Welcome to the sunshine of a brand new day. You drifted onto the sea. You powered into a dream, a dream that never would fade away. Into the world
above, after day. We can find a secret to a hidden smile.
The music no one can hear will sound for us loud and clear. To find forever, it takes a while. It's time to give our love a chance. The music's going. Shall we dance?
The world of love tonight, girl, baby. Welcome to the sunshine of a brand new day. Drifted onto the sea, fallen into a dream, a dream that never will
fade away. Welcome to the world of laughter. Baby, I love you.
Nobody can tell you. There's only one song worth singing. They may try and sell you. 'Cause it hangs them up to see someone like you. But you gotta
make your own kind of music, sing your own special song.
Make your own kind of music, even if nobody else sings along. You're gonna be nowhere. The longest kind of lonely. It may be worth going just to be. Oh.
Hi. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Harvard. Hi.
Oh. Welcome again. Just a quick announcement. As I said, this class you can take pass/fail. By the way, the PowerPoints are on the.
Some of you may have seen it on the website. And what you can do is just download it to your computer and then print it out as you wish. And it will
be on every time before class. Usually the night before. At the latest.
You can take this class, pass, fail, and you can have it. I can sign it, or Jessica or Sean can sign it for you. Are there any questions before I go?
Any any technical, mechanical, biological, psychological? Yes.
If I can what? Wireless, so that if I'm boring, you can surf the web. I know, I was a student too. I'll, I'll ask Barry after. Okay.
SMS messages, emails. Record it. You know, you can actually put a camera on, and your mom can watch it at home. You know, the options are limitless. And but I will ask yes.
And any other questions? I guess not. All right, so I had a little bit of a scare last week. Most of you don't know, I mean all the TFS do, but you
don't. I was very ill last week, and the only the only way I could get through this class was.
You know, basically completely drugged. You know, no wonder I had such a good time. You know, Jeff brought me some amazing chicken soup. Highly recommend if you're ever ill, just call him. The best.
But I really wasn't well, and Friday finally, I wasn't teaching, so I could go to the doctor, and I went to the doctor and did all the customary I and
U, and they took out took a blood sample. They said, you know, we're not sure. It may be mono, but. Turned out not to be, fortunately, but they sent
me home. Now for three for three days, I I literally hadn't slept, and when I slept, I was delirious and not really knowing what was going on.
And finally, on Friday night. I fell asleep at around 9 p. m. At midnight, my wife wakes me up, and again, it takes me a while to orient myself. And she said, "Look, the doctor just called.
The lab results had just come in from blood, and she wants you to go to the emergency room immediately. " And she said, "You have to go to Beth Israel
because that's the best hospital. " And she recounts the discussion. She said to the doctor, "Look, you know, he fell asleep finally after three
nights. You know, can he go in the morning?
" And she said, "No, absolutely not. He has to go right now. " So as you can imagine, you know, we're slightly worried. Yeah, and we don't want to wake up David, our baby. So I, we call a cab.
Tammy stays home with David, and I get into the cab. I'm still shivering, freezing, and worried. And you know, the cab goes. I look down by Huron by
the quad, and you know drives down, goes up the river. I look at Harvard on my left.
I look at Boston in front of me, and I can't help thinking. I try to have positive thoughts, positive psychology, but I really tried, believe me. But
but I said, you know. What if this is it? You know what?
What if I have one year left here? What would I want to do? You know, this is a question that I ask theoretically once in a while, but here it had a
little bit more emotion stuck to it, unfortunately. And I, and you know, I feel very you know sad, wistful. I won't see David grow up.
You know, won't have other babies that I could see grow up. Won't spend more time with my lovely wife and family and You know, won't be doing the
things that I love to do. And then I turned to the professional side, and I said, professionally, what, what would I want to do in this one year if I
had just one year left? And the first thing that came to mind was I would want to leave behind a
coherent. Document or something that would bring together my ideas of positive psychology, that would communicate positive psychology to others, as I
understand it, so that others can see the benefits of it, the greatness of it, and the wonder of it.
This is what came to mind today on that. On that taxi ride. Anyway, so I get to the hospital. It drops me off at Beth Israel, at the wrong hospital.
So I have to walk three and a half blocks to the right emergency room.
Barely made it. You know, checked out throughout the night and all that, and finally turned out to be a false alarm. They gave me antibiotics, said
I'm not contagious anymore, and sent me home. But what I want to do today is share with you why is this the one thing that came to my mind? As I said,
what if I had one year?
Why do I think positive psychology is so important? Why is it so important? I think for Harvard students and for the world to know more about this
fascinating and important field. This is what today's lecture is about. It also will explain why people like Marty Seligman.
Phil Stone, Alan Langer, saw this area as an area that has to become its own unique network of scholars. Why couldn't you just continue to be part of
psychology as a whole? Well, one of the studies that had a lot of impact on the thinking in positive psychology was run by David Myers. David Myers,
positive psychologist from Hope College, very appropriate name, looked at psychological abstracts. He ran this in 2000, so for 33 years.
And he wanted to look how often certain topics, certain words, appeared in the psychological abstracts. And here is what he found: the word anger,
over 5,000 studies concerning anger. That's on Psych Info for those of you who, who look it up. Anxiety. Over 41,000 studies on this topic.
Depression wins with close to 55,000 entries on Psych Info, just in the abstract. Positives: four hundred and fifteen abstracts on joy, happiness.
