Positive Psych: Class 3

What is Eudamonic wellbeing?
Eudamonic wellbeing involves finding happiness through internal meaning. It involves doing what you need to do to take care of your own emotional needs and finding meaning in your life. Eudamonic theory argues that wellbeing lies in the actualization of human potential. There are three approaches to this theory.

1) Psychological wellbeing:

• Self Acceptance
• Personal Growth
• Purpose in Life
• Positive Relations
• Environmental Mastery
• Autonomy

2) Authentic Happiness

• The Pleasant Life
• The Good Life
• The Meaningful Life

3) Self-determination Theory

• Autonomy
• Competence
• Relatedness

What is the difference between Eudamonic and Hedonic wellbeing?

Eudamonic focuses on intrinsic values and ideals, while Hedonic focuses on external factors that promote happiness. Hedonic is also short-lived, while eudamonic is more lasting.

Our group's thoughts on the two types of wellbeing:

Positive Psych: Class 2

What is the concept of hedonic happiness?
Hedonic happiness is the attainment of subjective wellbeing (SWB). SWB is defined by three different variables: Life satisfaction,  high positive affect, and low negative affect. Life satisfaction is measured by how your reality compares to your life ideal. For example, if your dream is to be a millionaire, you won't have a lot of life satisfaction if you have a minimum wage income. The others are the emotion associated with momentary events, such as the joy from getting a new car or the sadness from crashing that car.

What are top-down and bottom-up arguments?
Bottom-up arguments take the variable cause the phenomenon, while top-down are the opposite. For example, a bottom-up argument would say that having a lot of positive experiences makes people happy, while a top-down argument would say that happy people tend to have a lot of positive experiences.

Positive Psych: Class 1

What is Positive Psychology?

Positive psychology studies what makes life satisfactory and how people achieve a good life. It explores human strengths to determine what makes people happy, both as an individual and as a group.

How is Positive Psychology different from other fields of psychology?
Positive Psychology focuses on what is going right in human psyche rather than just what is going wrong. Most fields focus on healing mental illness. In this field, human strengths are emphasized to study how people "flourish" or go beyond basic functioning to a feeling of wellbeing.

My group's visual description of Positive Psychology: