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Looking forward to tomorrow: The buffering effect of a daily optimism intervention
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This research demonstrates the effectiveness of a brief daily self-applied optimism intervention in an adult normal population. Participants completed Life Orientation Test-Revised, Positive and Negative Affect Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale, and Burnout Measure scales before, immediately after, and one month after the intervention. At baseline, optimism intervention group (N=36) and control group (N=41) were statistically similar on the variables of interest. At post-test, and also one month later, the intervention group demonstrated reduced pessimism, negative affect, and emotional exhaustion, although optimism, positive affect, and life satisfaction did not increase. Higher initial optimism increased the intervention effect for the optimism group, but not for the control group, by diminishing negative affect and emotional exhaustion, and increasing optimism. Sixty-one percent of the activities mentioned by the control group participants focused on duties and work, compared to 28% in the optimism condition. No correlations were found between initial optimism or pessimism, and the type of activities mentioned.
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... Additionally, optimists have a better profile of emotional responses to adversity and their coping responses are healthier. Interest in daily optimism at the workplace is increasing due to its positive relation with the dynamics of well-being (Casper et al., 2019;Littman-Ovadia & Nir, 2014;Sonnentag, 2015), however, there are few studies about it. ...
The present study seeks to build on burnout research by examining daily fluctuations of role stress and work incivility, and their impact on employees’ energy loss. Optimism and recovery (i.e., psychological detachment and relaxation), two mechanisms that allow workers’ self-care and self-defence from these toxic conditions when faced by these job stressors, were included. In a daily study, 117 service sector workers completed surveys three times a day, over a period of one working week. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed work incivility as predictor of daily emotional exhaustion. Optimism and recovery play different roles in protecting workers from daily energy loss. Daily optimism increased employees’energy and decreased emotional exhaustion and negative affect at night. It also moderated the relationship between work incivility and positive affect at night. The results on psychological detachment supported the stressor-detachment model (Sonnentag, 2010), in which psychological detachment from work during nonworking time is not only a direct predictor of increased energy, but could similarly buffer the negative impact of role stress and work incivility. Relaxation basically showed main effects in predicting emotional exhaustion (inversely) and positive affect (directly). Our findings suggest two main implications: (1) the necessity for implemention of workplace policies to prevent role stress and work incivility in reducing daily loss of energy. (2) Training workers in self-care programmes focusing on optimism and recovery can provide early steps toward organizational change and employee daily well-being.
... For each interaction round, the participants held similar interactions with the RC, with only slight variations focusing on their past, present, and future, in that order. This ordering reflects the emphasis that well-being interventions often place on imagining optimistic futures, which has been shown to reduce pessimism, negative affect, and emotional exhaustion [56]. Expressly, for the past (first interaction round) the RC asked the participants to recall events from the past few weeks, for the present (second condition); from the same day or week, and for future (third condition); they were asked to imagine situations that may arise in the coming weeks. ...
This paper provides a detailed overview of a case study of applying Continual Learning (CL) to a single-session Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) session (avg. 31 +- 10 minutes), where a robotic mental well-being coach conducted Positive Psychology (PP) exercises with (n = 20) participants. We present the results of a Thematic Analysis (TA) of data recorded from brief semi-structured interviews that were conducted with participants after the interaction sessions, as well as an analysis of statistical results demonstrating how participants' personalities may affect how they perceive the robot and its interactions.
... Positive mental imagery for the future is associated with optimism (Blackwell et al., 2013). Writing about positive near-future events also EMOTION DIFFERENTIATION AND OPTIMISM 4 help decrease pessimism, negative affect, and emotional exhaustion (Littman-Ovadia & Nir, 2014). This set of intervention research collectively implies that both positive emotions and psychological functioning conducive to positivity are protective factors to state optimism. ...
