Positive Psychology 5

The Pygmalion Effect , beliefs as self-fulfilling prophecies

This session continues the fifth basic premise ‘the moral dimension of happiness’. It then explores how beliefs shape the reality, beliefs as self-fulfilling prophecies, and understanding the power of situation.
Tal states that “Equating to selfishness and immorality is the No.1 cause, subconsciously mostly, of unhappiness… Because people feel guilty about pursuing their own happiness“. It’s interesting to ponder this statement. I once thought that selfish people don’t care about others, they think and do things from their own perspective or aim, and they have lower sense of other people’s feeling and concern little, that’s why they are happier; whereas non-selfish people care about other people’s feeling and often feel guilty to be selfish. They have higher sense of other people’s feeling and concern too much, that’s why they are less happy. The view clearly has problem. We shouldn’t look it as selfish equal immoral, rather we should look it as something so wonderful about our nature. Tal explains that “Happiness is a positive-sum game. Happiness is contagious. Being happy is also a moral state.”
Tal suggests to commit above and beyond what we usually commit five extra acts of kindness during one day. Helping others is also helping ourselves. There is a self-reinforcing loop between the two.

Interesting research findings:​

  • Approach rather than avoidance goals.
  • People mostly do what you do rather than what you say.
  • The Pygmalion Effect – the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform
  • The Asch Conformity Experiments – an individual’s own opinions are influenced by those of a majority group

People and their work:

  • William James’ (1890) book Varieties of Religious Experience – happiness as our highest end
  • Dalai Lama – The very purpose of our life is happiness. The very motion of our life is towards happiness.
  • Aristotle’s Law of Identity – A is A
  • Barbara Fredrickson – positive emotions have an evolutionary reason
  • Alice Isen – positive emotions – helping ourselves, contributing to our well-being lead us to be more generous and benevolent towards others.
  • Sonja Lyubomirsky’s book The How of Happiness – helping others is also helping ourselves.
  • Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography My Experiments with Truth – Be the change you want to see in the world.
  • Roger Bannister – the power of the mind – broke the world mile record and the four-minute barrier at Iffley Road Track in Oxford on 6 May 1954.
  • Albert Bandura – self-efficacy
  • Nathaniel Branden – self-esteem
  • Martin Luther King’s dream and approach – how we can make a dream into reality
  • Herbert Benson – Mind Body Medicine
  • George Bernard Shaw – Pygmalion – how people can be changed
  • Robert Rosenthal (1960s) – shift the attention to something that was there all along.
  • Kay Redfield Jamison’s reasearch in 1997 – beliefs.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – “If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”
  • Stanley Milgram’s experiment on Obedience to Authority – The power of the situation
  • Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment – the power of the situation, entering an role, the sense of the reality [I had a quick search of the experiment and felt extremely uncomfortable to watch/read. Very profound questions were emerged to ask at the end…]
  • Ellen Langer’s psychology experiment in 1972 and her book Mindfulness– The power of the situation
  • John Barge – priming – at subconscious level and conscious level

Positive Psychology 6

History of Self-Help movement, congruence, placebo

The session explores how we can create positive situation/environment by applying beliefs, realistic optimism and self-esteem.

Tal states that many self-help books are over-promise and under-deliver and points out the misunderstanding of the power of the mind. “Believe, you will achieve; conceive, and it will be conceived… However… it has to come with a lot of hard work and persistence, a lot of failure and learning from that failure.”

Tal’s talking about the notion of consistency or CONGRUENCE helps me understand my behaviours a lot. “The mind does not like when there is a discrepancy between what is inside and what is outside. The mind likes when where is consistency, congruence between the two, and if there is not congruence…. then we experience a sense of dissidence, then we experience disease…. very often we do everything that we can to get the two on par again, .…We often do one of these things (1) update schema (2) ignore or discard the external information that does not match our schema (3) actively seek confirmation, (4) creating a new reality.”

I have a good lough by Tal’s humor on the example of unrealistic optimism. Positive is not The Secrete, it’s only a part of the secrete. The secrete of success is optimism, passion and hard work.

To increase the base level of happiness, to raise self-esteem is to cope as opposed to avoid. To risk failure, to try, to deal things that are important to you.

