 Cognitive Focused Approaches

 14. Creativity
 15 The Role of Personal Control in Adaptive Functioning
 16 Well-Being: Mindfulness Versus Positive Evaluation
 17 Optimism
 18 Optimistic Explanatory Style
 19 Hope Theory: A Member of the Positive Psychology Family
 20 Self-Efficacy: The Power of Believing You Can
 21 Problem-Solving Appraisal and Psychological Adjustment
 22 Setting Goals for Life and Happiness
 23 The Passion to Know: A Developmental Perspective
 24 Wisdom: Its Structure and Function in Regulating Successful
Life Span Development    
 14. Creativity
People are almost universal in their appreciation of creativity.
Rarely is creativity perceived as a negative quality for a

person to possess.
Creative behavior: It is almost in all societies appreciated.

“creative genius.” such as Aristotle, Descartes Shakespeare

and Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, Architects etc.

Although several psychologists/ perspectives touched upon

this topic, the one who deserves more credit than any other for
emphasizing creativity as a critical research topic is the
psychometrician J. P. Guilford (1950). He addressed this issue
as president of American Psychological Association.
 Measurement Approaches :
 Creativity must be original.
 Creativity must be adaptive.
 “adaptive originality,”
 lack of consensus on definitions:
 First, creativity may be viewed as some kind of mental
process that yields adaptive and original ideas .
 Second, it can be seen as a type of person who exhibits
creativity
 Third, creativity can be analyzed in terms of the concrete
products that result from the workings of the creative
process or person .
 Guilford (1967), who began by proposing a profound
distinction between two kinds of thinking.
 Convergent thought involves the convergence on a single

correct response, such as characteristic of most aptitude

tests, like those that assess intelligence.
 Divergent thought, in contrast, entails the capacity to

generate many alternative responses, including ideas of

considerable variety and originality.
Guilford and others have devised a large number of tests
purported to measure the capacity for divergent thinking (e.
g., Torrance, 1988; Wallach & Kogan, 1965). Typical is the
Alternate Uses test, in which the subject must come up with
many different ways of using a common object, such as a
paper clip or brick.
 The creative person
 Creative individuals tend to be independent ,
nonconformist, unconventional; they also tend to have wide
interests, greater openness to new experiences, and a more
conspicuous (noticeable) behavioral and cognitive
flexibility and boldness (Simonton, 1999a).
 The personality contrasts between creative and noncreative
individuals may partially reflect significant differences in
their biographical characteristics, including family
background, educational experiences, and career activities.
(heredity & environmental factors)
 One approach is to simply ask individuals to
identify what they would consider samples of their
creative activities, such as poems, paintings, and
projects.
 Another approach is to have research participants
generate creative products under controlled
laboratory conditions and then have these products
evaluated by independent judges
 Psychological Disorder:
 One of the oldest debates in the study of creativity is
the “mad-genius controversy” (Prentky, 1980). As far
back as Aristotle, thinkers have speculated that
outstanding creativity is associated with
psychopathology.
 On the other hand, creative individuals often have
character traits, such as high ego strength,(Rule-
conscious, dutiful, conscientious, conforming,
moralistic, settled, rule bound -High Super Ego
Strength) which are not found in clinical populations
(Barron, 1969; Eysenck, 1995).
 Humanistic psychologists, in particular, tend to see
creativity as a symptom of mental health, not illness
(e. g., Maslow, 1959; May, 1975).
 The Nature-Nurture Issue
 Is creativity born or made, or some combination of
the two?
 Galton (1869) introduced this question in his book
Hereditary Genius, and he later coined the terms
nature and nurture in his book
 English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture
(1874).
 Specific Congruency of Nature-Nurture
(Eysenck,1995)
 Small-c Versus Big-C Creativity
 Small-c creativity enhances everyday life and
work with superior problem-solving skills
 Whereas big-C creativity makes lasting
contributions to culture and history.
 In the first case, we are speaking of the
creative person, whereas in the latter case we
are talking about the creative genius.
 Practical applications
 Children are naturally creative.
 The view of creative development is consistent with
creative adults’ tendencies to exhibit childlike traits
such as openness to experience, playfulness, and
rich imagination (Feist, 1998).
 However it should be emphasized that many of the
personal attributes contributing to adult creativity
have respectable heritability coefficients, thereby
signifying that environmental influences may play a
minor role
 Adult Encouragement
 Creativity can take place in a variety of groups,