Daily life events often trigger and co-occur with various emotional reactions, which activate self-regulatory processes. One possible outcome of self-regulatory processes is optimism. Limited research has examined optimism in daily life and potential daily predictors including stressors, negative emotions, and positive emotions. Emotion differentiation-the ability to identify and label discrete emotional states-has the potential to change the association between daily predictors and optimism. The current study contextualized optimism in the emotion-laden daily life and examined the association of daily stressors and daily negative and positive emotional states to daily optimism and the role of negative and positive emotion regulation on these relationships. The current study adopted a daily diary design and collected self-reported daily responses from a sample of 248 college students over a seven-day study period. The results included concurrent and lagged effects and showed that daily negative affect and positive affect predicted both concurrent daily optimism and the next day's optimism. Greater negative emotion differentiation predicted higher daily optimism. A better ability to differentiate positive emotions predicted a stronger relation between positive affect and daily optimism. The findings underscored the importance of daily affect and emotion differentiation being important markers for optimism interventions and daily practices.
Objectives: In this research, we examined the academic and psychological coping of post-secondary students during the early stages of COVID-19. The main goal was to investigate correlations involving self- compassion, spirituality, psychological capital, and subjective well-being, and evaluate the mediating role of self-compassion and spirituality in the relationship between psychological capital and subjective well-being.Methods: We had 257 participants (ages 19-59) complete 5 questionnaires: demographic and academic information, Psychological Capital Questionnaire, Subjective Well-Being Index, Spiritual Intelligence Self- Assessment Inventory, and Self-Compassion Index. Results: We found a strong positive correlation between psychological capital, self-compassion, and subjective well-being. However, spirituality failed to show statistically significant correlations with self-compassion and subjective well-being, with only weak correlations with psychological capital. Self-compassion positively mediated the relationship between psychological capital and subjective well-being, but not spirituality. Conclusion: These findings indicate the role of positive psychological resources of post-secondary students in coping with a difficult situation like COVID-19.
Purpose
The study investigates the moderating effect of personal resources, including optimism and resilience, on the link between fear of Covid-19 and perceptions of academic safety among university students in Ghana.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 618 students took part in the research by completing an online self-reported questionnaire. The respondents were chosen using a simple random sample method. The data was processed and analysed using IBM SPSS version 24 and SEM-PLS, respectively.
Findings
Results reveal fear of Covid-19 positively influence students' perception of academic safety. Furthermore, both resilience and optimism mitigate the impact of fear of Covid-19 on students' perceptions of academic safety.
Originality/value
This is the first study to examine personal resources as a moderator between fear of Covid-19 and students' perceptions of academic safety. Practical and theoretical implications are added to the text.
Objective:
The objective of this research was to assess the relative contribution of three resilience-related dispositional resources (trait mindfulness, core self-evaluations, and optimism) to emergency medicine physicians' fatigue, retention, and productivity.
Methods:
We surveyed emergency physicians employed by a national (US) medical staffing organization. The survey included measures of work stressors, resilience resources, job search behavior, and fatigue. We linked the survey responses to objective demographic and productivity measures from the organization's records.
Results:
A total of 371 respondents completed the survey. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated support for each of the three resilience-related resources as predictors. Relative weights analyses showed that resilience accounted for 14% and 62% of the outcome variance whereas work demands accounted for between 32% and 56%.
Conclusions:
Multiple facets of dispositional resilience are important predictors of emergency medicine physicians' occupational health, retention, and productivity.
(ENG) Positive psychology was pioneered by Seligman in 1998 and has greatly advanced the psychological study of human positive strengths and virtues over the past 24 years. However, studies on positive psychological art therapy in Korea have been conducted sporadically and have not been systematically reviewed. This study therefore conducted a literature review to examine how positive psychology has been applied in domestic art therapy research. To this end, 27 articles published in Korean journals were collected, and the data were coded focusing on publication information, participants, research design, and characteristics and techniques of positive psychological art therapy, frequency analysis was then performed. Since the first articles were published in The Korean Journal of Art Therapy in 2013, a total of 27 articles were published in 12 journals by 2021, and almost all the articles were case and experimental studies. The review showed that existing studies focused on adults, children and adolescents, and women, showing that there are an insufficient number of studies on the elderly and men. Further, the review revealed that the pre-post experimental design method, including a comparison group, was mainly used, and only one qualitative study was published. Finally, the review confirmed that positive psychology art therapy is an approach that emphasizes support for clients to live a flourishing life through positive psychology. The significance and limitations of this study were also discussed.