Interesting research findings:​

  • The Iceberg Principle – seen and unseen
  • The Self-Help movement started in the 20th century.
  • Self-esteem has high correlation with well-being; very low level of correlation between the location where people live and well-being or between material affluence and well-being.
  • The Placebo Effect – mind and body, a person’s expectations
  • Learn to fail, or fail to learn. There is no other way to succeed.​
  • Learn to fail, or fail to learn. There is no other way to succeed.
  • People who learn to interpret things more positively actually live longer.
  • The Stockdale paradox – finding the tension, reconciling the tension – reality optimism

People and their work:

  • Ap Dijksterhuis and Ad Van Knippensberg – priming and behaviour
  • Napoleon Hill’s book Thinking and Grow Rich
  • Henry Ford – whether you think you can or can’t, you are right
  • Norman Vincent Peale’s book The Power of Positive Thinking
  • Rhonda Byrne’s book The Secret – the law of attraction
  • Albert Bandura – self-efficacy
  • Lewis A.Curry – 56% of success in athletes is determined by their levels of hope
  • John Carter – the distinction between extraordinarily successful HBS graduates and the successful HBS graduates on two things: (1) really believe in themselves and having the sense of confidence (2) always asking questions and keep the state of curiosity.
  • Nathaniel Branden – self-esteem
  • Herbert Benson’s book Timeless Healing and his research about the power of the mind.
  • Thomas Edison – 1097 patents – hard work and motivation
  • Dean Simonton – the most successful failed the most times
  • Martin Seligman – optimism and pessimism
  • Karen Reivich’s book The Resilience Factors
  • Richard Wiseman’s book The Luck Factor
  • William James’ formula for self-esteem – high expectation is likely to hurt our self-esteem. This formula is wrong!
  • Daniel Gilbert – the base level of happiness
  • Daryl Bem – self perception theory – we derive conclusion about ourselves in the same way we derive conclusion about others.

Positive Psychology 7

Self-perception, 3M, Cognitive reconstruction, imagination/visualisation

This session finishes up with the beliefs of self-fulfilling prophecy first and then explores how ‘focus’ creates reality. This is a very important session as it reveals how people’s emotions are affected by their own evaluations about the external world.
Tal summarises that to raise of base level of happiness is to cope due to three reasons: (1) self-perception theory (2) The pain that in our minds we associate with failure is far greater than the actual pain of failure when that comes. (3) learn to fail, or fail to learn, there is no other way to succeed.

Optimism is an interpretation style rather than a Pollyannish feeling-good kind of approach. Three techniques of being optimism are:
  1. To take action
  2. The power of imagination/visualisation
  3. cognitive therapy.

Tal states 3Ms as the key traps that people often fall into and distort the reality:
  1. Magnify – exaggerating something that happens – it’s an all or nothing approach,
  2. Minimising – tunnel vision – ignoring the important things or things going well,
  3. Making up or fabricating. 
Emotion reasoning – Emotion doesn’t necessarily capture reality. It’s my evaluation of reality. I think I have fallen into all three traps and often the third one is my weakness as I’m a very emotional person, likely sensitive too, but I often seek the evidences that bring my evaluations/thoughts.
The techniques we can use to get real is to practice and ask ourselves right questions, for example,
  1. Is my conclusion tied to reality?
  2. Is it rational?
  3. Am I ignoring something important?
  4. What other impotent evidences do I still need to take into consideration?
  5. What I am magnifying?
  6. What I am minimising?
  7. What is the big picture? 
We co-create our reality. There are two archetypes of “focus”: the benefit-finder and the fault-finder. We are all on somewhere between the extreme benefit-finding and the extreme fault-finding. The key is how can we move a bit more from the fault-finding side towards the benefit-finding. The extreme fault-finder experiences resignation and learned helplessness. The benefit-finder focuses on what works.

Cognitive reconstruction is about learning to interpret things optimistically. Tal said “I don’t believe that things happen for the best. But I do believe that some people are able to make the best of things that happen.”

Tal reflects his own experience. He mentioned ADD. I had a quick look at ADD, which I have never noticed it before. It stands for Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (commonly referred to as ADD or ADHD). I did this test. The result is interesting, “you appear to have some symptoms consistent with a possible diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, but may not qualify for a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD.” I thought it’s normal that our mind is wandering and gets distracted so often. I thought I am a very concentrate person as often when I’m doing things I need to, I ignore the things happen around no matter it’s people’s talking, noises outside of the room, or a background music. Now, it seems not what I thought.