including those that encompass whole domains,

traditions, cultures, and civilizations.
For instance, particular creative activities in the arts or
sciences may exhibit periods of florescence
(“golden ages”) alternating with periods of
decadence or stagnation (“dark ages”).
 Future Directions
 the genetic basis of individual differences in
creativity, using the latest theoretical and
methodological advances in behavior genetics
 Second, the psychological study of creativity would
be greatly strengthened by a comprehensive and
precise theoretical framework. It is not that the field
lacks theoretical perspectives. but no single theory
has emerged as the consensual one in the field.
 Third, practical new methods are needed for
enhancing both personal and societal creativity.
 The psycho economic theories stress “investment in
human capital” or human assets.
The Role of Personal Control in Adaptive Functioning

 Perceived control is particularly relevant to the

positive focus on the ability to find a meaningful life
even in difficult circumstances.
 Frankl (1963) reports that those who were able to

keep this sense of self effectiveness were more likely

to survive the harsh prison environment.
 Humans stand out for their exceptional success not

only at survival but also in learning how to control

their environment.
 A person’s self-assessment of the ability to exert contro
is called perceived control— the judgment that one has
the means to obtain desired outcomes and to avoid
undesirable ones.
 one’s sense of personal control has positive
implications for emotional well-being, for the likelihoo
that action will be taken, for physical health, and for
general adaptive functioning.
 Perceptions of control also are advantageous because
they may prompt individuals to take action and avoid
stressful situations.
 In summary, perceived control is beneficial because it i
associated with positive emotions, leads to active
problem solving, reduces anxiety in the face of stress,
and buffers against negative physiological responses.
 If one intends an outcome and can see a
connection between one’s action and the outcome,
then judgments of control will be high.
 the cognitive processes by which control is
estimated appear to be biased toward control
overestimation.
 Thompson and Wierson (2000) suggest that people
use at least three strategies to maintain control
even in difficult circumstances, including
changing to goals that are reachable in the current
situation, (alternate goals will be able to maintain a
sense of control).
 Creating new avenues for control, e.g. chronically ill
individuals can influence the course of their illness by
obtaining extensive medical information, getting good
medical care, following the course of treatment, reducing
stress in their lives, improving overall fitness through diet
and exercise, and investigating alternate types of treatment.
 Accepting current circumstances
 Primary control is the same as perceived control as it is
defined in this chapter: the perception that one can get
desired outcomes.
 Secondary control involves accepting one’s life
circumstances as they are, instead of working to change
them.
 Acceptance can be achieved in a variety of ways, including
finding benefits and meaning in the loss and in one’s life
situation. Even in an overall negative experience, many
individuals are able to find some benefits or advantages in
their situation For example, some stroke patients report that
their stroke has helped them appreciate life and their spouse
and that they have grown from the experience (Thompson,
1991).
 Acceptance increases a sense of control because it helps
people feel less like helpless victims and reduces the
discrepancy between desired and achieved outcomes.
 Measuring Perceptions of Control
 (a) locus of control, which is the perception that most
people’s outcomes are influenced by personal action
(internal) versus out side forces or other people
(external),

 (b) self efficacy, which refers to the belief that one

personally has the ability to enact the actions that are
necessary to get desired outcomes.

 Perceived control is the combination of an internal

locus (i. e., outcomes depend on personal action) and
self-efficacy (i. e., I have the skills to take effective
action).
 Interventions to Increase Control
 Cunningham, et. al (1991) instructed cancer patients
in a psycho educational program with weekly 2hour
sessions that included learning coping skills,
relaxation, positive mental imagery, stress control,
cognitive restructuring, goal setting, and lifestyle
change. After the program, participants had higher
perceptions of self efficacy, which, the authors
suggest, led to their ability to exert control,
improved mood, and improved relationships with
others.
 Slivinske and Fitch (1987) tested a comprehensive
control-enhancing intervention for elderly
individuals that focused on enhanced responsibility,
stress management, physical fitness, and spirituality.
 In a study by Hazaree singh and Bielawski (1991),
one group of student teachers received cognitive
self-instruction training (positive self-talk) and saw
models who took responsibility for their behavior.
Compared with another group that did not get this
training, the student teachers who received self-
instruction and modeling perceived themselves as
being in more control in classroom settings.
Well-Being: Mindfulness Versus Positive
Evaluation

