PSY 212 - Positive Psychology
For over 100 years psychology has been helping people with personal problems as they deal with disorder, disease, and distress. Great progress has been accomplished in assisting and alleviating personal discomfort and dysfunction. In recent years, however, we have become aware that the “disease model” is not adequate in enabling individuals to perform at their potential. “Positive Psychology” is also about what is positive, meaningful, and productive in a person’s life. Positive Psychology identifies those characteristics that make life worth living, fulfilling and meaningful. This course enables the student to study and strengthen the positive personal traits and dispositions – like kindness, resiliency, curiosity, values, interests, talents, optimism and hopes, while exploring those social institutions which enable our lives to the fullest such as friendship, marriage, family, education, etc. The premise of this course is that human goodness and excellence are as important as human flaws and inadequacies. Psychology is as much about human potential as it is human pain.
Special Assignments
Learning by Reflection
Why Reflective Writing?
Reflection offers you the opportunity to consider how your personal experiences and observations shape your thinking and your acceptance of new ideas. This paper asks you to explore your own ideas about some aspect or experience related to this course. This paper is to express your opinion rather than summarize the opinions of others. Reflective writing can help you to improve your analytical skills because it requires you to express what you think, and more significantly, how and why you think that way. Support your assertions with examples!
Reflective analysis asks you to acknowledge that your thoughts are shaped by your assumptions and preconceived ideas; in doing so, you can appreciate the ideas of others, notice how their assumptions and preconceived ideas may have shaped their thoughts, and perhaps recognize how your ideas support or oppose what you read.
When you are asked to reflect upon experience, you do not only describe your experience, but you evaluate it based on ideas from class. You can assess a theory or approach based on your observations and practice and evaluate your own knowledge and skills within your professional field. This is an opportunity to take the time to think about your choices, your actions, your successes and your challenges. Abstract concepts can become concrete and real to you when considered within your own experiences, and reflection on your experiences allows you to make plans for improvement.
Reflective Inquiry: Critically engage with concepts from your course by making connections between your observations, experiences, and opinions. This paper expects you to explain and analyze your experiences with these concepts from your own point of view, eliciting original ideas and encouraging active interest in the course material.
Gratitude Journal
There are a variety of ways to cultivate gratitude, and the most effective interventions are always the ones that resonate with you the strongest while fitting into your lifestyle. One of the most popular, studied, and proven methods of increasing levels of positive well-being is the gratitude journal. Using it can help you increase your personal levels of gratitude and gain a variety of other benefits, ranging from increased happiness to better sleep quality (Emmons, McCullough, Lyubormirsky)