People and their work:

  • Albert Bandura – self-efficacy
  • Soren Kierkegaard – to cope with failure
  • Richard Heckman – prepare, prepare, prepare and then be spontaneous
  • Stephen Kosslyn – imagination for the brain is no difference to the reality for the brain
  • Martin Luther King’s speech I have a dream
  • Martin Seligman and Aaron T. Beck founders of the cognitive therapy approach – thoughts drive emotion. so change the thought, restore the sense of reality.
  • Karen Reivich – two weeks of cognitive therapy techniques
  • David Burns’ book The Feeling Good Handbook
  • Ed. Diener and Martin Seligman looked at the 10% of the happiest people – they recovered more promptly from hardship as a result of different interpretations.
  • Barbara Fredrickson – broaden and build phenomenon.
  • Ed. Diener – it appears that the way people perceive the world is much more important to happiness than objective circumstances.
  • Dan Millman’s book Way of the Peaceful Warrior
  • Henry David Thoreau – The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.
  • Julian Bauer – The benefit-finder finds the miracle in the common.
  • Nathaniel Branden – to respect the reality.
  • William James – what we see the reality depends on the perspective into which we throw it.
  • Ann Harbison – crisis has the potential for growth
  • David Schnarch’s book Passionate Marriage
  • Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas’ book Geeks and Geezers

Positive Psychology 8

 Self-perception, 3M, Cognitive reconstruction

This session is about benefit finders and gratitude.
Benefit finders are psychological and psychical healthier and happier. They found the benefits when they experience bad things, not for the best, but they made the best of the things that happen.

Question 1: “Why not everyone is optimistic?”
Answers: Optimists are considered detached.
  1. The media focuses on negative news and highlights them, how can we be positive in the world like this? ‘Focus’ creates reality. The media needs to focus on positive news equally. When we constantly hear bad news or bad chatter in our mind, what happens on us? We create negative reality.
  2. To ignore the good and focus mostly on the bad is that we adapt. We adapt to the common, we stop seeing it after a while, whereas the bad, the exception, always captures our attention. We are “change detectors” and we adapt. However, when we adapt, we take things for granted.

Question 2: “How can we become more optimistic?”
Answers: Switching our focuses and really appreciation are important in changing our internal schema.

If we learn gratitude as a way of life, if we cultivate the habit of gratitude, we can cultivate benefit finding.

Interesting research findings:​

People and their work:

  • Suzanne Thompson – differences between benefit finders and fault finders among people who lost their homes
  • Gleen Affleck – positive thinking in heart attack patients
  • Julienne Bauer – benefit finders in AIDS patients
  • Laura King and Kathi N. Miner – benefit finders in people who experienced traumas and women who had cancer.
  • Thomas Hobbes
  • Albert Bandura – a simple sentence of appreciation can give people strength to go on
  • Oprah Winfrey – what you focus on expends
  • G.K. Chesterson – gratitude produces the most purely joyful moments.
  • Brother David Steindl‑Rast’s book A Good Day: A Gift of Gratitude
  • Irvin Yalom’s research on terminal diseased people – the value of gratitude
  • Robert Emmons’ book Thanks!: How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier. His and Michael McCullough’s research based on comparing write five things (grateful, bothered, things you are good at, random anything) everyday.
  • Ellen Langer – mindfulness as creating novel distinctions.
  • Stephen Kosslyn – kids actually visualise most words.

Positive Psychology 9

Gratitude, benefit-finder, fault-finder permission to be human, neuroplasticity

This session continues focusing on ‘gratitude’ and moves on to ‘change’.
To be a benefit finder, we do not only need to understand the importance of gratitude, but also need to do it, to practise it and to experience it. How do we maintain the gratefulness? It’s by being mindful, by thinking about those wonderful things that we have. Expressing gratitude to others is a win-win approach.

Most questions we asked ourselves are “What’s wrong?” “what needs to be improved?” “What are my weaknesses?” They are important but not enough. If we ask also right question such as “What I am graceful for?” That in and of itself creates a new reality.

How do we deal with painful and positive emotions? With the permission to be human, we give ourselves the permission to experience the emotions, the experience the experience. One of the most effective ways to act would be to share that painful experience, to just write it down. That is active acceptance.

Change is hard, but we know change is possible. There are two types of change. The first one is the gradual approach. It takes time. We can enjoy the journey of change as well as the destination. Another one is the acute approach. It happens immediately but it’s not a quick fix. It takes time to prepare.

