| Psychology 1504: Positive Psychology |
This blog was inspired by Psychology 1504: Positive Psychology by Tal D. Ben-Shahar
February 3rd, 2008
Welcome to PPtime, Positive Psych time, that is. If you made it to the first lecture you probably heard him crack the PP joke. If not, don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll make it again.
I am a senior who took Psych 1 many semesters ago and am enrolling in Positive Psychology wondering if it will...
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February 6th, 2008
There’s no better way to start lecture on a rainy Tuesday morning than with some Little Mermaid music.
Tal begins by recounting the last time he taught the course two years ago. He was very sick and his mentor, Philip Stone, to whom he dedicates this class, had just passed away. His doctor called...
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February 9th, 2008
Tal begins lecturing on Thursday to a slightly smaller audience. According to the Harvard Crimson, 587 students have enrolled in Psychology 1504 this semester, “down 30 percent from the 846 students it last enrolled in the fall of 2006.” That means Introduction to Economics is once again the largest...
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February 14th, 2008
This Tuesday’s lecture began with the heartwarming melody Everybody Hurts Sometimes.
Tal continues where he left off last week by discussing the second premise of PP- change is possible. He adds that change is possible starting with individuals, in other words the power of one. As Ralph Waldo Emerson...
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February 16th, 2008
Thursday’s lecture coincides with Tal’s appearance in The Harvard Crimson’s weekly Fifteen Minutes magazine in an article entitled 15 Questions with Tal Ben-Shahar.
The lecture begins with two somewhat random shameless plugs for post graduation: one being Teach for America and the other Masters...
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February 21st, 2008
Tal returns to a discussion of Positive Priming with the research of Dijksterhuis& Van Knippenberg who primed study participants by asking them to describe the typical characteristics of three different archetypes: a soccer hooligan, a secretary or a professor. Next the participants took intelligence...
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February 25th, 2008
Tal finishes his discussion of beliefs as self-fulfilling prophecies by discussing becoming an optimist. Some tips are 1- just do it (take action) 2- image it (visualize) and 3- cognitive therapy (rational thinking).
In terms of taking actions, Bandura’s research shows that the self-help movement...
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February 27th, 2008
Tal returns to the discussion of benefit finders and fault finders. Benefit finder know it is possible to make the best of things, even if it may take a while (“that too shall pass” is their motto). They give themselves permission to be human and understand that negatove feelings are temporary. There...
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March 3rd, 2008
Tal continues the discussion on Gratitude. Why aren’t more people benefit-finders given all of the benefits? According to William James it takes 21 days to change a habit. Tal recommends chipping away negativity and co-creating your reality with the right questions.
According to research done by...
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March 5th, 2008
Tal begins lecture by posing the difficult question: do you really want to change? Langer and Thompson (1989) brought in participants and asked them whether they wanted to rid of certain negative characteristics like rigidity, gullibility and grimness. They also asked them how important is it for them...
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March 11th, 2008
Tal begins the lecture by discussing research on overcoming shyness. Haemmerlie & Montgomery recruited shy, heterosexual men for the study which was supposedly about taking a test. When they arrived at the test site, the participants were asked to wait because the study was running late. In the waiting...
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March 15th, 2008
Journaling epitomizes the ABC’s of chance, according to Tal. Coping through writing as Jamie Pennebaker found is a very healthy process. Pennebaker brought in participants on 4 consecutive days and asked them to spend 15 minutes writing about their most difficult experiences. More specifically, he...
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March 15th, 2008
The Benefits of Self-Concordance are many. For one, they increase your well-being. They also resolve internal conflicts (because it focuses you on what you really want to do, in the same way that groups in interpersonal conflict need to work towards a common goal as Sharif found). They also increase...
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March 19th, 2008
Hey readers,
So you've gotten to know me this semester and you've certainly gotten to know Tal Ben-Shahar. Now we want to get to know you. Well I can't speak for Tal but I certainly do.
Take a second to take these polls; also I encourage readers to comment on my posts. Creating an active discussion...
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April 6th, 2008
As we return from Spring Break, Tal completes the discussion on stress. He explains that stress isn’t the problem as stress in and of itself is actually good. Instead the problem is lack of recovery. We need multiple levels of recovery: micro (minutes, hours), mezzo (nights, days)...
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April 6th, 2008
Tal begins the lecture on perfectionism by discussing Warren Dennis' research for his book Geeks and Geezers, in which Dennis compared men in their 20s to men in their 70s. He found that the one common element was they had all experienced at least one significant failure, a crucible so to speak. And,...
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April 10th, 2008
Today we complete the Perfectionism lecture and move onto the Mind-Body lecture.
Tal continues the discussion of overcoming perfectionism. As mentioned in the previous lecture, overcoming perfectionism begins with awareness of your flaws then focus on and reward of effort. Next, one needs to experience...
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April 12th, 2008
Tal begins lecture this sunny Thursday by mentioning trends in exercise research. While most studies in this area are tentative pilot studies (as the sample size is too small), they still have interesting results. In terms of most bang for your buck, the best exercise is aerobic exercise. If it can...
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April 17th, 2008
In today’s lecture we discuss the remaining elements of the Mind-Body question: Sleep and Touch as well as move onto the next topic, Love and Relationships.
Next, we discuss sleep. In the era pre-Edison, people in the US slept 10 hours/day on average. Today the average has dropped to 7 hours/day...
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April 18th, 2008
Growing tip statistics show us that successful relationships have the following elements in common. They involve:
hard work
striving to be known rather than validated
allowance for conflict
appreciation of the positive.
Now we will discuss each of these elements in detail...
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April 23rd, 2008
Shawn Achor, the head TF, conducts a lecture today on The Science of Humor. Aside from TFing Positive Psychology, Shawn also heads up a positive psychology consulting firm, Aspirant. He starts by explaining that the brain is a single processor which chooses to focus on pain and suffering or positivity...
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April 28th, 2008
Today Tal returns to complete the lecture on relationships and move on to self-esteem.
Refocusing on the positive When it comes to relationships its all about the questions. We are taught to ask questions that focus on the negative. We need to refocus on the positive such as What am I grateful for...
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April 29th, 2008
Tal begins with a clarification on unconditional self-esteem. People with this level of self-esteem do things because they feel they need to be done. They feel interdependent with everyone else in the world. For example, if they feel a good book needs to be written, they write it, without comparing...
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May 1st, 2008
In this last lecture of Positive Psychology, Tal outlines the following eleven tips of Positive Psychology.
Oh, the questions you’ll ask (the type of questions you ask define your journey)
Believe—in yourself and others (beliefs are a self-fulfilling prophecy)
Learn to fail...
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© 2008 TheFinalClub.org, All rights reserved.
TheFinalClub.org has no affiliation with Harvard University.
User-generated content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution
Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.