 Positive or negative evaluation, leads to our happiness or

unhappiness.
 Mindfulness is a flexible state of mind— an openness to
novelty, a process of actively drawing novel distinctions.
 When we are mindful, we become sensitive to context and
perspective.
 we are situated in the present, our behavior may be guided
rather than governed by rules and routines.
 Mindfulness is not vigilance or attention when what is
meant by those concepts is a stable focus on an object or
idea. When mindful, we are actively varying the stimulus
field.
 When we are mindless, we are trapped in rigid mind-sets,
oblivious (unaware) to context or perspective. When we are
mindless, our behavior is governed by rule and routine.
 mindlessness may come about on a single exposure to
information The context has changed, but our behavior
remains the same. (habitual responses)
 Mindless is not habit although habit is mindless.
 Yet over 25 years of research reveals that mindlessness may
be very costly to us.
 Mindlessness comes about in two ways: either through
repetition or on a single exposure to information. (low
motivation)
 e. g. It is learned that horses do not eat meat.
 In different studies have found that an increase in
mindfulness results in greater competence, health
and longevity, positive affect, creativity, and
charisma and reduced burnout, etc. (Langer, 1989,
1997).
 Mindfulness can increase, rather than decrease,
one’s performance. Consider states of “flow”.
 It is a cognitive behavior that is well adapted to the
circumstances of having to react to an environment
that requires quick, decisive action.
Mindlessness and Evaluation
 “One man’s passion is another man’s poison”,
 Evaluation is central to the way we make sense of

our world, yet in most cases, evaluation is mindless.

 Example of Frogs.

 (Yours geeta)

 Often negative evaluations lead us to give up.

 “Clothes make the man” versus “You can’t

judge a book by its cover.”

 Consider three different perspectives: (a) bad things
are intolerable;
 (b) bad things happen, but if we just hold on, they
will pass; and
 (c) bad things are context dependent— shift the
context, and the evaluation changes.
 The Multiple Meanings of Behavior :
 Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to
explain others` actions as stemming from
dispositions, even in the presence of clear situational
causes.
 Actor-observer differences: the tendency to attribute our
own behaviour mainly to situational causes but the
behaviour of others mainly to internal (dispositional)
causes.
 Self-serving bias: The tendency to attribute positive
outcomes to internal causes but the negative outcomes to
external causes.
 We think we know because we know how we would feel
in the same situation. That is, we overestimate how similar
other people are to ourselves. Lee Ross and colleagues
have called this the false consensus effect (Ross, Greene,
& House, 1977).
 Regrets
 Regret happens under two conditions:
 when we are unhappy, and when we obscure the
difference between our perspective at time one,
when we took some action, and when we evaluate
the action we took. Regret is a prediction of our
emotions: If we had chosen differently then, we
would feel better now.
 it is too easy for people to jump from “could have
been,” to “should have been” and then there arises
the problem of how could we have been so stupid or
incompetent not to have done it that way in the first
place.
 Blame and Forgiveness
 “To err is human, to forgive divine.” Again, ask 10 people
whether forgiveness is good or bad. All will probably tell
you that it is good. Forgiveness is something to which we
should aspire. The more wronged we have been, the more
divine it is to be able to forgive. Now ask 10 people if
blame is good or bad. All will probably tell you that blame
is bad. And yet to forgive, we have to blame. If we do not
blame in the first place, there is nothing to forgive.
 Discrimination Is Not Evaluation
 Mindfulness Versus Positive Evaluation
 Surely a single-mindedly positive view is likely to be more
beneficial to health and well-being than a mindlessly
negative view. (Langer, Janis, & Wolfer, 1975).
 17. Optimism
• “Optimism is a generalized sense of
confidence about the future, characterized
by a broad expectancy that outcomes are
likely to be positive” (Boniwell, 2006)
•Optimists are people who expect good

things to happen to them

• Pessimists are people who expect bad

things to happen to them.