Over seventeen hundred, compared to forty-one thousand on anxiety. And finally, the winner on the positive side: life satisfaction. It's a huge topic
in psychology.
Over two thousand. That's the ratio between negative research and positive research, and again, I don't mean negative in the sense of bad, poor, sense
of psychopathology, as opposed to the positive psychology. The ratio is twenty-one to one. This is the ratio that Marty Seligman looked at when he
said, "We need to create a network of scholars that will focus on studying positive things like joy, things like happiness, things like life
satisfaction, like self-esteem, like relationships, love, friendship. " Like goal setting.
Just so that there is more of a balance today and for the rest of the class, I'm not going to argue for there to stop being research on this. It is
extremely important. But just for a shift of the pendulum, this phenomenon is not new. But psychology focuses on the negative. Here is Abraham Maslow
back in the '50s.
The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side. It has revealed to us much about man's shortcomings,
his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological heights. It is as if
psychology had voluntarily restricted itself to only half its rightful jurisdiction, and that the darker, meaner half. There's a lot of research on
violence, on anger, as you saw, on evil. Very little research on virtue and goodness.
And on Thursday we'll talk about the importance of such research, not just for its own sake, but also for bringing out. The goodness in people, and
also for eradicating a lot of the evil and the negatives that we see around us. So, Martin Seligman and company said we need to accentuate the
positive. You know, we need to focus on it much more. And toward this end, the aim of positive psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a
preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life.
It's about life flourishing. It's about the flourishing individual. It's about the flourishing community, and it's about the flourishing society. What
positive psychology saw was that essentially psychology needs help. Why?
Because imagine, imagine that in your life you were experiencing half an hour of joy during the day and ten hours of depression on an ongoing basis,
or one day of happiness and twenty-one days of anger. I'm healthy, right? You would go and seek help, ideally. The field of psychology is in a similar
predicament, but the question is: Is this a good analogy, individual to a whole field? I don't know, because many people who say no, we need to
continue focusing on negative, quote unquote, research, is that.
It reflects reality. You know, we need to do all this research because there is so much anxiety and depression and anger and evil and violence. Plus,
these are the things we want to eradicate, to get rid of. So we need to research these things. Especially given that, in many ways, it seems like it
reflects that ratio is not that far from reality, and it's getting worse.
Ten times higher today than it was in 1960. Now, part of it is because we're better at diagnosing it. There's more higher levels of awareness, but
still, it doesn't account for ten times more. People are overall generally more depressed today than they were back then. Why?
There are many reasons for it. One of them is the red rice, which we'll talk about a lot later. Lack of time. People are always stressed. So much to do, and so on.
But you know, we'll leave that for the rest of the semester. But that reflects reality. And of course, we need more research on depression. Look at the situation. Mean age today is less than fifteen.
You know, with the information highway, kids have more access to things that. Kids didn't have a few years back. Whether it's the standards that they
can't reach. Whether it's the materialism or whatever it is, people have access to these things and they become depressed much more often. Also, how
many 15-year-olds in you know my parents' generation spoke about depression?
Very few. You know, today through the internet, much more educated, for good and for ill. Right here at home, 12th of January, 2004. Depression at
Harvard. Over eighty percent, sorry, eighty percent, not over eighty percent of Harvard students, according to the Crimson study.
Eighty percent were depressed. Now, this is not just feeling down. This is, you know, feeling seriously down to the point of not being able to
function at least once during the year, and that's for a period of weeks or months. It's very high. Plus, the other thing that this article identified
was the rising levels of depression and anxiety and other mental illnesses, and call it on our campus right here.
And what they said is, we need more resources, and I'll talk about that later. More resources to deal with this phenomenon. So it's right here with
us. Once again, I'm not talking just about the you know occasional down or I have few bad days. I mean, who doesn't have that?
I mean, I was—I felt down ten times just yesterday. You know, it's natural—the ups and downs, the vicissitudes—they're there. This is depression that
people experience. In a study of thirteen thousand five hundred college students throughout the country—a huge sample—nearly forty-five percent. Were
depressed, seriously depressed to the point of not being able to function.
Over the last year, over ninety-four percent feel overwhelmed or stressed. I talked about the connection between the two, stress and depression.
That's unhealthy. And then people who defend negative psychology would say, "Look at these numbers. What are you talking about?
Positive psychology. We need to deal with these issues. " No, this is an epidemic. We're not talking here, you know, a couple of people. We need to
put all our resources, all our minds, all the minds in William James or the universities throughout the world need to focus on these problems, and
they have a point.
They have a real point here. This is again what I'm saying is not to do away with this research, which is important. But I want to shift the pendulum.
The 21 to 1 ratio, I still argue, is unhealthy. Why do I think that?
Why do I think we need more positive research? Why do I think we need to shift that pendulum? There are three reasons, which I'll elaborate on today.
First reason: psychology shouldn't just react to the to reality, to the status quo. It should also create a different reality, and I'll explain what I
mean by that.
Happiness—it's not just enough to get rid of depression or anxiety in order to be happy. Maybe a first step, but it's not enough. We need to actively
pursue happiness, and that's why positive psychology is important in order to give us the tools to do that. So even if we are not anxious or
depressed. We still need to do more.
