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1.2 A Thought Experiment

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1.2 A Thought Experiment

Positive Psychology: Applications and Interventions

Universidad de Pensilvania

Curso 2 de 5 en Foundations of Positive Psychology Programa Especializado

Positive interventions are one of the building blocks for the application of positive psychology in our day-to-day lives. In this course taught by Dr. James Pawelski, we explore positive interventions through theory, research and practice. We provide learners the basic tools for using and measuring positive psychology in professional or personal contexts. Suggested prerequisite: Positive Psychology: Martin E. P. Seligman’s Visionary Science.

Destrezas que aprenderás

Character Strengths And Virtues, goal setting, Positive Psychology, Savoring

Impartido por:

James Pawelski, Ph.D.
Director of Education and Senior Scholar

Transcripción

[MUSIC]

Hello and welcome back to our course on the theory,

research, and practice of positive interventions.

In the first section of the course, we talked about our interests as human beings

in influencing the change that characterizes human experience.

We noted that there are lots of places we can get advice for

how to influence that change, and we saw that positive psychology relies on

scientific investigation to inform us about how we can live our lives well.

In this section, I'd like to invite you to explore further

the perspectives of positive psychology by means of a fun thought experiment.

I'd like you to imagine that you are walking near your house and

you find a flea market.

And in the flea market you see for sale a magic lantern and you pick it up,

and you rub the lantern and out pops a genie of course, and

the genie says I have been waiting for you, I'm so impressed with

you as a human being and I want to help you by transforming you into a super hero.

Now you have a choice to make,

the genie says you have to decide what color you want your cape to be.

And there are two options.

On the one hand, you can choose a red cape.

And if you choose the red cape you will have the power

to fight against things in the world that we don't want.

Things like poverty, injustice, hunger, violence.

On the other hand, you can choose a green cape.

And if you choose a green cape, you will have the power to fight for

the things in the world that we do want.

Things like understanding, harmony and justice.

So the genie is waiting, which cape would you choose?

I'd like you to think about that for a moment and

to note down, which cape would you choose and why?

All right, so some of you no doubt have chosen the red cape and there maybe any

number of reasons, maybe one of the reasons you chose the red cape, those of

you who did, is because we live in a world where there are a lot of problems.

There a lot of severe problems.

People are in danger right now.

And if you had a red cape, you would be able to exert your efforts to fight

against the problems that those people are facing.

Or you might say, well, you know if I chose the red cape,

it's a whole lot easier for all of us to agree on what we don't want than it is for

us to agree on what we do want.

So if I have a red cape, I can work with certainty

on eliminating problems that we all agree shouldn't be around.

On the other hand, you may have chosen not the red cape but the green cape.

And there are a variety of reasons for wanting the green cape.

You may say for

example that, if I choose the green cape, I think I'll have more fun.

Because working towards those things that we want is just more appealing

than working to eliminate the things that we don't want, or you may have chosen

the green cape because you say there are times when if I choose the green cape and

I work to realize those possibilities and the things that we do want,

that can sometimes automatically take care of the things that we don't want.

Think for example about disease and good nutrition.

If you can help someone to have good nutrition,

that will protect them against the development of a lot of diseases.

But on the other hand, if someone has a disease and you cure that disease, that

doesn't necessarily guarantee that, that person is going to have good nutrition.

So again, there are some cases where using the green cape

may make it unnecessary to use the red cape.

Okay, red cape, green cape, lots of different choices.

Which one should you have chosen?

Well, the point of this thought experiment is not to make

one wrong and the other right.

Rather, the point of this thought experiment is to say that they

are different.

Would you agree?

If you're a red cape super hero you will be looking for problems in the world.

And will you find them?

Absolutely, there are lots of problems in our world.

And you will have a very meaningful life working to eliminate those problems.

On the other hand, if you choose the green cape, you will be looking for

opportunities.

Will you find opportunities?

Absolutely, there are lots of opportunities in our world.

And you will have a very meaningful life working to realize those opportunities.