• Dictionary definitions of optimism and

pessimism rest on people’s expectations

for the future.
• This grounding in expectancies links the concepts of
optimism and pessimism to a long tradition of
expectancy-value models of motivation.
 Expectancy-value theories begin with the
assumption that behavior is organized around the
pursuit of goals.
 Goals are states or actions that people view as either
desirable or undesirable.
 The second conceptual element in expectancy-value
theories is expectancy— a sense of confidence or
doubt about the attainability of the goal value.
 Goals Vary in Breadth and Abstractness
 Goals vary in specificity— from the very general -
to the very concrete and specific.
 Range of variation : you can be confident or
doubtful about having a fulfilling career, about
making good impressions in social situations, about
winning a particular golf game, about finding a nice
place to have dinner, or about tying your shoes etc.
 Variations in Conception and Assessment
 1. One approach measures expectancies directly,
asking people to indicate the extent to which they
believe that their future outcomes will be good or
bad.
 2. Life Orientation Test( LOT)
http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/DLiT/2006/HelpingHands/LOTtest.pdf
 3. Another approach to optimism relies on the
assumption that people’s expectancies for the
future derive from their view of the causes of
events in the past (Peterson & Seligman, 1984;
Seligman, 1991).
 Optimism and Subjective Well-Being
 Optimism, Pessimism, and Coping
 In the workplace optimists use more problem-
focused coping (self-control and directed problem
solving) than do pessimists— (Strutton & Lumpkin,
1992).
 Pessimists use more emotion-focused coping,
including escapism (such as sleeping, eating, and
drinking), using social support, and also avoiding
people.
 Aspinwall & Taylor (1992) reported that Optimistic
students engaged in more active coping and less
avoidance coping than did pessimistic students.
 Avoidance coping related to poorer adjustment;
active coping related (separately) to better
adjustment.
 Optimists turn toward acceptance in uncontrollable
situations, whereas pessimists turn more to the use
of active attempts at denial. Although both tactics
seem to reflect emotion-focused coping, there are
important differences between them.
 Some people are more vulnerable to suicide than
others. It is commonly assumed that depression is
the best indicator of suicide risk. But pessimism (as
measured by the Hopelessness scale) is actually a
stronger predictor of this act, the ultimate
disengagement from life (Beck, et. al 1985)
 Pessimists`3ps
 Personal
 Permanent
 Pervasive
 Promoting Well-Being
 Shepperd, et. al (1996) found optimism related to
greater success in lowering levels of saturated fat,
body fat, and an index of overall coronary risk.
Optimism also related to increases in exercise across
the rehabilitation period.
 Pessimism and Health-Defeating Behaviors
 Pessimism can lead people into self defeating
patterns. The result can be less persistence, more
avoidance coping, health damaging behavior, and
potentially even an impulse to escape from life
altogether. With no confidence about the future, there
may be nothing left to sustain life (Carver & Scheier,
1998).
 Is Optimism Always Better Than Pessimism?
 Chesney, and Tipton (1995) studied the extent to
which adolescent girls at risk for HIV infection
sought out information about HIV testing and
agreed to be tested. Those higher in optimism were
less likely to expose themselves to the information
and were less likely to follow through with an actual
test than those lower in optimism (Perkins,et. al,
1993).
Do not encourage optimsim when the cost of
failure is high
 Downside of optimism

 ‘It can’ happen to me’

 thinking is associated with an underestimation

of risks, and so optimists get themselves into

risky situations (Peterson & Park, 2003)
 Optimists see themselves as below average for

