Five positive psychological principles for wellbeing are set out in the Introduction: connection, autonomy, competence, strengths-based approaches, and having a sense of meaning beyond the self. These principles, together with an open mind (mindful awareness), open heart (kindness and compassion), and clear thinking (informed appraisal), we saw as providing a foundation for ‘wise action’ – defined as choosing whatever yields the greatest long-term benefit, not just for ourselves in the here and now, but for others, including those who are not like us or come after us. This embeds utilitarian philosophy in a global and chronological context, threaded throughout the book with illustrative stories. In each chapter, readers are invited to reflect on the ideas presented and how they apply to their own lives and things they care about.
Click on the below to watch Felicia’s introduction to the book as delivered at the Happiness and its Causes conference online at the end of 2020:
And for a longer introduction, click below to see the video of the online book launch:
Barbara Fredrickson (2011) Positive Emotions Open Our Mind. Greater Good Science Centre
Barry Schwartz (2011) Using our practical wisdom. TEDx.
Paul Gilbert (2020) The Nature of Compassion, Fear, Safe Relating, and World Change: Lecture Series
Richard Ryan (2017) Motivation and Lifestyle. Happiness & Its Causes.
Shauna Shapiro (2017) The Power of Mindfulness: What You Practice Grows Stronger. TEDx.
Barbara Fredrickson (2011) Positive Emotions Open Our Mind. Greater Good Science Centre
Barry Schwartz (2011) Using our practical wisdom. TEDx.
Paul Gilbert (2020) The Nature of Compassion, Fear, Safe Relating, and World Change: Lecture Series
Richard Ryan (2017) Motivation and Lifestyle. Happiness & Its Causes.
Shauna Shapiro (2017) The Power of Mindfulness: What You Practice Grows Stronger. TEDx.
- Psychology Podcast Interview with Martin Seligman (2020): From Learned Helplessness to Learned Hopefulness
- The Science of Happiness with Dacher Keltner, Greater Good Science Centre
- Marié Wissing, Lusilda Schutte, Christelle Liversage, Brenda Entwisle, Marianne Gericke & Corey Keyes (2019) Important Goals, Meanings, and Relationships in Flourishing and Languishing States: Towards Patterns of Well-being. Applied Research Quality Life 16, 573–609. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-019-09771-8* This research shows that those who are languishing are usually self-focused and concerned with their own needs and hedonic happiness whereas those who are flourishing are focused towards others and the greater good – eudaemonic happiness.
- Stewart Donaldson, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & Jeanne Nakamura (Eds.) (2020) Positive Psychological Science: Improving Everyday Life, Well-Being, Work, Education, and Societies Across the Globe. Routledge.
- European Policies Initiative, Open Society Institute Sofia (2019) The Media Literacy Index 2019: Just think about it.
- Paul Gilbert (2013) Mindful Compassion. Hachette.
- Robert Krznaric (2020) The good ancestor: how to think long term in a short-term world. Random House.
- Tara Brach (2020) Radical compassion: learning to love yourself and your world with the practice of RAIN. Penguin Life.
- Winston Sieck (2020) Critical Thinking in Everyday Life
- The Compassionate Brain, Rick Hanson
- De-Mystifying Mindfulness, Leiden University, Chris Goto-Jones
- Discover the power of self-compassion, Kristen Neff & Chris Germer
- Free Kindness 7 Day Course, Awake Academy
- A Life of Happiness and Fulfilment, Indian School of Business, Dr. Rajagopal Raghunathan
- Mindfulness Daily with Tara Brach
- Mindfulness for wellbeing and peak performance, Monash University, Craig Hassed & Richard Chambers
- Positive Psychology, The University of North Carolina with Barbara Fredrickson
- Positive Psychology Resilience Skills, University of Pennsylvania, Karen Reivich
- The Science of Happiness, University of California Berkeley, Dacher Kelter & Emiliana Simon-Thomas
- The Science of Wellbeing, Yale University with Laurie Santos
- Sorting Truth From Fiction: Civic Online Reasoning – How to educate students on critical thinking skills
The potential that positive psychology offers
- Christopher Peterson, Nansook Park & Patrick Sweeney (2008) Group well-being: morale from a positive psychology perspective. Applied Psychology, 57, 19–36.
- Martin Seligman & Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (2000) Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55(1), 5–14.
- Robert Biswas-Diener (Ed.) (2011) Positive psychology as social change. Springer.
- [There is now an increasing recognition that positive psychology has the potential to make a much broader contribution]:
- Isaac Prilleltensky (2020) Mattering at the Intersection of Psychology, Philosophy and Politics. American Journal of Community Psychology, 65,16–34
- Johnathan Duff, Carolyn Rubenstein & Isaac Prilleltensky (2016) Wellness and fairness: Two core values for humanistic psychology. The Humanistic Psychologist, 44(2), 127-141.
Wellbeing matters
- Jessica Kansky & Ed Diener (2017) Benefits of well-being: Health, social relationships, work, and resilience. Journal of Positive Psychology and Wellbeing, 1(2), 129–169.
- Kostadin Kushlev, Danielle Drummond, Samantha Heintzelman & Ed Diener (2019) Do happy people care about society’s problems? The Journal of Positive Psychology, 15(1), 1–11.
- Shannon Suldo, Amanda Thalji & John Ferron (2011) Longitudinal academic outcomes predicted by early adolescents’ subjective well-being, psychopathology, and mental health status yielded from a dual factor model. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 6(1), 17-30
- Marcus Richards & Felicia Huppert (2011) Do positive children become positive adults? Evidence from a longitudinal birth cohort study. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 6(1), 75–87.
What kind of world do we want to live in?
- John Rawls’ Theory of Justice
- John Rawls (2001) Justice as fairness: A restatement. Harvard University Press
- John Helliwell, Richard Layard & Jeffrey Sachs (2017) World Happiness Report 2017. Sustainable Development Solutions Network
- John Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey Sachs & Jan-Emmanuel De Neve (2020) World Happiness Report 2020. Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
The psychological foundations of wellbeing
Principles for psychological wellbeing
1. Feeling connected to others
- Bethany Kok & Barbara Fredrickson (2014) Wellbeing Begins with “We” The Physical and Mental Health Benefits of Interventions that Increase Social Closeness. In Felicia Huppert & Cary Cooper (Eds.), Wellbeing: A Complete Reference Guide, Volume 6: Interventions and Policies to Enhance Wellbeing. Wiley.
- Richard Ryan & Edward Deci (2000) Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78.
- Richard Ryan & Edward Deci (2017) Self-Determination Theory – Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development and Wellness. Guilford Press.
- Naomi Eisenberger & Matthew Lieberman (2004) Why rejection hurts: a common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. Trends in cognitive sciences, 8(7), 294–300.
- Steven Cole, John Capitanio, Katie Chun, Jesusa Arevalo, Jeffrey Ma & John Cacioppo (2015) Myeloid differentiation architecture of leukocyte transcriptome dynamics in perceived social isolation. PNAS, 112(49), 15142–15147.
- Julianne Holt-Lunstad (2017) The potential public health relevance of social isolation and loneliness: Prevalence, epidemiology, and risk factors. Public Policy & Aging Report, 27(4), 127–130.
2. Having a sense of autonomy
- Edward Deci & Richard Ryan (1995) Human autonomy. In Michael Kernis (Ed.), Efficacy, agency, and self-esteem, 31-49. Springer.
- Mark Evans & Nina Terrey (2016) Design thinking and public policy reform: Co-design with citizens and stakeholders. In Gerry Stoker & Mark Evans (Eds.), Evidence-based policy making in the social sciences: Methods that matter, 243-262. Policy Press.
- Peter Bradwell& Sarah Marr (2017) Making the most of collaboration an international survey of public service co-design. Annual Review of Policy Design, 5(1), 1-27.
- John Helliwell, Richard Layard & Jeffrey Sachs (2017) World Happiness Report 2017. Sustainable Development Solutions Network
- John Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey Sachs & Jan-Emmanuel De Neve (2020). World Happiness Report 2020. Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
3. Feeling competent
- Beiwen Chen, Maarten Vansteenkiste, Wim Beyers, Liesbet Boone, Edward L. Deci, Jolene Van der Kaap-Deeder,Bart Duriez, Willy Lens, Lennia Matos, Athanasios Mouratidis, Richard Ryan, Kennon M. Sheldon, Bart Soenens,Stijn Van Petegem & Joke Verstuyf (2015) Basic psychological need satisfaction, need frustration, and need strength across four cultures. Motivation and emotion, 39(2), 216-236.
- Carol Dweck (2008) Mindset: the new psychology of success. Ballantine Books.
- John Clarkson, Roger Coleman, Simeon Keates & Cherie Lebbon (2013) Inclusive design: Design for the whole population. Springer Science & Business Media.
4. Paying attention to what’s going well
- Roy Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Catrin Finkenauer & K de Vohs (2001) Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323–370.
- Barbara Fredrickson & Michael Cohn (2008) Positive emotions. In Michael Lewis, Jeanette Haviland-Jones & Lisa Feldman Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of Emotions (3rd ed., 777–796). Guilford Press [NB: omitted from the 4th Edition, 2018]
- Barbara Fredrickson (2009) Positivity. Crown.
