DanielR IB Psychology HL

Reading and writing about Seligman had given me a lot of encouragements and positive attitude in life.

Here are some of the few things in life that stimulate my positive thinkings...

- Anyone who has a chance to hear their songs will be embraced with warmth and joyful, cozy feeling. With that said, DepaPepe is no doubt a great choice for inspiring positive attitudes

Learning about Seligman's positive psychology helps me to see the world in a different way. I begin to see the good side of people, events, and things around me more often. This reminds me of one of the greatest comeback-player on the ATP Professional Tennis tour, James Blake. I frequently thought of him as I read through the text on Seligman. Take a quick look at his interview after the match against another great compatriot tennis player, Andy Roddick.

"Yeah, unbelievable. I told Andy after the match it was the best grass court match I think I've ever played...he's gotten me plenty of times. I had to get him back just once...Yeah, things were going well."

Overall, I find Martin Seligman's concepts and ideas very interesting and useful. I admit that my optimistic level is low compare to other classmates, thus reading about the theories of psositive psychology certainly suggests me some new ways of thinking that help increase my optimistism level. Although I have heard it already, but the quote "In the long run, money does not account for happiness" gives me the feeling of optimism toward living a happy life with just enough needs, not a lavish lifestyle. This slightly changes my attitude toward applying as a tutor. At first I wanted to do it because I want to add on to my record of the extracurricular activity (I also earn money from being a tutor), but now after i read that quote, I want to do it because I want to show my tutee, whoever that is, how high school is like. That way I'm not taking the job for the money or for my own record, but I want to help middle school students, or even elementary students to at least have some clues about high school. Not only that the quote makes me realize that I should decide on something with a good, clean, and unselfish intention, thus will allow me to stop and think before I decide to do something in the future.

"Faith and relationship have significant influence on how happy people are"

How do those statistic make you feel? Despite greed and examples of power-hunger that exist around the world, good feelings can be the best way to fulfill one's happy life.


Humanistic had long emphasized the importance of devloping human potential. Martin Seligman conducted animal experimentations testing whether helplessness is learned. Over time, he shifted his focus from the negative aspects of behavior to the more positive, thus introducing the concept of positive psychology. Positive psychology overlapped humanistic perspective in many ways. Human growth and understanding of the subjective experiences were the important focuses of the concept, although the knowledge about subjective experiences by itself was not enough to develop a scientific understanding of behavior. Positive psychology mentioned the importance of personality traits and social context of behavior, which were ignored by the humanistic approach. According to the positive psychology, personality traits influenced behavior across a variety of situations, while social context was concerned with understanding how communities and cultures affect experience and growth, and also how each person choose to interact with his/her social environment to inspire heathly growth. The value of relationship was greatly valued in positive psychology. Seligman introduced his view of psychology called positive psychology, which enabled us to study the human behavior by means of positive thoughts and optimistic perspective.

As I through texts on the positive psychology, I enjoyed it as much as Maslow's theories and ideas. Personally, I agree that to truly understand human behavior, psychologists should pay great attention to what is good about each individual, not just collective assumptions that imply how human behaviors are results of sexual or aggression drives! I also feel that studying the personality traits of different individuals will contribute to the understanding of human as a whole. Moreover, social context should be even more heavily emphasized, because I believe that environment (eg. in diffeten situations) plays a major role in determining the behavior of an individual. Successful relationships such as community, love, friendship, family, or even owner-pet can contribute to the development of a person's healthy growth.
With those said, I feel that positive psychology is useful and enjoyable to rely on as an approach to understand human behavior

~Daniel

"Not only do happy people endure pain better and take more halt and safety precautions when threatened, but positive emotions undo negative emotions."

[It's never a bad idea to have a good view of life, especially if you are bad at doin that. This quotation caught my attention the very first time I saw it. I like its message about how being more positive actually takes away negative thoughts and emoitons. It tells me that happy people tend to do better under stressed situation, in which mastering it is one of my ultimate goals]

[This means that, when a person is happy, he will show it to others and thus making them feel happy as well. On the other hand, a grumpy people will tend to refuse to talk to other people and try to calm down by being isolated. From the past experience, I enjoy sharing good feelings with my friends, and prefer to not social when i'm grumpy. I had some friends coming up to me when they are sad. By reading this quote, I can see better solutions to tell them next time. It's always good to help others]

[What can cheer you up more than this? It gives hope to even the most negative person, and warns them to be aware of the dangers that might be hidden under the happiness emotions. As a rather pessimistic person, this quote allows me to question my pessimism whether it will grow with me. I regard myself as a careful person rather than pessimistic, therefore the second part of this quote is especially interesting to me. I truly agree that optimism always risks overlooking threats and potential dangers unlike mild pessimism.]

[This suggest that individuals are the "captains of their souls". Optimistic view leads to optimistic behavior, and that means a happier life. To me, this quote says "The time when a person can really tell apart a good choice from a bad one is when he has grown up and gained enough experience of the world". It is like a reminder saying to pay attention to advice given from adults, because they have more experience of life than you do, therefore what they say will not be useless]

Information from http://mfinley.com/experts/seligman/SELIG.HTM

Martin Seligman became famous in the field of humanistic psychology when he introduced the concept of learned helplessness. He was born in New York in 1942. At the age of thirteen, he experienced doubtful abnormal behaviors from his father. Seligman was then taken out of public school and was put into a private military academy, filled with rich upper-class kids. This made him feel rejected and alone. The experience at military contributed to his feeling of learned helplessness. Soon after that, his father experienced severe strokes, and had to be sent to the hospital. Seligman heard him told his mother, “Irene. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in anything after this. All I believe in is you and the children, and I don’t want to die”. This introduced Seligman to the suffering that helplessness emerged from.

Later he earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Princeton University. Then he completed his PhD in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in three years, where he later returned there as a professor. Seligman had experimented with dogs and unavoidable mild electric shock stimuli, which attracted him to the importance of developing human potential. After research and experimentation, he shifted his focus from the negative to the positive view of behavior. He took this chance to focus on a new psychological method of understanding healthy development when he the President of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1998. The new focus was known as “positive psychology”.