And finally, I will argue that positive psychology can also help in terms of prevention, in terms of helping us overcome depression, anxiety,
neurosis, other psychopathologies. So these are the three things I'll argue for today. Let me begin with the first. You see, what's happening today
with psychology is that unintentionally, psychologists are creating a downward spiral of unhappiness. In what sense?
There's certainly a lot of negative experiences out there. As we saw, these numbers are staggering of anxiety and depression. These negative
experiences, in turn, lead people to want to research. These topics—they're important. Naturally, they want to research and study them.
Also, NIH gives money to study these. But then, what happens inadvertently is that this negative research is also reinforcing negative experiences. I. e. , creating more depression and more anxiety.
In a sense, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I'll discuss that. This is you see, because the thing is that what we focus on in reality, what
we choose to focus on, very often becomes what we see out there. Let me explain further. You see, what positive psychology needs to do is to break
this cycle. What it needs to do is to reverse it.
Now, when I talk about the negative research, I'm not just talking about you know one or two studies on depression or anxiety. What I'm talking about
is the obsession that exists today. With the study on that, where you see most of the labs studying psychology, most of the NIH money goes to studying
these things, and this creates a certain reality, reinforces the current predicament. Positive psychology is about reversing the spiral. You see,
because if you have positive research, this will lead.
To more positive experiences, which will in turn will lead to more positive research, and so on and so on in an upward spiral of happiness. You know,
it works a little bit like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Again, this very superficial explanation here. What does it say? It says that you
cannot measure a phenomenon without affecting it.
Right, you cannot go on and measure anxiety, depression, neurosis without actually affecting reality and bringing these things about even more.
Similarly, for positive research, if you study happiness, greatness, virtue, wonder, awe, gratitude, you also bring these things out much more in
reality. Human systems grow in the direction of what they persistently ask questions about. What are the research questions that positive psychology
asks? What are the research questions that negative psychology asks?
These questions make a lot of difference. I mean, think about it on a personal level. If someone comes to you and says, "Are you depressed today? ",
versus, "Well, what are you so happy about? " Different questions will elicit a different response on the micro level, but also on the macro level of
society.
So this is the first reason. Psychology shouldn't just react to the reality; it should also create the reality. And therefore, we need more positive
psychology. The second thing: why we need positive psychology. Happiness is not just the negation of unhappiness.
So there is this assumption today that if let's just get rid of the depression, of the anxiety, of the neurosis, the psychosis, or whatever it is, and
then we'll be happy, and then people will be happier. But that's not the way it works. You see, look, take an analogy. Look, you have indigestion.
Sure, you need to get rid of this indigestion before you can enjoy a gourmet meal.
But getting rid of the indigestion in and of itself is not enough to enjoy Jeff's soup. Right? You need more than that. Getting rid of depression is
not enough to be happy. And this is the assumption that a lot of psychology is under, which is why we see many people are not necessarily depressed or
anxious, but they go through life with a certain ennui, you know, just some boredom, or if you want to take it a little bit more to the extreme, to
use Thoreau's term, you know, most men lead a life of quiet desperation.
They're not really depressed, not. Not overly sad, not anxious, but, but so what? And what psychology needs to do, positives. What positive psychology
needs to do is take the next step. You see, you can look at our experiences on a continuum.
Whereas on the negative side you have things like neurosis, anger, anxiety, depression, psychosis, and on the positive side, well-being, satisfaction,
joy, excitement, happiness. It's not enough, and this is what psychology has been doing mostly now: getting from zero negative to zero. We also need
to get from the zero to one, and psychology doesn't have really good answers for that. Yet, but this is why we need a positive psychology. And when we
do have answers, most people don't know about because it's not conventional wisdom yet.
And this is what this course is about: to make this, getting from zero to the plus, more accessible. There are two different models of conventional
psychology, of negative psychology and positive psychology. Are the disease model, where the goal is to get rid of disease, versus the health model,
to get people to flourish. Very different approaches. Here are some examples.
The disease model would focus on what am I bad at versus what am I good at. Again, overcoming deficiencies versus building on my competencies. We'll
talk about this in this class. Also, fifteen oh eight. We'll talk a lot about this.
Run away from pain. Run away from that depression because it hurts. I know it hurts. Versus, look for pleasure, for excitement, for the joy in life. Run away from unhappiness.
Pursue happiness. Now, these can manifest themselves in similar behaviors. You know, you can have a person working an eighty-hour week. One person is
running away from an unhappy relationship or from, you know, doesn't want to deal with relationships. Running away from their depression and just
burying themselves at work for eighty hours a week.
The other person can work for eighty hours a week. And just love it. Can't wait to get to work in the morning, and just suddenly looks at the clock,
and it's midnight already. So you can do the same thing, but from very different places. For the disease model, let's get to the zero, so that I'm not
ill, versus an ongoing pursuit of happier and happier, higher levels of self-esteem.
Joy, excitement, and so on—a lifelong journey. And finally, just want to get to this tensionless state. Or I just don't really feel too bad. Versus, I
want to feel the excitement. I want to wake up in the morning and say, I can't wait to get to work.
Or in the evening, you know, I can't wait to get home and see my girlfriend, wife, boyfriend, family, whatever. Very different ways of living. Now,
which one do you choose? Because the choice has implications. And again, this choice is very often made on the subconscious level.
