I am watching Paul Bloom's lectures a little out of order, but I listened to the last one of the course today and he touched on the field of Positive Psychology which I have a particular interest in.
He did say that he thought much of the field was rubbish, and a lot of the work very bad science or rather just a way for people writing self help books to pretend to add academic credence to their work. Probably not his words, but the sentiment is there.
He did say that there was also some interesting work going on. I had read 2 of the 4 books he recommended, and am busy reading the third. They are:
Stumbling on Happiness by Dan Gilbert
The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman
Seligman basically credited for starting the field although others such as Abraham Maslow had done a lot of related work. The basic idea is that a lot of good work has been done in helping people with mental difficulties become 'normal', but not a lot has been done at looking at 'mental virtues' to help 'normal' people become really successful.
It is easy to be cynical and see how Bloom's point about non-scientific random self help advice been dished out under the mantra of positive psychology. That said, if good research is being done... I think it is an exciting field.
'The Red Queen' by Matt Ridley talks about evolution as more of a treadmill than a progression. In the search for happiness, many people choose things that serve that purpose... continually running forward but getting nowhere.
I think it is useful to turn proper research to real ways to improve the quality of our lives using measures other than GDP/capita. These kind of fuzzy concepts are difficult to quantify, but psychologists seem to have done a good job with mental illness. Between drugs, therapy and meditation... it seems a lot of mental troubles can be alleviated. It would be great if we could do a similar job with helping healthy people to be happier.
No comments:
Post a Comment