P. Alex Linley’s research while affiliated with Coventry University and other places

As we write, it has been almost 14 years since Martin Seligman inaugurated the emergence of positive psychology as a discipline, with his Presidential Address to the American Psychological Association. Despite the intervening decade and more, we are surprised at how little attention-in relative terms at least - has been dedicated to positive psychology theory, research, and applications as they pertain to children and adolescents. Looking back, this is perhaps reflective of positive psychology's de facto roots in social and clinical psychology, and its limited foundations in developmental and educational psychology, which are of course the disciplines where we might expect to find the most work in relation to children and adolescents. © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013. All rights are reserved.

This book presents recent positive psychological research, applications and interventions being used among adolescents and children. Currently there is a wave of change occurring whereby educators, and others working with children and adolescents, are beginning to recognize the benefits of looking at well-being from a positive perspective, specifically the integration of positive psychological theory into the school curriculum in order to improve student well-being. Moreover, although the positive psychological field has grown tremendously since its inception, there remains an imbalance in the publication of research findings, applications, and interventions among children and adolescents in comparison to adults. This book fills the need for a reference to this valuable information and benefits a wide range of professionals, including educators, clinicians, psychologists, students, and many other working with children and adolescents. © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013. All rights are reserved.

How to better the lives of people is central to the mission of positive psychology, and understanding and fostering life satisfaction is widely seen as being central to this goal. A wide range of studies attests to the role that life satisfaction plays in successful functioning in youth. Increased life satisfaction is consistently related to adaptive psychosocial functioning, interpersonal and social relationships, academic success, decreased behavior problems, increased healthier behaviors, and a host of school-related variables, including perceived academic efficacy, competence, and self-efficacy. This chapter reviews the factors that are associated with and predictive of life satisfaction in youth, including supportive interpersonal relationships with both family and peers, participation in meaningful instrumental activities, having a healthy lifestyle, cultural integration, positive behavior, and peer interactions. Further, the chapter also reviews specific positive psychology interventions that have been shown to increase life satisfaction, including gratitude diaries, the teaching of well-being in schools, and character strengths interventions.

Background Positive psychology interventions have been shown to increase happiness and well-being, and researchers are beginning to speculate on the mechanisms through which these interventions may be effective. People are also naturally attuned to the things that will make them happier in their daily lives, and there is a case for considering how more naturalistic, everyday activities may also increase positive affect, happiness and well-being. Methods Study 1 involved 89 participants who completed a gratefulness activity while eating an ice cream for two days, following baseline measurement for two days. Participants completed the PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Scale) twice per day, in the afternoon and in the evening, with the activity between these two times on the activity days. Study 2 involved 280 participants who formed four groups (gratefulness activity; ice cream consumption; gratefulness activity and ice cream consumption; control group), which undertook the relevant activity for two days. Participants completed baseline and follow-up measures, including the PANAS and the GQ-6 (Gratitude Questionnaire-6) on the day before and day following the two activity days. On the activity days themselves, participants completed the PANAS before and after their activity. Results In Study 1, we found that the combination of the gratefulness activity and eating ice cream led to increased positive affect. In Study 2, we explored this finding further, and found that any combination of the gratefulness activity and eating ice cream (together or alone) led to increased positive affect. The same pattern of results was observed for affect balance and the ratio of positive to negative emotions. The gratefulness activity only also led to increased gratitude as measured by the GQ-6. Results showed that even simple, naturalistic everyday activities can lead to increases in positive affect. This experience of positive affect may be one mediating pathway through which positive psychology interventions, and indeed everyday activities, are effective in enhancing happiness and well-being. Conclusions Researchers should consider the role of everyday activities in enhancing happiness and well-being, in addition to investigating the operational mechanisms of more formal positive psychology interventions.

Applied positive psychology is concerned with facilitating good lives and enabling people to be at their best. It is as much an approach as a particular domain of inquiry. As shown throughout this chapter, positive psychology has applications that span almost every area of applied psychology and beyond. In clinical psychology, counseling and psychotherapy, applied positive psychology builds on the traditions of humanistic psychology and Carl Rogers' client-centered therapy. It challenges the dominant assumptions of the medical model and promotes a dimensional, rather than dichotomous, understanding of mental health and mental illness. Beyond the alleviation of psychopathology, applied positive psychology has also seen the development of specific happiness-increase interventions, including counting one's blessings, using signature strengths, and paying a gratitude visit. In education, applied positive psychology has been used to promote flow in the classroom, as well as harnessing children's strengths to aid their learning and development. Forensic applications of positive psychology are represented by the good lives model of offender management, which focuses on the adaptive satisfaction of human needs. In Industrial Organizational (I/O) psychology, positive psychology applications are represented throughout work on transformational leadership, employee engagement, positive organizational scholarship, positive organizational behavior, appreciative inquiry, and strengths-based organization. In society, more broadly, applied positive psychology is shown to influence the development of life coaching and the practice of executive coaching, while population approaches are being explored in relation to epidemiology and the promotion of social well-being. Having reviewed these diverse areas, the chapter then goes on to consider the theoretical basis for applied positive psychology; the questions of who should apply positive psychology, as well as where and how; and whether positive psychology applications could be universally relevant. The chapter concludes by considering what the future of applied positive psychology may hold and suggesting that the discipline has the potential to impact positively on people throughout the world.

Objective: In recent years there has been a growing interest in research related to the use of strengths. Although results from past research have consistently suggested that the use of strengths is associated with higher performance and greater well-being there is, as yet, no clear theory describing how using strengths might contribute to greater well-being or goal progress. The objective of the current research was to test a model of how strengths use may support performance and well-being through an extension of the self-concordance model of healthy goal attainment. Design: We test a repeated measures cross-sectional model in which using signature strengths is associated with goal progress, which is in turn associated with the fulfilment of psychological needs, and in turn well-being. Method: Participants were 240 college students who completed measures of psychological strengths, need satisfaction, well-being, goal progress and goal attainment at three time points over a three-month period. Results: Our results demonstrate that strengths use is associated with better goal progress, which is in turn associated with psychological need fulfilment and enhanced well-being. Conclusions: Strengths use provides a key support in the attainment of goals, and leads to greater need satisfaction and well-being, providing an extension of the self-concordance model of healthy goal attainment. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

The burgeoning field of positive psychology has highlighted the need to discover what makes life worth living. Within this framework is the exploration of how youths perceive their lives and achieve happiness. Recent research demonstrates that perception of life satisfaction (LS) among youths has important implications for their psychological, social, and educational functioning. An important part of understanding how youths perceive their lives is the incorporation of measurement of life satisfaction, and this article provides a review of the extant measures of youth life satisfaction. Following systematic literature searches, empirical studies (n ¼ 47) of youth LS measures are reviewed. The review provides an overview of each instrument outlining its normative samples, reliability, and validity. Recommended future research directions are briefly discussed.