Kamlesh Singh

Indian Institute of Technology Delhi | IIT Delhi · Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

India is aging. The growth of India's older population has increased our concerns about their well-being. While it is critical to explore the diverse needs and aging experience of older Indians, their voices are largely missing in the aging literature. In this context, data was collected from 63 community-dwelling and OAH residing older men and wom...

BACKGROUND The present study documented the psychological benefits among participants attending a short, online, yoga-meditation program during COVID-19. OBJECTIVE The study documented the changes in executive functioning, emotion regulation, and other psychological benefits in participants after attending an online, 4-days advanced yoga and medit...

Sikhism is a widely practiced religion that guides its followers regarding a healthy way of living. This chapter starts by discussing the demography and history of Sikhs. The chapter then identifies the various aspects of Sikh philosophy that propagate the idea of flourishing. Further, it explores the various teachings and practices within Sikhism...

Religion and spirituality form an integral part of one’s identity. The chapter intends to outline some possible paths that researchers interested in religion, spirituality, and positive psychology can explore in their future research. The chapter begins by briefly examining the role of religion in influencing human behavior. After exploring the pos...

Buddhism is a globally practiced religion which has made its way into psychological research. Buddhist literature is replete with concepts pertaining to behavior, mind, and emotions and has been efficacious in providing insights into the dynamics of human mind and behavior, resulting in the development of a new subfield of research known as ‘Buddhi...

The present chapter discusses the role of the holy Qur’ān as a divine guide providing a road map for a human being toward positivity. The chapter is primarily dedicated to delineating the therapeutic endeavors within the boundaries of Islam and so deals with the themes like therapeutic effects of sleep, dream interpretation (DI), and its place in t...

The topic of interest in the twenty-first century has shifted from ‘how long will I live’ to ‘if I am going to live a long time, how can I be happy in the process?’ The present chapter attempts to answer this question with particular reference to the Indian context. After reviewing the happiness literature on older people, we report the findings of...

Psychological science is infamous for developing scholarship that systematically propagates the perspectives and interests of a selected few. The prejudiced nature of scholarship that privileges the geopolitical, economic, social, and cultural stances of the west reflects a form of contemporary colonization. Such systems of knowledge regard the per...

Spiritual leaders and social reformers have contributed greatly toward creating positive experiences, positive individual traits, and in building positive institutions that have supported healthy and thriving life for the self and others. Social well-being, which encompasses the extent to which individuals view society as meaningful and just, exper...

Religion and spirituality (R/S) form an essential part of an individual’s identity. About 80% of people around the world are believed to be associated with some religion. Researchers have become increasingly interested in the psychological associations between religiosity and spirituality in the last few decades. The first part of this chapter intr...

Hinduism is a global religion with millions of followers across the world. It incorporates several schools of thought that can facilitate our understanding of human behavior. This chapter presents a descriptive account of some of the principles and constructs within Hinduism that aid the psychological understanding of human behavior. The chapter be...

India is known for its sociocultural diversity. Rituals form an integral part of Indian ethos. They can be defined as a set of activities, usually pertaining to a religious ceremony or service, which involves a series of actions performed in a predefined order. This chapter attempts to put forth the relevance and impact of community rituals that re...

Jainism is the sixth-largest religion in India and is referred to as the religion of non-violence. The present chapter focuses on understanding the application of Jain practices and principles in the context of positive psychology, mental health, and other psychological outcomes. First, we begin by briefly discussing Jain philosophy, its historical...

Various Buddhist practices promote virtuous behavior and human flourishing at the individual and community levels. This chapter examines a host of such traditions, practices, and festivals, emphasizing the widely embraced practice of mindfulness. The first part of the chapter discusses prominent Buddhist practices like chanting, charity, and contem...

Christianity is the most widely practiced global religion. Christian philosophy and practices have recently gathered the interest of psychology researchers, especially in positive psychology. This chapter attempts to provide an overview of Christian theology and practices and their association with positive psychology. We discuss how the Christian...