(KOR)긍정심리학은 1998년에 셀리그만(Seligaman)에 의해 개척된 심리학 분파로 지난 24년 간 인간의 긍정적인 강점과 덕목에 관한 심리학 연구를 크게 발전시켜 왔다. 그러나 국내에서는 긍정심리학적 미술치료에 대한 연구가 산발적으로 이루어져 체계적으로 검토되지 못했다. 이에 본 연구는 긍정심리학이 국내 미술치료 연구에 어떻게 적용되어 왔는지 알아보기 위해 문헌 고찰을 하였다. 연구를 위하여 국내 학술지에서 출판된 논문 27편을 수집하고 출판 동향, 연구 참여자, 연구 설계, 미술치료 특징과 기법을 중심으로 자료를 코딩한 뒤 빈도분석을 실시하였다. 출판 동향을 살펴본 결과, 2013년에 처음으로「미술치료연구」에 논문이 게재된 이래로 2021년까지 총 27편의 논문이 12개의 학술지에 게재된 것으로 나타났으며 거의 모든 연구가 사례 및 실험 연구에 해당하는 것으로 조사되었다. 연구 참여자의 배경을 조사한 결과 성인, 아동 및 청소년, 여성에 집중되어 노인과 남성을 대상으로 한 연구는 미흡한 것으로 나타났다. 연구 설계를 분석한 결과, 비교 집단을 포함한 사전-사후 실험설계 방법이 주로 활용되었으며 질적 연구는 단 한 편만 발표된 것으로 조사되었다. 미술치료의 특징과 기법을 정리한 결과, 내담자가 긍정심리학에서 지향하는 플로리시한(flourish) 삶을 살아가도록 지원하는 것을 강조하고 있는 것을 확인하였다. 이러한 연구 결과를 바탕으로 본 연구의 의의와 제한점에 대하여 논의하였다.
Purpose
The study examines a mediated, moderated process of students' intellectual engagement from optimism, academic self-efficacy and academic burnout.
Design/methodology/approach
Five hundred and twenty-seven participants who completed a self-reported questionnaire were selected using a convenient sampling technique. PLSc was used to test the proposed hypotheses.
Findings
Results showed that optimism positively affects students' intellectual engagement and academic self-efficacy. Additionally, academic self-efficacy correlates positively with students' intellectual engagement and further mediates the relationship between optimism and intellectual engagement. Finally, the moderation effect of academic burnout was positive and non-significant.
Originality/value
This paper is among the first to have tested a model including optimism, academic self-efficacy, intellectual engagement and academic burnout in a university setup from a developing country perspective.
Most people want to be happy and many look out for opportunities to achieve a more satisfying life. Following a happiness training is an option, but the effectiveness of such training is being questioned. In this research synthesis we assessed: 1) whether happiness training techniques add to the happiness of their users, 2) how much happiness training techniques add to happiness, 3) how long the effect of happiness training lasts, 4) what kinds of training techniques work best, and 5) what types of groups of people profit from taking happiness training. We took stock of the available research and found 106 reports of effect studies on training techniques, which together yielded 314 findings. These findings are available in an online ‘findings archive’, the World Database of Happiness. Using links to this source allows us to condense information in tabular overviews, while providing the reader with access to much detail. Happiness training techniques seem to do what they are designed to do: 96% of the studies showed a gain in happiness post intervention and at follow-up, about half of the positive results were statistically significant. Studies with cross-sectional designs and studies that used control groups showed more mixed results. The average effect of happiness training was approximately 5% of the scale range. We conclude that taking a form of happiness training is advisable for individuals looking for a more satisfying life. Since happier workers tend to be more productive, organizations would be wise to provide such training techniques for their workforce.