such occurrences as cancer and heart disease

(e.g. Peterson & de Avila, 1995; Peterson &
Vaidya, 2001)
Balanced Perspective
There are downsides of
extreme optimism and
extreme pessimism
“optimism is a
wonderful motivator but
it needs to be wed to
reality,” (Reivich)
 Can Pessimists Become Optimists?
 Optimism relates both to neuroticism and to
extraversion, and both are known to be genetically
influenced. (Scheier et al., 1994), it may be that the
observed heritability of optimism reflects these
associations.
 Erikson (1968) held that infants who experience the
social world as predictable develop a sense of “basic
trust,” whereas those who experience the world as
unpredictable develop a sense of “basic mistrust.”
 Insecurity of adult attachment is related to
pessimism. This suggests that optimism may derive
in part from the early childhood experience of
secure attachment (Snyder, 1994).
 If pessimism is that deeply embedded in a person’s
life, can it be changed?
 Role of cognitive-behavioral therapies.
 Personal efficacy training.
 The focus of such procedures is on increasing
specific kinds of competence (e. g., by assertiveness
training or social skill training).
 Training in problem solving, selecting and defining
obtainable Sub goals, and decision making improves
the ways in which a person handles a wide range of
everyday situations.
 The tendency must be countered by establishing
realistic goals and identifying which situations must
be accepted rather than changed. The person must
learn to relinquish unattainable goals and set
alternative goals to replace those that cannot be
attained ( Schulz, 2000).
 18. Optimistic Explanatory style
 Explanatory style, how people habitually explain the
causes of events that occur to them.
 History: From Learned Helplessness (Skinner`s Dog
experiment) to Explanatory Style
 Researchers immobilized (powerless) a dog and
exposed it to a series of electric shocks that could be
neither avoided nor escaped.
 This behavior was in marked contrast to that of dogs
in a control group, which reacted vigorously to the
shock and learned readily how to turn it off.
 Response-outcome independence was represented
cognitively by the dogs as an expectation of future
helplessness that was generalized to new situations
to produce a variety of motivational, cognitive, and
emotional deficit
 Human Helplessness
 First, More generally, people differ from animals in
our sophistication of assigning meaning to events.
 Rothbaum, et. al(1982) suggested that there are
circumstances in which passivity, withdrawal, and
submissiveness among people are not prima facie
evidence of diminished personal control; rather,
these reactions may represent alternative forms of
control achieved by cognitively aligning oneself
with powerful external forces.
 A second asymmetry is what can be termed
vicarious helplessness. Problem-solving difficulties
can be produced in people if they simply see
someone else exposed to uncontrollability (Brown
& Inouye, 1978).
 A third difference is that small groups of people

can be made helpless by exposure to uncontrollable

events. So, when a group works at an unsolvable
problem, it later shows group problem-solving
deficits relative to another group with no previous
exposure to uncontrollability (Simkin, 1983).
 Peterson et al. (1993) proposed three formal criteria with
which to judge the goodness of an application:
 1. Objective non contingency : Learned helplessness is
present only when there is no contingency between actions
and outcomes.
 2. Cognitive mediation : Learned helplessness also involves
a characteristic way of perceiving, explaining, and
extrapolating contingencies. The helplessness model
specifies cognitive processes that make helplessness more
versus less likely following uncontrollable events.
 3. Cross-situational generality of passive behavior
 ( mediating variables) Does the individual give up and fail
to initiate actions.
 Other consequences : cognitive retardation, low self-esteem,
sadness, reduced aggression, immuno suppression, and
physical illness.
 Attributional Reformulation and
Explanatory Style
 Internal vs. External (“it’s all my fault”),
 Unstable vs. stable (“it’s going to last
forever”)
 Global vs. specific (“it’s going to
undermine everything”)
 An explanatory style characterized by
internal, stable, and global explanations
for bad events has been described as
pessimistic, and the opposite style,
characterized by external, unstable, and
specific explanations for bad events, has
been described as optimistic (Buchanan &
Seligman, 1995).
 Measures of Explanatory Style: Attributional Style
Questionnaire (ASQ).
 In the ASQ, respondents are presented with
hypothetical events - “the one major cause” of each
event if it were to happen (Peterson et al., 1982).
 CAVE (an acronym for Content Analysis of
Verbatim Explanations), which allows written or
spoken material to be scored for naturally occurring
causal explanations (Peterson, et. al, 1992).
 A something happens
 B belief about something
 C emotional reaction to the belief
 Origins of Explanatory Style: (about 8 years)
 Genetics: Schulman, et. al (1993) found that the
explanatory styles of monozygotic twins were more
highly correlated than the explanatory styles of
dizygotic twins (r = .48 vs. r = .00). This finding
does not mean that there is an optimism gene.
 Parents: Researchers have explored the relationship
between the explanatory styles of parents and their
offspring.
 Simple modeling (Bandura 1977)
 parents’ interpretation of their children’s behaviors.
 Perez-Bouchard, et. al (1993) found that children (aged 8 to
14) of substance abusers were more likely to have a
pessimistic explanatory style than children of parents
without a history of substance abuse. (Home environment)
 Teachers : As teachers administer feedback about children’s
performance, their comments may affect children’s
attributions about their successes and failures in the
classroom.
 Television’s proclivity for ruminating in its news coverage
compounds a tendency to magnify stories of violence in a
self-serving way that may slant factual presentation
(Levine,1977).
 Trauma
 Trauma also influences the explanatory style of children.
 Directions for Future Research:
 Explanatory Style as Positive Psychology :The
current stage in learned helplessness research began
with the reframing of explanatory style by Seligman
(1990) in his book Learned Optimism, where he
described how his lifelong interest into what can go
wrong with people had changed into an interest in
what can go right
 Attention to Outcome Measures
 Attention to Mechanisms
 The mechanism that lead from explanatory style to
these outcomes.
 Psychological and biological mechanisms for
humans
 Peterson (1988) found that an optimistic explanatory
style was associated with a variety of healthy
practices, such as exercising, drinking in
moderation, and avoiding fatty foods.
 In one of recent studies of optimistic explanatory
style and physical well-being, studied 1,000
individuals over almost 50 years (Peterson, at. al
1998). Pessimistic individuals had an increased
likelihood of early death, and the large sample size
made it possible to investigate associations between
explanatory style and death from different causes.
 Accidental deaths are not random. “Being in the
wrong place at the wrong time”
 19. Hope theory
 Some psychologists ask people to talk about their
goal-directed thoughts.
Recall the previous view of hope as “the perception that

