Nansook Park’s research while affiliated with University of Johannesburg and other places

How do I do it?In this daily reflection, you list three things that went well for you, and why they went well. How does it work?This brief exercise helps you reflect on the many things that happen every day. Over time, you begin to look for things in your day to add to your list!

Download Now Gratitude Letter 10 minutes | Gratitude How do I do it? Write a letter to a person who has influenced you life in a positive way. This could be a teacher, relative, mentor, or coach. If you can, read your letter aloud to the person you chose. How does it work? Gratitude letters help you focus on the positive influence of another person in your life. This reminds you that someone cares about you, and that you matter. In addition, reading the letter to your chosen person can be a powerful experience for you and the recipient—more than you originally expected.

The prediction of election outcomes is of widespread interest. Election outcomes are influenced by a variety of factors, but largely unexamined in past research is how psychological characteristics of the electorate influence the results of actual elections. The present study investigated whether the optimism of an electorate predicted the outcomes of the 2010 US House of Representatives elections (N = 435) from measures ascertained in 2009 for congressional districts, controlling for an incumbent’s years of service and his or her political party, as well as 2009 median household income in these districts. As expected for midterm election, Republicans and longer-serving incumbents were more likely to win re-election. Districts with higher median household incomes were also more likely to re-elect incumbents. The optimism of a congressional district additionally predicted election outcomes. Districts where people evaluated their own lives in more hopeful terms were more likely to re-elect incumbents.

This chapter covers positive youth development, positive psychology, and positive education, which suggest that mental health is more than the absence of mental illness and involves proactively supporting the mental well-being of young people. The assets of youth that protect against problems and allow young people to do well include both individual psychological characteristics and aspects of their social context. Positive approaches aim to maximize the potential of young people by encouraging both personal and environmental assets. Research findings over the past three decades have brought empirical support for key premises of positive youth development and have provided important insights into individual and contextual factors that underlie youth thriving. Future studies will continue to refine measures, improve interventions, and use empirical findings to understand and influence the processes that give rise to positive development.

Positive psychology is the scientific study of a healthy and flourishing life. The goal of positive psychology is to complement and extend the traditional problem-focused psychology that has proliferated in recent decades. Positive psychology is concerned with positive psychological states (eg, happiness), positive psychological traits (eg, talents, interests, strengths of character), positive relationships, and positive institutions. We describe evidences of how topics of positive psychology apply to physical health. Research has shown that psychological health assets (eg, positive emotions, life satisfaction, optimism, life purpose, social support) are prospectively associated with good health measured in a variety of ways. Not yet known is whether positive psychology interventions improve physical health. Future directions for the application of positive psychology to health are discussed. We conclude that the application of positive psychology to health is promising, although much work remains to be done.

Background: Accidents are one of the leading causes of death among U.S. active-duty Army soldiers. Evidence-based approaches to injury prevention could be strengthened by adding person level characteristics (e.g., demographics) to risk models tested on diverse soldier samples studied over time. Purpose: To identify person-level risk indicators of accident deaths in Regular Army soldiers during a time frame of intense military operations, and to discriminate risk of not-line-of-duty from line-of-duty accident deaths. Methods: Administrative data acquired from multiple Army/Department of Defense sources for active duty Army soldiers during 2004-�2009 were analyzed in 2013. Logistic regression modeling was used to identify person-level sociodemographic, service-related, occupational, and mental health predictors of accident deaths. Results: Delayed rank progression or demotion and being male, unmarried, in a combat arms specialty, and of low rank/service length increased odds of accident death for enlisted soldiers. Unique to officers was high risk associated with aviation specialties. Accident death risk decreased over time for currently deployed, enlisted soldiers and increased for those never deployed. Mental health diagnosis was associated with risk only for previous and never-deployed, enlisted soldiers. Models did not discriminate not-line-of-duty from line of-duty accident deaths. Conclusions: Adding more refined person-level and situational risk indicators to current models could enhance understanding of accident death risk specific to soldier rank and deployment status. Stable predictors could help identify high risk of accident deaths in future cohorts of Regular Army soldiers.

Background: A recent study reported that the highest suicide rates in the US occurred in the happiest states. This is a counter-intuitive finding. The present research investigated whether the same result occurred when the unit of analysis was city. The association between happiness (of most) and suicide (by some) might differ in cities versus states because those in a city provide a more immediate influence. Methods: Suicide rates were examined in 44 large US cities as a function of the average happiness reported by residents. Results: According to our results, happier cities had lower suicide rates (Spearman's rho = -.37, p < .014), implying that cities may be a more meaningful unit of analysis than states for studies of suicide risk. Conclusions: The appropriate geographical unit of analysis needs to be considered seriously in psychological studies.

The Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth (VIA-Youth) is a self-report inventory assessing 24 character strengths among people 10–17 years of age. This paper describes the adaptation and initial validation of a German version of this measure utilizing several samples (in total N = 2,110 self-reports of participants aged 10–17 years, 56.5% girls; N = 219 parent-reports) from Germany and Switzerland. The 24 scales yielded high reliability and exhibited stability over 4 months. Self-reports and parent-ratings of strengths converged well. An oblique five-factor solution was found to represent the data well. There were small age effects, and small to medium gender effects (e.g., girls scored higher on beauty and kindness). Character strengths of hope, gratitude, love, and zest correlated positively with global life satisfaction. Furthermore, most of the strengths were strong predictors of general self-efficacy. Overall, the German VIA-Youth demonstrated good psychometric properties and promising evidence for validity. The German VIA-Youth is recommended for the assessment of character strengths in German-speaking children and adolescents.