The Theory Research On Positive Psychology And Its Practice

The positive psychology movement is a major direction of contemporary psychology development. Advocated by a number of American psychologists represented by Dr. Martin Seligman, the movement is now prevalent throughout the world. This paper mainly reviews the theory of this worldwide psychology movement, and also probes into its application in the fields of mental health and business management.On the basis of reviewing relative researches both at home and abroad, this paper, at the very beginning, interprets the concept of"positive psychology". The term"positive", derived from the Latin word"positum", means"actual"and"potential". In positive psychology, positive means the actual and potential capacity that every person possesses. Then, what is positive psychology? Positive psychology is the science of engaging in studying positive traits of people such as development potential and virtues. In other words, positive psychology is a psychological thought by using the fairly complete and effective experimental methods and measurements to study the positive aspects of people such as strength and virtue, the objects of which are ordinary people with average level (usually said normal people). It regards and understands human's potential, motivation and ability (or even problems or limitations of human) with an opener and more appreciative vision. Compared to the past pathological psychology which mainly studied psychological problems, the"positive"in positive psychology includes three meanings: firstly, opposite against pathology psychology that focused on the mental problems in the early stage; secondly, advocate psychology to study the positive aspects of people's mentality; thirdly, emphasize to give appropriate explanations for mental problems by means of positive ways and gain positive significances form it.Based on interpreting the concept of positive psychology, this paper focuses on three major research fields of positive psychology (positive emotions, positive characters and positive organizational system) to make profound analysis. These three research fields reflect the main research idea of positive psychology, i.e. by increasing its own positive experiences, it will be helpful for individuals to form their positive characters; once positive characters are formed, individuals will experience more positive aspects; during this process, the outside environment system is also an inevitable necessary condition. Therefore, create a positive outside environment system is also very important for individuals to gain positive experiences and form positive character. Positive psychologists believe that, although individuals are to a large extent influenced by genes during the process of gaining positive experiences and forming positive characters, this process also depends on the outside environment in which the individuals live. In positive psychology, positive environment system is one environment system that impels individuals to obtain more positive experiences and tends to form positive characters. At this level, positive psychology mainly studies on positive social organizational system. From its three areas, positive psychology focuses on positive aspects of human nature to study the merits and value of people and advocate to concern the psychological functions for the development of normal people, which will help the psychology itself to have more scientific understandings and more effective interventions toward human nature and to promote the benign development among individuals, families and societies. From a deeper level, the objective of positive psychology lies in the search for the humanistic care of human being. It advocates that psychology shall be with an opener attitude to shift the attention to positive qualities such as human potential, motivation, ability, happiness, hope, etc, which makes psychology is no longer a cold technical field but a new discipline full of passion and rigorous rationality. Therefore, on the whole, the three areas defined by positive psychology itself contain one common premise, i.e. psychology should commit to study the positive quality of human. This premise not only embodies the consistent position of positive psychology, but also reflects positive psychology emphasizing the application of its theory. Positive psychology has always claimed to study 24 kinds of cross-cultural positive traits, but from its major research achievements in recent years, it is still concentrated on the subject well-being, optimism, hope, etc, which will be deliberated in this paper.This paper also discusses on the relation between positive psychology and the thoughts of Chuang-tze in ancient China. Although the thoughts of Chuang-tze are a kind of philosophy while positive psychology movement is a concrete psychology movement, the thought that life should be interprets as"all things turning into one"by Chuang-tze philosophy and"core of happiness"by contemporary positive psychology have some logical consistency which should not be ignored due to different time or culture. From the common ground of the positive psychology and the thoughts of Chuang-tze, in some degree, the former is one practice of the latter.Health psychology is one important origin of positive psychology movement, however in real practice, after the rise of positive psychology; some of its research achievement in turn developed the mental health movement and added many new concepts and significance for contemporary mental health movement. This paper discusses some new features of contemporary mental health movement formed after the rise of positive psychology health movement; in fact, this new mental health movement has become an important component of contemporary positive psychology, which is quite different from those of mental health movement raised in 1960s. Mental health movement under positive psychology has a specific name, called positive mental health, which is an important part of theory system of positive psychology, also an application of positive psychology in the field of mental health.This paper also discusses the application of positive psychological theory in contemporary management, and puts forward the positive management idea based on it. One core of positive management idea is that management should take the inner positive experiences of staff as the core and increase the work efficiency by improving the inner experiences of staff. Although this kind of management is also for better work efficiency, this indirect way is more humanized than those that directly emphasize on work efficiency and more suitable to people's actual mental needs at presentGenerally, this paper mainly takes the method of theoretical analysis which belongs to qualitative research methodological framework in nature. The advantage of theoretical analysis is that it can consider the overall situation but not stand upon details. Therefore, during the research the author pays attention to apply views and data, i.e. to take the abstracted views as the core and to develop relative data around the view. On concrete research methods, this paper mainly adopts documents method and comparative method.To sum up, this paper has the following achievements:Firstly, sort out the theoretical framework of positive psychology systematically. Many researches have been done in positive psychology in recent years, but they are dispersed in many branches of psychology. This paper makes some researches on this aspect, and systematically classifies these researches of positive psychology.Secondly, thoroughly interpret some concepts of positive psychology. On the one hand, it enriches theory of positive psychology; on the other hand, it provides solid foundation for the application of positive psychology in social life practice. Positive psychology is a new psychology movement, so it has its unique interpretation towards some conceptions. Only know the real meaning of these conceptions can we make use of positive psychology to serve for the life of human being.Thirdly, integrate theory of positive psychology with business management. Psychology studies human mental and behavior and business management is the management of human. Seizing this common ground, this paper intends to put relative theory of positive psychology into the modern business management, and explicitly put forward the positive management idea with the core of staff's good experience in China for the first time. Even though China is still a developing country and she may not have the foundation to implement the positive management idea, the advance of theory will undoubtedly play a sound role in promoting the practice. Fourthly, this paper makes a comparison between the theory of positive psychology and the thoughts of Chuang-tze in ancient China. Positive psychology is originated from the West, but from its philosophy foundation behind the theory it has certain connection with the thoughts of Chuang-tze. This paper analyzes this question, and summarizes some connection points between the theory of positive psychology and the thoughts of Chuang-tze. This attempt may provide a new vision for the application of theory of positive psychology in the social life of China.As the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) states on its website,"Positive psychology is the scientific study of what enables individuals and communities to thrive", this is not only a slogan for positive psychology, but also reminds psychological researchers of the prosperity of human and society depends on two aspects: one is to study how to solve various mental problems people met, the other is to study the mechanism with which human become positive. Only both aspects are achieved can human and society go to thrive.