Conway III, Lucian G.

Digital Document

The chapter "How can positive psychology influence public policy and practice" was written by the listed authors including Roger Tweed (Douglas College Faculty). Positive psychologists who decline to involve themselves in government policy issues may be similar to medical doctors who refuse to work in hospitals or clinics. Both the positive psychologist and the doctor may greatly reduce their positive effect if they avoid involvement in these institutions that widely impact the population. This chapter explains what positive psychologists bring to policy discussions: An emphasis on measurable well-being, a desire to do more than just ameliorate pathology, and a broad knowledge of psychological findings. The chapter provides examples of policy relevant findings related to: (a) measurement of well-being, (b) identification of groups with particular needs, and (c) exploration of paths to the good life. The chapter also gives warnings about ways to fail in policy engagement, such as limiting efforts to legislative lobbying, ignoring lessons from policy-engaged academics, failing to consider costs, seeking to change fundamental belief systems of opponents, ignoring unintended consequences, expressing hubris, providing imbalanced emphasis on particular types of well-being, and failing to test policies incrementally. The chapter closes by proposing a strategy for policy engagement that not only promotes, but also embodies positive psychology. --From publisher description.

Currently, positive psychology is experiencing problems with coherence, and the field could benefit from more organizing concepts linking disparate findings and researchers within the field. This incoherence can be seen in several domains. At a conceptual level, the field has produced an abundance of important studies clarifying predictors of well-being, but no consistent theory has emerged explaining why these factors predict well-being. In addition, disunity has emerged between first wave positive psychologists and second wave positive psychologists, and also between practitioners and researchers. The field could benefit from more unifying constructs that explain links between constructs and practices within positive psychology. Faith in humanity (FIH) has potential as a unifying construct. FIH is like a forgotten sibling whose important story is mentioned rarely and mainly obliquely. In fact, this construct, though seldom mentioned, already implicitly pervades much of positive psychology, and the field would benefit by explicitly recognizing this fact.

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