And if the only thing we read about, again, if the if the gestalt, the reality that we face, is negative research, anxiety, depression, then we say, I
just don't want to have these things because they're terrible, and they are terrible. Again, I don't think there is one person in this room who hasn't
experienced these things. Or do I say I've experienced these things? They're part of human nature. I'll deal with them, or I am dealing with them.
But I want more out of my life. I don't want there to be a glass ceiling. I want to feel excited about my work. I want to feel passionate about my
relationships. I want to walk out and feel awe and gratitude.
I want to be excited. I want more than the ennui or the boredom, or the and just another day, or the rat race. The questions we ask very often
determine our reality. Whether it's a research question in psychology, or whether it's these questions that I just asked that we ask of ourselves. All
right.
Let me move on to the third idea. So the first idea was that psychology shouldn't just react; it should also create reality. The second idea is that
just getting rid of the negative. Is not enough. That's why we need a positive psychology to see how do we get from that zero to the positive.
The third point I think is in many ways the most important one. You see, because positive psychology doesn't only help us to get from the zero to the
plus. So that I say, once I get rid of my depression, then I can start pursuing my happiness. No, it says much more than that. It says that a that it
can prevent going be beyond below the zero if I cultivate things like strengths, things like virtue, self esteem, my levels of happiness.
And also, I'll be able to better deal with my anxiety and depression when I do get there, if I have cultivated a strong positive psychology-related
traits. Again, such as self-esteem, happiness, and so on. So it's not just the zero to the plus, but it also has an impact on the other side of the
equation. It very much has an impact on this side of the model. Here is why.
You see, the two psychologies have a very different conception of illness. For positive psychology, illness is the absence of health. For general
psychology, health is the absence of illness. Think about it for a second. The implications of this.
This is not just semantics. You see, because what it's saying is that if we take away. Or at least the positive psychology. What positive psychology
is saying is that if we take away our striving for self-actualization, toward happiness, toward excitement, that's when we'll be unhealthy. In other
words, in order to prevent ourselves from going below the zero, we need all the positive psychological elements.
Look at Maslow. What he has to say specifically about neurosis. And this applies, as he says, as research shows, to many other areas. But he's talking
specifically about neurosis, which he defines as the failure of personal growth. Maslow.
It neurosis is a falling short of what one could have been, and even one could say of one what one should have been, biologically speaking. That is,
if one had grown and developed in an unimpeded way, human and personal possibilities have been lost. The world has been narrowed, and so has
consciousness. Capacities have been inhibited. So you see what he's saying.
The reason why we get to the negative side is because we haven't cultivated the positive enough. This is very different from saying, "I'm on the
negative now and I need to work on these negatives in order to eradicate them. " Again, that's important when we are there. But no less important is
to also develop the positive side. Again, he's not the only one who says it.
Marty Seligman addresses this very issue. Let me read to you. In the last decade, psychologists have become concerned with prevention. It's a huge
thing. Those of you who've done research on it, how can we prevent problems like depression or substance abuse or schizophrenia in young people who
are genetically vulnerable or who live in worlds that nurture these problems?
Talking about a lot of the at-risk population, which we'll discuss later. How can we prevent murderous schoolyard violence in children who have access
to weapons, poor parental supervision, and a mean streak? What we've learned over 50 years is that the disease model does not move us closer to the
prevention of these serious problems. Over the last 50 years, I mean, look at the research; it's getting even worse. Not only is it not helping.
Now, I'm not blaming that kind of research for it not helping, but what it's showing is that there has to be something more. Indeed, the major strides
in prevention have largely come from a perspective focused on systematically building competency, not correcting weakness. In other words, the health
model, rather than the disease model. He continues. We've discovered that there are human strengths
that act as buffers against mental illness: courage, future-mindedness, optimism, interpersonal skill, faith, work ethic, hope, honesty, perseverance,
the capacity for flow and insight, to name several.
We've shown that learning optimism prevents depression and anxiety in children and adults, roughly halving their incidence over the next two years.
Similarly, I believe that if we wish to prevent drug abuse in teenagers who grow up in neighbourhood that puts them at risk, that the effective
prevention is not remedial; rather, it consists of identifying and amplifying the strength that these teens
already have. What he's saying, positive psychology saying, is that the best way to deal with all these issues, with schizophrenia, with depression,
with anxiety, is to develop strengths, to cultivate self-esteem, optimism, all the things that we'll talk about this semester, all the things that
positive psychology is concerned about. So going back. Prevention through cultivation of the positive.
What positive psychology does is that it strengthens. According to Seligman, and according to a lot of research, it strengthens our immune system. In
what way? Well, think about it this way. It's not that people who study positive psychology or who do positive psychology or who cultivate self-esteem
and happiness and excitement and hope and awe, gratitude.
It's not that they don't experience depression and anxiety. Not at all. I mean, you know, it reminds me a few. Last year, when I was teaching this
class, I was I was still a resident tutor in Leverett House. One of the students who wasn't taking this class came to me and said, "You know, some of
my roommates told me you're teaching a class on happiness.
" And I said, "Yeah," and he said, "Well, watch it because if I see you depressed, I'm going to tell them. " You know, and. I'm sure he told them many
times, you know, so over the semester. You see, the last thing I want you to think or to come out of this class with is to say, "Okay, now I can do
positive psychology. I can avoid being depressed or anxious for the rest of my not at all.