- Kareem Johnson & Barbara Fredrickson (2005) “We All Look the Same to Me”: Positive Emotions Eliminate the Own-Race Bias in Face Recognition. Psychological Science, 16(11), 875–881
- Tara Lomas, Jeffrey Froh, Robert Emmons, Anjali Mishra & Giacomo Bono (2014) Gratitude Interventions: A Review and Future Agenda. In Acacia Parks & Stephen Schueller (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Positive Psychological Interventions, 1–19. Wiley.
- John Gottman (2014) What predicts divorce? The relationship between marital processes and marital outcomes. Psychology Press.
- Marie Forgeard & Martin Seligman (2012) Seeing the glass half full: A review of the causes and consequences of optimism. Pratiques psychologiques, 18(2), 107–120.
- Sara Puig-Perez, Carolina Villada, Matias Pulopulos, Mercedes Almela, Vanesa Hidalgo & Alicia Salvador (2015). Optimism and pessimism are related to different components of the stress response in healthy older people. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 98(2), 213–221.
- David Cooperrider & Diana Whitney (2011) Appreciative inquiry: A positive revolution in change. ReadHowYouWant.com.
5. Having a sense of meaning
- Martin Seligman (2004) Authentic happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment. Simon and Schuster.
- Emily Esfahani Smith (2017) The power of meaning: Crafting a life that matters. Random House
- Joo Yeon Shin & Michael Stegar (2014) Promoting Meaning and Purpose in Life. In Acacia Parks & Stephen Schueller (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Positive Psychological Interventions, 90–110. Wiley.
- Andrew Steptoe & Daisy Fancourt (2019). Leading a meaningful life at older ages and its relationship with social engagement, prosperity, health, biology, and time use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(4), 1207-1212.
- Shulamit Ben-Itzhak, Jonathan Dvash, Maya Maor, Noa Rosenberg & Pinchas Halpern (2015) Sense of meaning as a predictor of burnout in emergency physicians in Israel: a national survey. Clinical and experimental emergency medicine, 2(4), 217-225.
- Darrell Campbell Jr, Seema Sonnad, Frederic Eckhauser, Kyle Campbell & Lazar Greenfield (2001) Burnout among American surgeons. Surgery, 130(4), 696-705.
- Isaac Prilleltensky (2014) Meaning-making, mattering, and thriving in community psychology: From co-optation to amelioration and transformation. Psychosocial Intervention, 23(2), 151-154.
Core capabilities
1. Open mind – mindful awareness
- Vikram Bhargava & Manuel Velasquez (2020) Ethics of the Attention Economy: The Problem of Social Media Addiction. Business Ethics Quarterly, 1-39
- Tim Wu (2017) The attention merchants: The epic scramble to get inside our heads. Vintage
- Felicia Huppert (2018) Living life well: The role of mindfulness and compassion. In Joseph Forgas & Roy Baumeister (Eds), The social psychology of living well. Routledge.
- Mark Williams & Danny Penman (2011). Mindfulness: a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world. Hachette UK.
This reference is also relevant to: “Mindfulness practice is an evidence-based form of awareness and attention training that is increasingly popular.” - Ruth Baer (2009) Self-focused attention and mechanisms of change in mindfulness-based treatment. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 38(S1), 15-20.
- Edo Shonin, William Van Gordon & Mark Griffiths (2015) Mindfulness in psychology: a breath of fresh air? The Psychologist, 28(1), 28-31.
- Ryan Niemiec & Judith Lissing (2016) Mindfulness-based strengths practice (MBSP) for enhancing well-being, managing problems, and boosting positive relationships. In Itai Ivtzan & Tim Lomas (Eds.) Mindfulness in positive psychology: The science of meditation and wellbeing, 15-36. Routledge .
- Anna Kozlowski (2013) Mindful mating: Exploring the connection between mindfulness and relationship satisfaction. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 28(1-2), 92-104.
- Maria João Gouveia, Carlos Carona, Maria Cristina Canavarro & Helena Moreira (2016) Self-compassion and dispositional mindfulness are associated with parenting styles and parenting stress: The mediating role of mindful parenting. Mindfulness, 7(3), 700-712.
- Alison Christie, Paul Atkins & James Donald (2017) The meaning and doing of mindfulness: The role of values in the link between mindfulness and well-being. Mindfulness, 8(2), 368-378.
- Adam Lueke & Bryan Gibson (2015) Mindfulness meditation reduces implicit age and race bias: The role of reduced automaticity of responding. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(3), 284-291.