So with this distinction in mind, this allows me to state

what I believe is the fundamental principle of positive psychology.

Namely, you can't flourish without a green cape.

You can't flourish without a green cape or in less colorful terms

well-being is not the same thing as the absence of ill being.

Let's take a couple of examples to make this clear.

Let say you go to the doctor and the doctor gives you all kinds of tests.

To see whether you have any kind of illness or not.

And she concludes that you don't.

You are disease free.

Does that mean you're healthy?

Well, maybe, maybe not.

Maybe you don't have an illness right now, but maybe you're engaging in habits.

You're not living in a very healthy way, and

so you may develop the disease in the near future.

Maybe you're not eating your vegetables like you should.

Maybe you're not sleeping well enough or getting the exercise that you should.

What if you go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist?

And that person gives you all kinds of

test to see whether you have any kind of mental illness.

And it turns out that you don't have any diagnosable mental illness.

Does that mean you're mentally healthy?

Well, again, not necessarily, right?

Who among us couldn't do better about managing those doubts and

voices that arise in our heads, sometimes late at night or

early in the morning about our competence or what it is that we're doing in life.

And who among us couldn't do better in

developing relationships with other people into personal skills, and so on.

So just because we don't have a mental illness doesn't necessarily mean

we're mentally healthy or not as healthy as we could be mentally.

This is something that the World Health Organization had in mind way back

in 1948 when they developed a definition of health.

They defined health as a state of complete physical, mental,

and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

So, think about this from another perspective as well,

I think this will help to the case too.

I don't know how many of you have had experiences with gardens.

But when I was a child my family and I had a garden at my grandparent's farm.

And so on the weekends we would travel out to the garden and work in that garden.

We planted, we had corn, and we had zucchini, and

tomatoes, and asparagus, and so on, and so forth.

Now, if we didn't have a green cape.

If all we did was pull out weeds, but we never planted those seeds for

those vegetables, we wouldn't have a garden.

We'd just have a plot of dirt.

So for a garden to flourish, you have to have a green cape, and plant the seeds.

Similarly for human beings to flourish we have to have a green cape.

Okay, so here is another question for you.

Can you flourish without a red cape?

What do you think?

Well, let's go back to the garden example, again.

Some people would say, yeah, all you need is a green cape and you're good to go and

if we go back with me to my childhood garden, if all we did is plant vegetables

but we never pulled the weeds, we wouldn't have much of a harvest in the fall either.

So with people as with gardens, it seems that it's important to have both a green

cape and a red cape in order to flourish.

So what are the results of our thought experiment?

Well, clearly what we need is a reversible cape.

We need to have one side that is red because there are times when we

do need to be able to put a stop to something that is threatening or

that is aversive in the moment and sometimes urgent, and we've gotta stop it.

On the other hand, it's important for

us to have, available to us the green side of the cape.

Where we can look for opportunities that arise.

Now, it turns out that we actually don't need a genie to

offer us the green and the red capes.

Because our genes have already equipped us with the power

to avoid the things that we don't want.

And to move towards the things that we do want.

The challenge is that we tend to overuse the red side of the cape, don't we?

Psychologists call this a negativity bias.

That is to say, it's easier for us to notice problems in our environment.

Then it is to notice opportunities.

In my life, problems scream at me and we normally know when we have a problem.

Whereas opportunities kind of whisper and if we don't take advantage of them,

they just go on their merry way and don't make any kind of a deal about it.

So it's important that we be able to use both sides of the cape effectively.

The challenge is, most of us are very good at using the red side,

but we under-use the green side.

So positive psychology seeks to use the methods of empirical psychology to help

us learn how to use the green side of the cape more frequently and effectively.

Now in this course, although we'll be keeping the reversible cape in mind,

we'll be focusing mostly on the green side of the cape, to explore

what positive psychology has learned about how we can use it more effectively.

In the next section,

we'll be talking more about the specifics of the course structure and content.

But for now, I invite you to reflect further on the importance of our thought

experiment for your life.

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