" Again, there are two kinds of people. Who don't experience anxiety, depression, and various or anger and various other negative emotions. Two kinds of people. One. The psychopaths.
Really, they don't experience these kind of emotions. The second group of people who don't experience these negative emotions are dead people. So you
know, if you experience depression and anxiety, it's a good thing. It means you're neither of the two. It's natural.
It's human nature. We all go through these ups and downs. Now, what does it mean to have a strong immune system? Look on the physical level. Someone with a very strong immune system gets sick.
Sick. Everyone does. But a strong immune system means he or she gets sick less often, and when they do get sick, they recover quicker. That's what a
strong immune system does. This is what cultivating of these positive psychological attributes does.
It strengthens our emotional immune system, and by the way, as we'll see throughout the semester, with the connection between mind and body, it also
strengthens our physical immune system. So that yes, we do feel depressed, but less often. And when we do, we can recover quicker. And yes, we do get
sick, but we recover faster as well. That's what positive psychology does.
Stronger immune system. Let's come back to our local village. So, what do we do here? Well, the crimson article says we need much more resources. We
need many more resources here at Harvard, and they have a point.
Now, we do need to focus more on mental health, but I think right now the resources. Don't go to the place where they should, or not fully. What do I
mean? So yes, there is a lot of emphasis on, you know, the mental health center and helping students deal with depression, anxiety, and it's
wonderful. And you know, and I'm not belittling these.
I think they should stand. The Bureau of Study Council, you know, I've been there many times, and I recommended those of you who've been to Leibniz.
I've recommended it to many students. Wonderful resource. We're privileged to inhabit here, but it's not enough.
It's only half of the equation. Why isn't there a center at Harvard where people would go to identify their passions? What they're blissful about,
what their personal strengths are that they can cultivate, their competencies. What would make? Why isn't there a happiness center at Harvard?
You know, it's not. It won't just help us get from the zero to the one, but also the prevention to help deal with a lot of the issues here. Again,
this is one of the things that hopefully positive psychology will do. Now he's talk about exactly these things. So what am I passionate about?
What do I really, really, really want to do with my life? What is there to be grateful about in the world? How can I improve my relationships?
Certainly, a place for that. Okay, any questions before I move on to a case study?
One of the most fascinating case studies within psychology, to my mind. Any questions before? As I said in the first class, also email me questions. I
will always respond to them, either in person or in class. These are important issues, and the field, as you saw, unfortunately, still is in its
infancy.
Yeah. Yes. Sorry. And it is. Yeah, yeah, it's a good question.
The I'll repeat it. So there are various schools of psychology. The the humanistic, you know, we talked about it lastly, humanistic, behavioral,
psychoanalytic, or psychodynamic, and What does positive psychology come out of? You know, as we said last time, it mostly comes out of the
humanistic. But the question is, does it form its own school, like the humanistic psychologists did?
And I don't know what will happen. Right now, it's becoming a very big movement, its own movement. I hope it doesn't form its own school. I really
hope it doesn't. I hope there is much more research on it, and there is a network of scholars.
But I'm, you know, those of you are taking the leadership class now. I'm against demarcation. I'm for the boundarylessness. I'm for there to be
collaboration between the behavioral psychologists, between cognitive behavioral therapy, between psychoanalysis and positive psychology. I think
that's when we can get the most.
That's why, you know, people say to me, you know, I'm I study psychopathology. Should I do positive psychology? I say absolutely. Or my students say,
look, I'm mostly interested in positive psychology. I'm not interested in, you know, so what?
What is it? Psych sixteen? What's what's psychopathology? No, eighteen. 18, yeah, 18.
I'm not interested in psychopath. No, by all, take it. It's important. The best ideas come as we'll talk next time. Actually, when there isn't a
demarcation among the fields, and you'll see in this in this course, we'll talk a lot not just about what's narrowly defined as positive psychology.
We need to reach out. We need. This is why liberal arts education is so great, because you do get. You know, there are some computer scientists, I
know in this room who are taking this class. You know, there are some people from math, and we take.
It's important this cross fertilization for the field. This is where I hope it will go. I'm not sure whether that is what will happen, but my classes
will always be that way. That's for sure. Any other questions?
Yeah, just you can you can also holler because evidently I can't see everything. All right, let me move on to a fascinating case study that shows the
power of positive psychology. The at-risk population. So many Harvard students are concerned with this issue. So many of us volunteer.
To help the at-risk population, it's a huge problem in the U. S. An even bigger problem throughout the world. What do we do about it? Well,
psychologists obviously ask these questions, and traditional psychology started asking it with earnest.
After World War II, and here is the question that traditional psychology asked. Why do these individuals fail? Why do so many? I mean, again, the
statistics are staggering. Why do so many people from inner cities not finish high school?
Are on drugs? Why do so many of them then become dependent on the government? Why there's so much crime in these areas? What answers did they come up
to this question? It's because of the poverty, the lack of resources, a lot of child abuse, broken families, poor education.
And so on, and so on, and so a lot of answers to this. But then, in 1979, a seminal book came out by Antonovskiy. It's on your recommended reading
list. By the way, there's a recommended reading list at the end of each PowerPoint. You'll see when you download them.
Antonovsky, who said, "Wait a minute, we shouldn't just look at the negative. " This was back in 1979, long before positive psychology started. We
have to ask different questions. And the positive psychological approach to this very same problem was not why do so many fail. Remember, to which the
answers were, you know, poverty and.