Several practices within Hinduism have positive implications on physical and mental health and well-being. This chapter attempts to highlight some of these positive Hindu practices and examine their efficacy in light of ongoing empirical research. It elucidates how engaging in some Hindu practices and traditions such as meditation, yoga, festivals,...

Happiness is longed for by people from all walks of life and is construed as one of the most important attainments in life. The present chapter endeavors to put forward the literature based on strategies that can enhance happiness levels along with its most probable determinants. As the notion of happiness majorly draws from the field of positive p...

Religious and spiritual practices are integral to the daily life of practicing Muslims in India. By investigating the psychological meaning of these practices through the lens of Islamic intellectual traditions, Muslim psychologists in the Indian subcontinent have initiated their very own interdisciplinary project in the context of a global surge o...

In the process, financial decisions are mostly dependent upon the classification system that is employed for allocating a group of observations into stable groups. A different group of data classification systems can be projected to forecast the financial crisis of institutions utilizing the previous data. An important procedure concern the design...

Rajan, G. and Singh, K. (2023, April). Do Emotion Regulation Strategies of Cognitive Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression Differ in Advanced, Novice and Non-Practitioners of Yoga and Meditation? Research paper presented at The 13th Asian Conference on Psychology & the Behavioral Sciences (ACP), Tokyo, Japan from 31 March- 3 April, 2023. https://a...

The Meaning in Life Questionnaire assesses presence of and search for meaning in life. Although the questionnaire has shown promising psychometric properties in samples from different countries, the scale’s measurement invariance across a large number of nations has yet to be assessed. This study is aimed at addressing this gap, providing insight i...

Sonars are used by SAR teams to identify and retrieve submerged objects like cars and planes. In the event of extensive searches, where sonar operators may become fatigued and overlook the possible item, strategies for the programmable characterisation or identification of the object may be invaluable. Current sonar technology may be used for more...

There is a growing recognition of the importance of subjective definitions of successful aging from a clinical and policy perspective, and for their social and cultural relevance. However, the voices of older Indians remain largely underrepresented in the emerging body of qualitative literature on successful aging. Given this gap, and India’s burge...

Digital currency is a way of currency utilized in the digital world namely electronic devices or digital forms. Many terms are alternative words for digital currency such as cyber cash, digital money, and electronic money. Cryptocurrency is a type of asset that has developed due to the progression of financial technology and it has made a tremendou...

In the process, financial decisions are mostly dependent upon the classification system that is employed for allocating a group of observations into stable groups. A different group of data classification systems can be projected to forecast the financial crisis of institutions utilizing the previous data. An important procedure concern the design...

Rajan, G. and Singh, K. (2023, March). Does the Experience of Well-Being Differ for Advanced, Novice, and Non-Practitioners of Yoga and Meditation? Research paper presented at the 32nd Annual Convention of National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) hosted by Ahmedabad University from 3-5 March, 2023.

Rajan, G. and Singh, K. (2023, February). A Holistic Psycho-Spiritual Approach to Well-Being: Yoga, Meditation and Positive Practices. Research paper presented at the International Society for Contemplative Research (ISCR), Inaugural Annual Conference, University of California, San Diego, USA, from 2nd to 5th February, 2023. https://iscr2023.sessio...

Bankruptcy prediction and credit risk study are amongst the most important problems in the domain of financial and accounting decision making. Evolving an effectual Classification Rule Induction (CRI) structure for bankruptcy prediction and credit risk examination at suitable time is vital to avoid the business communities being bankrupt. Classical...

Background The Child and Youth Resilience Measure-28 (CYRM-28) is one of the few measures based on a contextually and culturally embedded understanding of resilience. However, its psychometric properties have not been examined in India which is home to the largest proportion of adolescents worldwide. The present study was conducted to address this...

Breast cancer develops from breast tissue and leads to abnormally growing cells in the chest. Doctors usually look for tumors on a mammogram, and some mammograms contain abnormal macrocalcifications and microcalcifications when the image quality is very poor. The presence of these abnormal amounts of calcium deposits in the breast is a sign of earl...