Interesting research findings:​

  • 30% Vietnam vets experienced PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder). Far less people who have been through the holocaust have PTSD. – Tal uses Sonja Lyubomirsky’s research findings to explain it. The distinction between replaying bad experience and talking about bad experience.
  • The twins studies show that happiness is a stochastic phenomenon.
  • Until 1998, the neuro-scientists thought that the brain was essentially fixed; it don’t change after the age of 3. In 1998, it came the concept of neuroplasticity and the concept of neurogenesis. Scientists started to notice that the brain does actually change. The neural pathways are self-reinforcing, just like rivers are.
  • People who have more action on the left side of prefrontal cortex are generally happier and more resilience comparing to people who have more action on the right side of prefrontal cortex.

People and their work:

  • William James – visualise things; it takes about 21 days to change a habit.
  • O’hart Cumin, Tal’s teacher – focused on possibility, wonderful things in the world.
  • Martin Seligman – expressing gratitude to others.
  • Sonja Lyubomirsky – writing gratitude letters contributes to our well-being.
  • Sonja Lyubomirsky – writing down, talking, and thinking about worst experience (ABC), results are writing down has the best effect; writing down, talking, and thinking about happiest experience (ABC), results are writing down has the worst effect. Findings are it has distinction between analysing and replaying. We don’t know why yet, but we analyse bad experience and it helps us towards well-being; we replay good experience and it helps us towards well-being too.
  • Brother David Steindl‑Rast’s book A Good Day: A Gift of Gratitude
  • Galway Kinnel – To live and die in gratefulness if in no other virtue.
  • Marcus Tullius Cicero – Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parents of all others.
  • Helen Keller’s autobiography The Story of My Life
  • Daniel Gilbert – affective forecasting
    • People think that really good events are going to make them happy, and keep them happy for a very long time, and that really bad events are going to crush them for the unforeseeable future​
  • Carol Dweck – neuroplasticity
  • Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – before 1930s, self-help is about character change. After 1930s, it became quick fix. However, people should know there is no quick fix.

Positive Psychology 10

Change, Eureka, Perfectionism

This session is about ‘change’.
There is no quick fix to change. The expectation of quick-fix is one of the reasons why levels of the depression are so high today.
Defined by Tal, perfectionism is debilitating fear for failure, is an attitude to failure.
Three pathways to change: the ABCs and the two types of approaches mentioned in last session. The table below shows how interventions could help us to change.

Interesting research findings:​

  • Eureka effect/experience – the common human experience of suddenly understanding a previously incomprehensible problem or concept.
  • 80% people from the first Gulf War have PTSD.
  • After 911, 60,000 individuals have PTSD.
  • Facial feedback hypothesis – facial movement can influence emotional experience.

People and their work:

  • Carol Dweck – understand the brain changes.
  • Ellen Langer’s and Emma Thompson’s research in 80s – at the subconscious level, do you really want to change? People feel hard to change their negative attributes if they view them as a source for positive meaning. Tal listed some associated attributes:
This makes me remember Professor Yufen Qian’s session about relationships and happiness. She states people’s characters have both positive and negative sides. When you’re originally attracted by someone’s particular traits, the opposite sides in the traits may bother you later. The negative sides of the trait contribute to the form of the positive/attractive trait that you see. It’s in Chinese. I translate it below.
  • Nathaniel Branden – identify what you want to get rid of and what you want to keep.
  • John Dryden – “We first make our habit and then our habits make us.“
  • Sonja Lyubomirsky and Ed Diener – three factors affect on happiness: genetic set range (50%), external circumstances (10%), and intentional activities (40%)​
  • Jon Kabatt-Zin, Tara Bennett-Goleman, Herbert Benson  – mindfulness
  • Tara Bennett-Goleman’s book Emotional Alchemy – “…mindfulness means see things they are without change them…”
  • Abraham Maslow – peak experience by innate, meaningful goals, and time.
  • William James’s book The Varieties of Religious Experiences
  • Alice Eagly and Daryl Bem – Attitude affects behaiour, but behaviour also affects attitude.
  • Edgar Schein – behaviour changes attitude.
  • David Myers – active acceptance
  • Lindsey Hyde and Tory Martin – the founder of ‘Strong Women Strong Girls’ (swsg.org)
Source: 5minsbreak.wordpress.com/tag/harvard-open-courses-1504/