousness predicted men's old-age productivity. Differential patterns of association between personality traits and healthy aging components are informative about individual personality characteristics and long-term health outcomes.

Positive Clinical Psychology: a new vision and strategy for integrated research and practice

This review argues for the development of a Positive Clinical Psychology, which has an integrated and equally weighted focus on both positive and negative functioning in all areas of research and practice. Positive characteristics (such as gratitude, flexibility, and positive emotions) can uniquely predict disorder beyond the predictive power of the presence of negative characteristics, and buffer the impact of negative life events, potentially preventing the development of disorder. Increased study of these characteristics can rapidly expand the knowledge base of clinical psychology and utilize the promising new interventions to treat disorder through promoting the positive. Further, positive and negative characteristics cannot logically be studied or changed in isolation as (a) they interact to predict clinical outcomes, (b) characteristics are neither "positive" or "negative", with outcomes depending on specific situation and concomitant goals and motivations, and (c) positive and negative well-being often exist on the same continuum. Responding to criticisms of the Positive Psychology movement, we do not suggest the study of positive functioning as a separate field of clinical psychology, but rather that clinical psychology itself changes to become a more integrative discipline. An agenda for research and practice is proposed including reconceptualizing well-being, forming stronger collaborations with allied disciplines, rigorously evaluating the new positive interventions, and considering a role for clinical psychologists in promoting well-being as well as treating distress.

Creating 'good' self-managers?: facilitating and governing an online self care skills training course

Background

In chronic disease management, patients are increasingly called upon to undertake a new role as lay tutors within self-management training programmes. The internet constitutes an increasingly significant healthcare setting and a key arena for self-management support and communication. This study evaluates how a new quasi-professional health workforce – volunteer tutors – engage, guide and attempt to manage people with long-term conditions in the ways of 'good' self-management within the context of an online self-management course.

Methods

A qualitative analysis of postings to the discussion centre of 11 online classes (purposively selected from 27) run as part of the Expert Patients Programme. Facilitators (term for tutors online) and participants posted questions, comments and solutions related to self-management of long-term conditions; these were subjected to a textual and discursive analysis to explore:

a) how facilitators, through the internet, engaged participants in issues related to self-management;

b) how participants responded to and interacted with facilitators.

Results

Emergent themes included: techniques and mechanisms used to engage people with self-management; the process facilitators followed – 'sharing', 'modelling' and 'confirming'; and the emergence of a policing role regarding online disclosure. Whilst exchanging medical advice was discouraged, facilitators often professed to understand and give advice on psychological aspects of behaviour.

Conclusion

The study gave an insight into the roles tutors adopt – one being their ability to 'police' subjective management of long-term conditions and another being to attempt to enhance the psychological capabilities of participants.

From Continence to Virtue

Character is central to positive psychology's efforts to understand and promote human flourishing. Despite the importance of character and ubiquitous references to Aristotle, virtue theory remains underdeveloped in positive psychology. This article elaborates three key aspects of virtue ethics for understanding flourishing: goodness, the unity of character, and character types. Positive psychologists have not developed a substantial concept of what is good, which is essential because virtues are defined as the enduring personal qualities necessary for pursuing particular goods. Positive psychologists present virtue in a fragmented manner, focusing on a few `signature strengths,' whereas virtue ethicists generally emphasize the unity of character and the development of a full range of virtues. Because positive psychologists have not recognized the four character types in addition to virtuous character, they often misconstrue the continent character as virtuous, and many of their descriptors of the good life do not differentiate well between the virtuous and the vicious character types.

Positive Psychology, Ethnocentrism, and the Disguised Ideology of Individualism

This article aims to examine critically the attempts by positive psychologists to develop a science of happiness and positive human functioning that transcends temporal and cultural boundaries. Current efforts in positive psychology are deconstructed to reveal an adherence to the dominant Western conception of self and its accompanying vision of the good life as personal fulfillment. It is argued that in failing to recognize the tacit cultural and moral assumptions underlying their investigations, positive psychologists not only distort the outlooks of cultures that do not subscribe to an individualistic framework, they also insulate themselves from reflecting critically on their work. Alternative forms of inquiry are offered to assist positive psychology in overcoming these limitations.

Re-envisioning the training and practice of clinical psychologists: preserving science and research orientations in the face of change

We argue for preservation of an expectation of psychologists that approach human problems from an evidence-based perspective. Acquisition of the requisite knowledge, skills, and practical experience require access to resources outside of graduate psychology programs. Whether adhering to a scientist-practitioner or practitioner-scholar model, psychologists must be "scientifically literate." Deficiencies are noted in the training of scientist-practitioner psychologists for the conduct of clinical trials and the dissemination and sustained implementation of evidence-based interventions.

What (and Why) is Positive Psychology?

Positive psychology is the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions. In this brief introduction, the authors give examples of current work in positive psychology and try to explain why the positive psychology movement has grown so quickly in just 5 years. They suggest that it filled a need: It guided researchers to understudied phenomena. The authors close by addressing some criticisms and shortcomings of positive psychology, such as the relative lack of progress in studying positive institutions.