Lack of resources and poor education and abuse. The question became, what makes some individuals succeed despite all these circumstances? Can you see
the profound difference between these two questions? Can you see how a question creates reality? This, by the way, is not just a question for
inner-city kids.
Let's bring it home. One question to ask is: Why are so many people at Harvard depressed? Another question to ask is: What about those few people at
Harvard? Who do experience it as an awe-inspiring four years, or who go through the day-to-day loving it? Who don't just talk about the good old days
fifty years hence, but are experiencing the good old days, right now, every day, every or most days, most moments.
Different questions that yield different answers. This question, the positive psychological question, spawned the research on resilience. One of the
most important research projects in the field of psychology. Here is the definition of resilience: a class of phenomena characterized by patterns of
positive adaptation in the context of significant adversity or risk. By the way, a lot of this work I'm basing on work of one of my students from
Leverich, was in my sophomore tutorial, Lucy Grayson, has done wonderful work on resilience.
So they did this research on resilience, and you also have more in your recommended reading list. And initially, they said these must be super
kids—the select few. You know the one in a thousand who is able to do it. What's unique about them genetically, or something? What happened that
differentiate them from the rest?
But then, after a while, they started seeing that as more and more research accumulated, these were not super kids. These were normal kids with
ordinary, ordinary characteristics, but extraordinary results. I'm going to list now a few of the characteristics that they identified. They don't
just apply to inner city kids; they apply to you and to me just as much. Ask yourself as I go through each one of them: how many of these do I
cultivate?
How many of these do I have? How many of these am I working on developing? Now, no one has all of them, and the resilient kids. Didn't have all of them, but they had a few that kept them going. One.
Social support. They seek social support when they were when they had a bad day. They talked about their issues, their problems. They also talked
about the great things in their lives, which, by the way, is equally important, as we'll discuss later in the semester. It's not just important to
share our misery; it's also important to share.
Our wonders, and by the way, women are better at it than men are. About seeking out social support, about looking for help, which partially explains
why research shows—and we'll talk about it much more when we talk about relationships—in general, men benefit from marriage more than women do. True.
Because women have already got the supportive friends, or most women. Again, this is generalization, and I'm talking about a trend rather than you
know a one correlation.
But it's true. Whereas men are less or are more reluctant rather to share. Whether it's something biological, whether it's the way we're brought up—I
mean, I don't know—it's probably a bit of both. It's important to seek social support, but not from anyone. We need to find the right person.
Let me show you an example of the wrong person to seek social support from. This video game makes a nice birthday gift. You think your stepson would
like that? I don't know, honey. Can he eat it or rub up against it?
Let's come at this a different way. What are his interests? Ham. Why don't I just let you browse a while? Yeah, thanks.
Oh, and do you think there's anything you could do about all these kids in here? Ma'am, it's a toy store. Yeah. See what you can do. Move it, shorty.
Hey Karen, um, I I can't help you shop today. I gotta I gotta go. Hey, what's going on? What's happening? What's with the gaunt hand?
Nothing. I just had something zapped at the dermatologist, and it looks kind of funky. I just don't want anyone to see it right now. Grace, I'm sure
it's not nearly as bad as you think it is. It's probably nothing.
A little dot. Come on, show Mama. Wow! Wow! Wow!
Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!
How long have you had the herpes? It's not herpes. It's not even herpes adjacent. Oh yeah? Well, it's close enough to be invited to the herpes family picnic.
It was a weird freckle, and the doctor wanted to freeze it. And then he told me that it was going to take ten days to heal. I mean, I mean, what made
him assume that I could look awful for ten days? Respond to that, and I will rub it all over your product. What are you looking at, Prego?
Have you ever seen herpes before? Fat people are so insensitive. Oh my God! Oh my God! Would you look at it in this little toy mirror?
It's gotten bigger. It's like Barbie's dreams. It. Thank God I canceled my date with Mark. Yeah, 'cause that thing looks like it needs orange cones and police tape around it.
Come on, let's let's get out of here. Yes. So, be selective, right? Social support is critical. Another aspect, another element that's critical, is cultivating optimism and self-esteem.
We're going to do a lot of that in this semester. It's one of one of the critical areas. One of the critical characteristics associated with
resilience. Faith and a sense of meaning. For a lot of the kids and for a lot of people with resilience, it's religious faith, but not only.
It's a sense of meaning, feeling that there is something purposeful, something that you really believe in and want to do with your life. Again, this
is something that we're going to talk about throughout the semester. Pro-social behavior, helping others, actually helps ourselves. You know, half in
jest, in one of just only half in jest, in one of my articles, I once wrote. I said that giving to others has so many benefits that I can think of no
more selfish act than a benevolent act.
And there's some truth to that. I mean, we get so much out of helping people because what it does, especially to people who are in bad situations, is
move us from helplessness to helpfulness. From helplessness to helpfulness, and it's a whole different mindset. Those people focus on their strengths.
So, what am I good at?
Not what has my teacher told me that I can't do, but what can I do well? And then they cultivate these strengths. And then they also set goals. They think about the future. Why?
Because that helps them deal with the very, very often negative past and the difficult past. And we're going to dedicate two classes to goal setting.
Look at these. How many of these are you working on? How many of these can you work on?