Hinduism encompasses considerable heterogeneity within its many schools of thoughts and practice. However, the common thread that binds these multiple perspectives is this handbook’s main topic of inquiry—human well-being and happiness. Hindu thought has always deliberated on the process, nature, conditions, and practices that lead to a fulfilled l...

The Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE) is widely used to measure emotional experiences, but not much is known about its cross-cultural utility. The present study evaluated the measurement invariance of the SPANE across adult samples (N = 12,635; age range = 18-85 years; 58.2% female) from 13 countries (China, Colombia, Germany, Greec...

This study sought to explore the level of personal wellbeing and identified the determinants of happiness among Indian adolescents and youth. Data were collected from a sample of 495 participants (aged 11–23 years) residing in the National Capital Region of Delhi (Delhi-NCR), using the bilingual version (Hindi and English) of the Personal Wellbeing...

Background Schemas help with the organization and interpretation of information. Adaptive schemas indicate positive predisposing thinking patterns in an individual. This study aimed to develop a psychometrically robust tool to assess adaptive schema in a nonclinical sample. Method This research comprises two independent studies. Study I was multip...

India is a major player in the global knowledge economy. However, there is an underemphasis on the happiness promotion of Indian college students. Their alarming mental health statistics, and India’s consistent decline in the world happiness ranking heightens the need for an increased research focus on their happiness. Consequently, the present stu...

Purpose – This study aims to examine the lay notions of happiness and determine the factors that influence one’s experience of happiness. Design/methodology/approach – This study used a qualitative technique to understand better how happiness is conceptualised. This study uses a purposive sample to select a diverse and representative sample (N = 35...

India is home to the largest proportion of adolescent population in the world. However, there is a dearth of psychometrically and conceptually robust instruments to measure their resilience. Hence, the present study aimed at assessing the psychometric properties and factor structure of the original English and the translated Hindi version of the Ad...

While traditional media portrayals of older people are widely documented, social media representations have not been adequately examined. This is an undesirable oversight considering the prominence of social media in contemporary times. Further, such representations remain markedly unexplored in the Indian context. Given India’s burgeoning populati...

The differences in the emotion regulation strategies among advanced, novice, and non-practitioners of yoga and meditation were examined in the present study. 70 participants (20 Males and 50 Females, Mage= 37.58 years; SD= 7.45) (25 in Non-Practitioner Group, 23 in Novice-Practitioner Group, and 22 in Advanced-Practitioner Group) completed the self...

This chapter focuses on positive adolescent development and the role of gratitude in particular in promoting adolescent well-being. A global view on the subject is offered, with a specific focus on the Indian cultural context. The chapter consists of three main sections. The first section offers various perspectives on adolescent development, empha...

The present study aimed at understanding the subjective perception of happiness in a sample of Indian participants from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. Using convenience sampling, individual interviews were conducted with 60 participants aged between 19 to 73 years (M Age = 40 years). This study employed reflexive thematic analysis to analyse t...

The present study was aimed at documenting the changes in well-being indicators among participants in a 4-day online advanced yoga and meditation program during COVID-19 pandemic in October 2020. 32 participants (11 Males and 21 Females, Mage= 38.12 years; SD = 9.65) completed the standardized questionnaires of Multidimensional Flourishing Scale, P...

The present study aimed to evaluate the impact of Strengths Gym (Proctor & Fox Eades, in Strengths gym: Year 8, Positive Psychology Research Centre, Pennsylvania, 2009; Proctor et al., in J Posit Psychol, 6:377–388, 2011)—an intervention based on the Values in Action (VIA; Peterson & Seligman in Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and class...

Stress and allied difficulties are pervasive among school students in present times. This concern is further magnified in the Indian context with the large represention of young people in the population and limited resources to match. The present study aimed to evaluate the impact of a classroom based stress management training and gratitude journa...

This cross-sectional research aims to study the effect of yoga practice on the illness perception, and wellbeing of healthy adults during 4-10 weeks of lockdown due to COVID19 outbreak. A total of 668 adults (64.7% males, M = 28.12 years, SD = 9.09 years) participated in the online survey. The participants were grouped as; yoga practitioners, other...

