Using the new Positive Psychology

Money <em>can</em> buy happiness… if you spend it on other people | Not Exactly Rocket Science “This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.” – Douglas Adams In this pithy paragraph, the sorely missed Douglas Adams sums up a puzzling paradox of modern life – we often link happiness to money and the spending of it, even though both proverbs and psychological surveys suggest that the two are unrelated. Across and within countries, income has an incredibly weak effect on happiness once people have enough to secure basic needs and standards of living. Once people are lifted out of abject poverty and thrown into the middle class, any extra earnings do little to improve their joie de vivre. I can’t get no… satisfcation Hey big spender There is a silver lining then.

Decision Points Explanations > Decisions > Decision Points Description | Discussion | So what Description Across any single activity or a set of related activities, there may be points at which decisions have to be made. These are decision points. Unless there are clear decision points, people often will continue with the momentum of the current activity. In the design or management of an activity, more or less decision points may be deliberately inserted or omitted. Example A person is given five small bags of popcorn. In retail situations there are clear decision points along the way, such as to stop and look in a window, to enter the shop, to try on clothes and to buy particular things. Business decision-making is more difficult as it often requires a number of people to agree before something is purchased, particularly if it is expensive. Discussion Decisions take time, effort, energy and expense, which together is sometimes called the transaction cost. Decision is affected by desires. See also

Thinking vs. Feeling: The Psychology of Advertising Do ads with facts work better than ads that appeal through emotion and aspiration? Shutterstock Imagine two commercials for a new light beer. The first ad begins with a super-zoom of the luxurious, golden liquid tumbling into a tall clear glass. There is a man's voice: "All of the taste you want in a rich beer. Only half the calories." The second ad starts in a bar. You can probably guess where I'm going here. So what does science really know about advertising? Here's a good example from Clay Warren, director of the Communications Program at George Washington University. The literature on rational versus affective advertising is very long and mostly inconclusive. If this sounds basically intuitive, then good. The most successful ads -- in the eyes of advertisers at least -- have broad emotional and cognitive appeal. "In 2004, Goody, Silverstein & Partners, developed what would be a "Campaign of the Year" for Hewlett Packard's digital photography," he wrote in an email.

The uses and abuses of 'happiness' The happiness 'movement' has the potential to transform society, but do its proponents know what they're doing? William Davies sets out four strands of the debate - philosophical, statistical, economical and psychological - and shows how confusion between them is hindering progress The launch of Action for Happiness last week generated yet more debate about the meaning and value of happiness. On top of the Office of National Statistics’ (ONS) ‘national debate’ on how to define and measure ‘national wellbeing’, one can scarcely open a newspaper nowadays without discovering more political, scientific or pseudo-scientific pronouncements about what does or doesn’t make us happy. In a nation as stubbornly curmudgeonly as Britain, it is no surprise to find that the cynics seem equally delighted to have discovered so much Californian chirpiness to grumble about, right here in their own backyard. There is no reason to dismiss any of this as a flash in the pan.

Action for Happiness Positive psychology in the workplace Implementing positive psychology in the workplace means creating an environment that is relatively enjoyable and productive. This also means creating a work schedule that does not lead to emotional and physical distress. Background[edit] According to information provided by The United States Department of Labor, “In 2009 employed persons worked an average of 7.5 hours on the days they worked, which were mostly weekdays. Major theoretical approaches[edit] Martin E.P. Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers developed Humanistic Psychology that focuses on the positive potential of people and on helping people to reach their full potential.[5] Peter Warr is highly noted for his early work on work well being. Demand control model[edit] Robert A. Job demands-resources[edit] The job demands-resources model (JD-R) is an expansion of the DCM and is founded on the same principle that high job demands and high job resources produce employees with more positive work attitudes. Job characteristics model[edit]

Happiness Associated With Longer Life Happy people don't just enjoy life; they're likely to live longer, too. A new study has found that those in better moods were 35% less likely to die in the next 5 years when taking their life situations into account. The traditional way to measure a person's happiness is to ask them about it. But over the past few decades, psychologist and epidemiologist Andrew Steptoe of University College London (UCL) says, scientists have realized that those measures aren't reliable. The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing tried to get more specific. Of the 924 people who reported the least positive feelings, 7.3%, or 67, died within 5 years. The research shows that good moods are correlated with long life, but it's not proof that happiness makes people live longer, Steptoe says.

Foot-in-the-door technique The principle involved is that a small agreement creates a bond between the requester and the requestee. Even though the requestee may only have agreed to a trivial request out of politeness, this forms a bond which - when the requestee attempts to justify the decision to themselves - may be mistaken for a genuine affinity with the requester, or an interest in the subject of the request. When a future request is made, the requestee will feel obliged to act consistently with the earlier one.[5] The reversed approach - making a deliberately outlandish opening demand so that a subsequent, milder request will be accepted - is known as the door-in-the-face technique. Classic experiments[edit] In an early study, a team of psychologists telephoned housewives in California and asked if the women would answer a few questions about the household products they used. [edit] Environmental applications[edit] Examples[edit] "Can I go over to Suzy's house for an hour?" Charitable donation[edit] Notes

What Do Emotions Have to Do with Learning? Thinkstock When parents and teachers consider how children learn, it’s usually the intellectual aspects of the activity they have in mind. Sidney D’Mello would like to change that. During the learning experiments described in his paper, he notes, the participating students reported being in a neutral state only about a quarter of the time. Another counter-intuitive contention made by D’Mello is that even negative emotions can play a productive role in learning. Confusion motivates us to restore our equilibrium through thought, reflection, and problem solving, and deeper learning is the result. animated agents discussing scientific case studies. Confusion, D’Mello explains, is a state of “cognitive disequilbrium”; we are mentally thrown off balance when we encounter information that doesn’t make sense. In fact, deep learning may be unlikely to happen without the experience of confusion, suggests a study conducted by another researcher, Arizona State’s Kurt VanLehn. Related

7 Habits of Incredibly Happy People While happiness is defined by the individual, I’ve always felt it foolish to declare that nothing can be learned from observing the happiness of others. In our day-to-day lives it is easy to miss the forest for the trees and look over some of the smaller, simpler things that can disproportionally affect our happiness levels. Luckily, we can go off more than just our intuition; there are lots of studies that aim for finding the right behavior that leads to a happier life. 1. Research shows that being “rushed” puts you on the fast track to being miserable. The porridge is just right when you’re living a productive life at a comfortable pace. Feeling like you’re doing busywork is often the result of saying “Yes” to things you are not absolutely excited about. You should be expanding your comfort zone often, but not so much that you feel overwhelmed. 2. The number isn’t the important aspect here, it is the effort you put into your relationships that matters. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. How about you?

60 of the world's happiest facts 1. A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance. 2. If you fake laugh long enough you’ll start to really laugh, really, really hard. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.The kingdom of Bhutan use ‘gross national happiness’ as a key national indicator. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 2013 is the first year since 1987 that consists for four different digits. 59. 60.

Guide to flirting Why do we flirt? Flirting is much more than just a bit of fun: it is a universal and essential aspect of human interaction. Anthropological research shows that flirting is to be found, in some form, in all cultures and societies around the world. Flirting is a basic instinct, part of human nature. According to some evolutionary psychologists, flirting may even be the foundation of civilisation as we know it. If flirting is instinctive, why do we need this Guide? Like every other human activity, flirting is governed by a complex set of unwritten laws of etiquette. We only become aware of the rules when someone commits a breach of this etiquette – by flirting with the wrong person, perhaps, or at an inappropriate time or place. This is a very obvious example, but the more complex and subtle aspects of flirting etiquette can be confusing – and most of us have made a few embarrassing mistakes. Where to flirt Parties Drinking-places Learning-places Workplace Participant sports/hobbies 1. 2. Posture