You cultivate because these are the same things that help people get through the stressful Harvard experience, stressful job experience, stressful
relationship experience. As well as the inner city, this is what helps people succeed. And look at the difference. It's because they asked a different
question. No longer, why do so many fail?
But rather, why do so many succeed? Why why do those who succeed? And now you can take this and apply it to everyone else, just because of a different
question, different research question. Another thing that was common to people with resilience was that they had a role model. This role model was
very often someone that they knew in person, a teacher, a significant adult, a parent.
A friend who was a bit older, but it was not always someone who was next to them. It could also be a fictional character, historical figure, athlete.
But they had a role model who they emulated, and that often helped them get over difficult times. Let me share with you one of my role models—the role
model because of whom I do what I do today, because of whom I teach. Her name is Marvel Collins.
Marva Collins was born in the 1930s in Alabama. Her father was African American; her mom Native American. She was born in a place where there was a
great deal of discrimination. Then, as she grew up, her father really believed in her, thought she could do well, saw her through school, and sent her
to what was then considered the glass ceiling. For Black or Native American women in these areas, he sent her to secretary school.
She went to secretary school. She excelled there. She finished. She started working as a secretary. But then she said to herself, "I want more from my life.
I want a sense of meaning, and for me, a sense of meaning is in teaching. I want to become a teacher. At night. " She went to school, and after years
of working during the day, studying at night, she got her teacher certification. Marvel Collins then got married and, with her husband, moved to
Chicago.
In Chicago, she joined the public school system. It was back in the '60s. For those of you who didn't know the reality then, with the public school
system, the inner city, what it looked like was that there was a lot of crime, a lot of drugs, and more than anything, hopelessness. The only hope
that the teachers really had for the students was that they finish school, that they graduate from
elementary school, so that they can keep them off the streets, because many of their role models were the drug pusher or the prostitute on the street
corners. They wanted to keep them away from street gangs.
This was their hope. For the teachers, Marva Collins came in and said, "Things can be different. " She started teaching initially first and second
grade, later beyond. The first thing she said to the students coming in on the first day of class, the first thing that they heard from her. Was this?
We are going to do a lot of believing in ourselves. She repeated this message over and over and over again, like a broken record. She continued
telling the students, "It's up to you to succeed. " Stop blaming other people. Stop blaming the government.
Stop blaming the teachers. It's up to you to succeed, and you can succeed. You need to work hard. She pushed them very hard. We're going to do a lot
of believing in ourselves over and over and over again.
Miracles started to happen. These students, which were initially considered unteachable by most students, but by most teachers, were suddenly, by the
time they were in fourth grade, reading Emerson and Euripides. These students, once considered unteachable, were doing, by the time they were in
fourth grade, high school math and reading Shakespeare. But then rumors started to spread about Marvel Collins. Initially, the rumors were, well,
she's fudging the grades.
But then, these students became more public. They gave readings in the school, so rumors started to spread about her that she was beating up their
students. Otherwise, how else could it be? After a while, she'd had enough, and she left the public school system and created her own school. In her
home, initially in her kitchen, and there were four students in this school when it started.
Two of them, her own two children. After a while, more students came to the Marble Collin School. All the students that came in were students who
failed from the public school system. The Marble Collin School was their last resort before the street. The school grew.
She moved up. They had a room in the house, but then there was not enough space, and they moved to a shack in inner city Chicago. The shack in the
winter was freezing; in the summer, scorching hot. They continued to study, driven by their passion to make something out of their lives, because they
believed. Once again, the miracles continued.
Not a single student fell out, dropped out of school. Everyone went to high school. Not a single student of hers. She was no longer in teaching them,
but not a single student of hers dropped out of high school. They all went to college.
And Marvel Collins continued to fight poverty throughout her life. She, what she did was did not. She didn't know how to raise money for this school.
Many of these kids couldn't pay, and she didn't turn anyone away. Somehow she managed.
She and her husband together, again driven by the passion. Finally, in one thousand, nine hundred and eighty. Someone with connections heard about the
miracle of Marvel Collins and reported it to the TV, and they created a 60 minutes section on Marvel Collins. Overnight, she became famous. January
1981, President Reagan offers Marvel Collins to become the Secretary of Education.
Marva Collins turns him down. She says, "I love to teach too much. " 1989 January, George Bush Sr. offers her to be the Secretary of Education. She turns him down again.
She says, "I love to teach too much. " In 1995, a wealthy American, a philanthropist. Donates a hundred million dollars, and now there are Marvel
College Schools throughout the country. Hundreds and thousands of teachers. Come from all over the world to learn from Marvel Collins, to learn about
the Marvel Collins miracle.
Her students today are doctors, lawyers, business people, politicians, and more than anything, teachers, because they see what a teacher did for them,
and they want to spread goodness. People come from all over the world, and they study what Marvel Collins does. And I want to share with you a little
bit of Marvel Collins, and you'll see her more throughout the semester. But she's going to be with us. Always, every class, she's going to come up,
because in many ways she inspired what you're going to see throughout the semester.
So Marvel Collins, this is by the way an interview that she gave for the History Makers. It's about African Americans who made a great contribution to
society. Great website, History Makers. Okay. I think I am pretty wonderful.
I think I am bright. I think I am unique. Are And I'll teach every child in here to think that when they misbehave, their punishment is they have to
write 100 reasons why they are too wonderful to do what they're doing, and that they have to be in alpha order. I'm adorable. I'm beautiful.