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of a fourteen-module video-recorded well-being intervention that incorporates relevant videos of Indian spiritual leaders and motivational speakers and adopts an edutainment approach. Its efficacy was examined through a web-based (n = 42), and two classroom-based-studies (n = 308; n = 112) in a sample o...

Mental health literacy (MHL) is important for the prevention, early identification and treatment of mental health problems. However, its benefits have not been fully realised in rural India, which homes the majority of India's population. The current study assessed the level of well-being among rural residents and evaluated the effectiveness of a n...

Religion and spirituality (R/S) are embedded in all aspects of life in India, a predominantly rural economy. The aim of this mixed methods study was to assess the associations between a culturally tailored intervention and preexisting religious/spiritual (R/S) practices with indicators of well-being and factors which contribute to happiness among e...

The study aimed at validating the Hindi and English versions of PERMA and WEMWBS on Indian adolescent population. The data were collected from 1288 adolescents, aged 13–18 years (mean age = 15.27 years, SD = 1.08). Both the scales were an adequate fit to the data, indicating high reliability. For PERMA (α = 0.90), a set of 34 items had the best fit...

Purpose The current study examined cultural (diffuse orientation), organizational (organizational work-family climates) and individual (role centrality) antecedents of key work-family (WF) experiences (WF conflict, WF enrichment and WF boundary management) in India. Design/methodology/approach Survey data were collected from 586 white-collar emplo...

Despite the importance of India on the global scene, its unique culture, and the growing concerns about work-family balance in this country, existing work-family research in India is scarce. Moreover, it is predominantly quantitative and conducted using scales developed in Western developed countries, which limits our understanding of the work-fami...

The present study compared the well-being of married migrant and non-migrant women of rural Haryana. It comprised of 80 women from each group (N=160). The mean age of the married migrant women was 17.92 years (s=2.68) while that of their non-migrant counterparts was 19.59 years (s=1.6). The findings of the study indicated a statistically significan...

Happiness has always been a topic of intrigue among the social scientists. While the Western connotation of happiness is explained with the help of modules such as subjective well-being, psychological well-being, social well-being, PERMA model and so on, the Eastern concept of happiness conforms to focus on inner self such as inner harmony, peace o...

Young Schema Questionnaire—Short Form 3 (YSQ-S3) which measures Early Maladaptive Schema (EMS) has received limited attention in Indian context. The goal of the study was to validate the psychometric properties of YSQ-S3 in a non-clinical Indian sample using data collected from 702 participants (age range 16–55 years). Based on reliability and conf...

Children and youth comprise nearly 39% of the Indian population and are often considered the future demographic dividend of the country. The mental health and well-being of these young people are a pressing challenge in current times. The present study aimed to replicate the widely popular positive psychology interventions of Seligman et al. (Am Ps...

The present study reports the development and effectiveness of a Psycho-social and Cultural intervention that was designed to enhance the well-being of cross-region brides of rural Haryana. It aimed at increasing their familiarity with Haryanvi cultural values and tradition (language, food habits, and dressing style), and their awareness of their s...

Researchers have consistently advocated positive associations between religion and well-being. The present research takes a step forward and explores potential mechanisms behind the same. The mediating role of a surprisingly neglected mechanism, positive virtues, specifically gratitude, forgiveness and altruism, is studied through a quantitative st...

Analogous to the advancement in Applied Psychology, equivalent advancement has been achieved in the research methods which are being used in the various branches of this field. The increasing appreciation of translational research and knowledge translation in the social and behavioral sciences, for instance, has increased the scope of research in A...

In contemporary times, as more individuals seek help online, web-based psychotherapeutic interventions have been emerging and changing the traditional view of psychotherapy. They serve as an example of the application of translational research in the field of behavioral sciences. However, several legal, ethical and professional issues arise in the...

Sat-Chit-Ananda is an indigenous construct that refers to absolute bliss and consciousness. The present study aimed to strengthen the psychometric properties of the newly developed Sat-Chit-Ananda scale (Singh et al. in Int J Vedic Found Manag 1(2):54-74, 2014). A total of 398 students aged 17-36 years (mean age = 21.33 years, SD = 2.2, 70% males)...