Most people want to be happy and many look out for opportunities to achieve a more satisfying life. Following a happiness training is an option, but the effectiveness of such training is being questioned. In this research synthesis we assessed: 1) whether happiness training techniques add to the happiness of their users, 2) how much happiness training techniques add to happiness, 3) how long the effect of happiness training lasts, 4) what kinds of training techniques work best, and 5) what types of groups of people profit from taking happiness training. We took stock of the available research and found 106 reports of effect studies on training techniques, which together yielded 314 findings. These findings are available in an online 'findings archive', the World Database of Happiness. Using links to this source allows us to condense information in tabular overviews, while providing the reader with access to much detail. Happiness training techniques seem to do what they are designed to do: 96% of the studies showed a gain in happiness post intervention and at follow-up, about half of the positive results were statistically significant. Studies with cross-sectional designs and studies that used control groups showed more mixed results. The average effect of happiness training was Prime Archives in Psychology: 2 nd Edition 3 www.videleaf.com approximately 5% of the scale range. We conclude that taking a form of happiness training is advisable for individuals looking for a more satisfying life. Since happier workers tend to be more productive, organizations would be wise to provide such training techniques for their workforce.
Emotional processes influence a wide range of mental and physical systems, which makes them difficult to understand from a single perspective. In this special issue of the Review of General Psychology, contributing authors present 4 articles that draw from several areas within psychology in the service of understanding a topic relevant to emotion. In this overview, the authors argue that the long neglect of the scientific study of complex processes such as emotion might be linked, in part, to the fractionation of the field into specialized subdisciplines. Just as emotions were of central concern in the early years of psychology (which was a generalist's era), as psychology moves toward more integration in the late 20th century broad phenomena such as emotions are once again central interests. The 4 articles of this special issue are briefly reviewed as exemplars of an integrated approach to understanding emotional phenomena.
The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology studies the burgeoning field of positive psychology, which, in recent years, has transcended academia to capture the imagination of the general public. The book provides a roadmap for the psychology needed by the majority of the population-those who don't need treatment, but want to achieve the lives to which they aspire. The articles summarize all of the relevant literature in the field, and each is essentially defining a lifetime of research. The content's breadth and depth provide a cross-disciplinary look at positive psychology from diverse fields and all branches of psychology, including social, clinical, personality, counseling, school, and developmental psychology. Topics include not only happiness-which has been perhaps misrepresented in the popular media as the entirety of the field-but also hope, strengths, positive emotions, life longings, creativity, emotional creativity, courage, and more, plus guidelines for applying what has worked for people across time and cultures.
Optimism is expecting good things to occur in one's life. Such positive expectations are associated with higher subjective well-being, even under conditions of stress or adversity. In contrast, pessimists respond to adversity with more intense negative feelings. There are also differences in the manner in which optimists and pessimists try to cope with adversity. Optimists tend to put the best face on the adversity, but they acknowledge its existence and its importance, and they try to do as much as possible to resolve whatever problems can be resolved. Pessimists are more likely to distance themselves from the problem and put off doing anything about it as long as possible. They are also more likely to give up trying, if things remain difficult. Some kinds of problem solution is proactive, engaged in before the problem arises. Optimists also tend to engage in such proactive efforts, including taking actions to minimize various kinds of health risks. Perhaps, as a consequence of these preventive steps, optimists also tend to have better health than pessimists. They seem to heal faster from wounds, and there is some evidence that when they are seriously ill they experience slower disease progression. It has been suggested that optimists sometimes are no better off than pessimists, and sometimes are worse off: that their confidence can get them into situations where it is difficult to cope effectively. Evidence of such negative effects of optimism does exist, but it is relatively sparse.
After briefly reviewing the historical views about hope, a hope model based on three components - goal, pathways, and agency thoughts - is presented. Accompanying measures of hope for adults and children are described, and the positive correlates of higher hope are reviewed. Future applications of hope theory are presented, including such topics as psychotherapy, trauma, pain tolerance, adherence to taking medications, health psychology, gender, suicide, developmental antecedents, aging issues, and work.