I'm courageous. I give them the first ones until they get the hang of it. I'm delightful. I'm effervescent. I'm fabulous.
I'm heavenly. I'm idolized. I'm just wonderful. I'm a kindred spirit. I am laudable.
I am momentous. I am never, never in the line, and it goes on to Z. And if they do it again, then they have to use another synonym. They can't use
adorable anymore. Now the children will say to new students, "I don't know why you don't behave," because I'm tired of telling Mrs.
Collins how wonderful I am. Isn't she wonderful? Now, here's her book. For those of you interested in being teachers, if there is one book you want to
read, it's this. For those of you interested in being parents, if there is one book you read, it should be this.
For all the rest of you, if there is one book you want to read, really, I mean it. So what is what is her message? What is that? What is the secret of Marvel Collins? Very simple.
Remember, we talked about in the first class. This is not very complex stuff. It's basic, but the basics are important. First of all, she provides
them with role models. She herself is a role model, obviously the role model.
But then they study biographies. They study about great politicians. You know, they study about people like Lincoln. They study about Martin Luther King. They study about Ayn Rand.
They study about Rosa Parks. These are their role models. She provides them optimism and faith in themselves. Not ignoring the difficult situation,
she shifts them from blaming the government, blaming other people, blaming their parents, to take responsibility for their lives. It's up to you to
succeed, is what she says to them over and over again.
And finally, rather than focusing on weaknesses, she focuses on their strengths. So, what she looks at every kid and asks, "What is that child good
at? What can he or she excel at? " And she accentuates it. Again, some of these questions will ask throughout the semester.
Now there's a very different question, or different answers that the two questions suggest. Remember the two questions with the inner city kids, with
the at risk. She's working with at risk population. All her schools work with at risk population. Whether we ask why are these kids.
So many of these kids suffering or failing. Versus, why do some succeed? Because if we ask the negative psychology question, the answer is, again,
because there are not enough resources, abuse, family, or whatever it is. They very much the answer to this question shows or depicts these people as
victims of their circumstances. Right versus the Marvel Colin question, the positive psychology question, which is, why do some of these succeed?
And then we come up with resilience. It puts them as active agents. See how the question that we ask influences reality. Because if we see them as
passive victims, what do we do? Well, we need to pour more money into these places.
Not saying that it's not important, but that's not the answer. What else does this say? Well, you know, poor them. All we can do is empathize and wait
until the inner cities are better. Marvel Collins doesn't have time.
To wait, she says we can make a difference right now on the first day of class, when she tells these kids we're going to do a lot of believing in
ourselves. Why? Because you can make a difference in your life and in the life of your community. You see, you can situate every activity on this
continuum. You know, a politician can situate every activity on this continuum, and a politician will say, "What do I need to do?
" and will come up with very different answers, seeing passive victims versus active agents. But also in our day to day. Let me take just a mundane,
something that happened that happened to probably every single person in this room, or most people in this room. Something that happened to me,
unfortunately, one too many times. Let's say your girlfriend leaves you.
Let's say. Don't let me relive it. So, what the passive victim would say? That's terrible. It's awful.
But very quickly, it will move from self-pity. To blame. It's because of her. It's because of her parents. It's because of my parents.
It's because of President Bush. It's because of President Summers. You know he upset her with. You didn't video record this, did you? Good.
My boss. And then it moves on to frustration. And ultimately, anger. Anger at her, anger at her parents, at my parents, at President Bush, President
Summers, and so on. Look at the different conception.
If I have the active agent perception of the situation. Again, still feeling down, still feeling upset by it. Certainly not happy. Human nature to
experience the ups and downs, but much more confident about going out and doing something, taking responsibility for my predicament. Going out to
places and saying, "All right, so I'm going to meet other women," taking the initiative, going to Pinocchio's, Lamont, the Philosophy Library.
No, don't go there. Just kidding. I was a philosophy concentrator. Much more hope and optimism. Again, still feeling upset, experiencing it.
And ultimately, possibly, or much more likely, to forgive, and or forget, move on with my life. As opposed to ruminate over my predicament passively,
not that I don't experience sadness, not that I don't cry, and we'll talk about the importance of expressing emotions—not just positive emotions,
negative ones as well. But remember the strong immune system. I'm much more likely to get over it if I have a strong immune system. Okay.
Let me end just with a quote by Marty Seligman, which will give us a sense of what we're doing here. What we're going to do the rest of this semester.
The message of the positive psychology movement, just one minute, one minute, just one minute. The message of the positive psychology movement is to
remind our field that it has been deformed. Psychology is not just the study of disease, weakness, and damage.
It it also is the study of strength and virtue. Treatment is not fixing what is wrong. It is it's not just fixing what is wrong. It also is building
what is right. Psychology is not just about illness or health.
It is about work, education, insight, love, growth, and play. In this quest for what is best, in this quest for what is best, positive psychology does
not rely on wishful thinking, self-deception, or hand-waving. Instead, it tries to adapt what is best in the scientific method to the unique problem
that human behavior presents in all its complexity. Remember what I talked about last time: that the difference between the humanistic And positive
psychology is that positive psychology, and this goes also to answer to you. Positive psychology takes the rigor.
And the fun, and brings them together, and I can't wait for the semester to share the rigorous fun with you. See you next time. Okay.