We present lessons learned from conducting a limited pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) of an indigenously developed positive psychology intervention. This RCT essentially examines the efficacy of a competencies enhancing Internet-delivered intervention for Indian students. A total of 212 participants signed up for the semi-automated, text-bas...

Background: Meditation has been a key component of eastern spiritual practices. Heartfulness meditation is a unique heart based system with key practices like cleaning and meditation aided by yogic transmission. Objective: To study the effects of Heartfulness cleaning and meditation (guided by Heartfulness trainer) on Heart Rate Variability (HRV)...

Recently, two forms of virtue-related humor, benevolent and corrective, have been introduced. Benevolent humor treats human weaknesses and wrongdoings benevolently, while corrective humor aims at correcting and bettering them. Twelve marker items for benevolent and corrective humor (the BenCor) were developed, and it was demonstrated that they fill...

The primary focus of the study is to present the psychometric properties of the Hindi translated version of the Grit-Scale, Connor Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and PERMA scale. The study was conducted in North India, where more than one-third of the population speaks Hindi. A total of 474 Hindi speaking participants (females = 202) in the ag...

It has been reported in various studies that music in general and satsang (singing folk sings in a group) in particular has a positive effect on well-being. The present paper focuses on an analysis of what the rural women sing in these songs that form the repertoire of a satsang. The study area is Haryana, a state in India. Sample songs have been a...

Several studies have supported the role of spiritual practices to improve mental and physical health. The present study focused on the effect of Heartfulness (also known as Sahaj Marg) spiritual practice comprising meditation and related processes (like Cleaning and Prayer) on health indicators. Thirty one participants (19 males, 12 females) with a...

The psychometric properties of Flourishing Scale (FS) and the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE) were examined in the Indian milieu in three separate studies. Firstly, reliability and exploratory factor analysis was confirmed on a sample of 789 adults for both the scales. Thereafter, the two measures were administered to 608 adolesce...

Impact of five days spiritual practice in Himalayan Ashram of Sahaj Marg on well-being related parameters and selected physiological indicators has been studied on 55 participants (25 male, 30 female; age range 18-65 years; mean age = 49 years & SD = 12.5 years). It was found that mental health and its dimensions like emotional well- being and soci...

Introduction Globally about a billion people work in IT, however the sector still faces a shortfall of employees (Young, Marriott, & Huntley, 2008). India has established itself as the premier and de facto location for offshoring activities (National Association of Software and Service Companies and McKinsey & Company, 2005) and its booming informa...

In the subsequent chapters, different scales have been developed and validated on Indian population. The current chapter aims to give an overview of various norms that were followed while constructing the scales. In literature, several methods for scale development and validation exist however, in this chapter only those methods are discussed more,...

The current chapter introduces positive psychology (PP), Indian psychology (IP) and connection between two. Broadly both focus on well-being but with different angle; PP focuses more on external sources of happiness and IP focuses more on internal sources of happiness. The present chapter addresses PP in India by considering both the points of view...

The chapter begins with a brief outline on well-being and its various facets which are highly correlated with other positive psychology constructs. It then focuses on various factors which are significantly correlated with well-being. Various researches related to already existing scales on well-being are documented. Next it mentions the procedure...

The current chapter focuses on the various aspects of mindfulness. The chapter begins with a brief introduction on the conceptual definitions and historical perspective of mindfulness with special focus on difference between Buddhist and Western concept of mindfulness. It then converges to explain the different mindfulness-based intervention progra...

The chapter centers around the concept of “flow”, a relatively less explored concept in the field of positive psychology but one that has garnered a lot of interest in the last few decades. Flow has been studied in various fields such as art, sports, and workplaces. However, most of the research on flow-theoretical as well as psychometric testing h...

The chapter explains the concept of interpersonal and intrapersonal strengths which are important for a strong foundation of healthy relationships and overall personality. The chapter beings with a brief outline on conceptual definitions of interpersonal and intrapersonal character strengths. It then converges upon different studies that have been...