- Adam Lueke & Bryan Gibson (2016) Brief mindfulness meditation reduces discrimination. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 3(1), 34.
- James Donald, Bajinder Sahdra, Brooke Van Zanden, Jasper Duineveld, Paul Atkins, Sarah Marshall & Joseph Ciarrochi (2019) Does your mindfulness benefit others? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the link between mindfulness and prosocial behaviour. British Journal of Psychology, 110(4).
- Megan Reitz & Michael Chaskalson (2016) Mindfulness works but only if you work at it. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, November 04, 2016.
- Luke Wreford & Paula Haddock (2019) Mindfulness and social change. Open Democracy.
2. Open heart – kindness and compassion
- Rutger Bregman (2020). Humankind: A hopeful history. Bloomsbury Publishing.
- Rutger Bregman (2020) The real story of Lord of the Flies. The Guardian, 9 May 2020.
- Felix Warneken & Michael Tomasello (2006) Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees. Science, 311(5765), 1301-1303.
- Rodolfo Cortes Barragan, Rechele Brooks & Andrew Meltzoff (2020) Altruistic food sharing behavior by human infants after a hunger manipulation. Scientific Reports (Nature Publisher Group), 10(1).
- Donald Pfaff (2015) The altruistic brain: How we are naturally good. Oxford University Press.
- Paul Gilbert (2015) The evolution and social dynamics of compassion. Social and personality psychology compass, 9(6), 239-254.
- Tania Singer & Olga Klimecki (2014) Empathy and compassion. Current Biology, 24(18), R875-R878.
- Lara Aknin, Christopher Barrington-Leigh, Elizabeth Dunn, John Helliwell, Justine Burns, Robert Biswas-Diener, Imelda Kemeza, Paul Nyende, Claire Ashton-James & Michael Norton (2013) Prosocial spending and well-being: Cross-cultural evidence for a psychological universal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(4), 635-652.
- Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin & Michael Norton (2008) Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science, 319(5870), 1687-1688.
- Olga Klimecki & Tania Singer (2017). The compassionate brain. In Emma Seppälä, Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Stephanie Brown, Monica Worline, Daryl Cameron & James Doty (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science, 109-120. Oxford University Press.
- David Hamilton (2010) Why kindness is good for you. Hay House.
- Joseph Chancellor, Seth Margolis, Katherine Jacobs Bao & Sonja Lyubomirsky (2018) Everyday prosociality in the workplace: The reinforcing benefits of giving, getting, and glimpsing. Emotion, 18(4), 507–517.
- Kristin Neff (2003) Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85–101.
- Chris Germer & Kristin Neff (2020) The Near and Far Enemies for Fierce Compassion. Center for Mindful Self-Compassion
3. Clear thinking – informed appraisal
- Stella Cottrell (2017) Critical thinking skills: Effective analysis, argument and reflection. Macmillan International Higher Education.
- Colin Seale (2020) The Case For Critical Thinking: The COVID-19 Pandemic And An Urgent Call To Close The Critical Thinking Gap In Education. Forbes.
- All-Party Parliamentary Group on Literacy (2018), Fake news and critical literacy: The final report of the Commission on Fake News and the Teaching of Critical Literacy in Schools. National Literacy Trust, UK.
- Select Committee on Communications, House of Lords (2017) Growing up with the Internet. UK Parliament.
- Joel Breakstone, Mark Smith, Sam Wineburg, Amie Rapaport, Jill Carle, Marshall Garland & Anna Saavedra (2019) Students Civic Online Reasoning: A national portrait. Stanford History Education Group
- Paul Machete & Marita Turpin (2020) The use of critical thinking to identify fake news: a systematic literature review. In Marié Hattingh, Machdel Matthee, Hanlie Smuts, Ilias Pappas, Yogesh Dwivedi & Matti Mäntymäki (Eds.) Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society 2020: Responsible Design, Implementation and Use of Information and Communication Technology, 235-246. Springer.
- Maura Sellars, Razia Fakirmohammad, Linh Bui, John Fishetti, Sarfaroz Niyozov, Ruth Reynolds, Nisha Thapliyal, Yu-Ling Liu-Smith & Nosheen Ali (2018) Conversations on critical thinking: Can critical thinking find its way forward as the skill set and mindset of the century? Education Sciences, 8(4), 205.
Wise action
- Arvin Paul (2021) Aristotle’s Wise Action: Exploring conceptions of wisdom in action. Psychology Today, Feb 17, 2021
- Barry Schwartz & Kenneth Sharpe (2010) Practical wisdom: The right way to do the right thing. Penguin.