one can reach desired goals”;

Two components of goal-directed thought— pathways

and agency.
One can find pathways to desired goals and become

motivated to use those pathways (Agency).

 We also proposed that hope, so defined, serves to

drive the emotions and well-being of people.

( hint: experiential/ insightful intelligence)


 Goals :
 We begin with the assumption that human actions
are goal directed.
 Accordingly, goals are the targets of mental action
sequences, and they provide the cognitive
component that anchors hope theory (Snyder,
1994a, 1994c, 1998b).
 Goals may be short or long-term, but they need to
be of sufficient value to occupy conscious thought.
Pathways:
Thinking In order to reach their goals, people must
view themselves as being capable of generating
workable routes to those goals.
This process, which we call pathways thinking,
signifies one’s perceived capabilities at generating
workable routes to desired goals.
 The production of several pathways is important
when encountering impediments (obstacle), and
high-hope persons perceive that they are facile
(too easy) at finding such alternate routes;
moreover, high-hope people actually are very
effective at producing alternative routes (Irving, et.
al. 1998)
 Agency:
 Thinking :The motivational component in hope
theory is agency— the perceived capacity to use
one’s pathways so as to reach desired goals.
 Agentic thinking reflects the self-referential
thoughts about both starting to move along a
pathway and continuing to progress along that
pathway.
 We have found that high-hope people embrace
such self-talk agentic phrases as “I can do this”
and “I am not going to be stopped”
 Adding Pathways and Agentic Thinking:
 It is important to emphasize that hopeful thinking

necessitates both the perceived

 Capacity to envision workable routes and goal-

directed energy.
 Thus, hope is “a positive motivational state

that is based on an interactively derived sense of

successful (1) agency (goal-directed energy) and (2)
pathways (planning to meet goals)”
 Hope, Impediments (obstacle), and Emotion:

 It is proposed that goal-pursuit cognitions cause

emotions. ( cognition emotion )

 Full Hope Model
Pathways Pathways thoughts
thoughts

Outcomes
values
Goal
Agency Behaviour
Thoughts
Agency
Thoughts

Learning history Pre event Event sequence

 Individual-Differences Scales Derived From
Hope Theory;
 Trait Hope Scale:

 The adult Trait Hope Scale (Snyder, et.al., 1991)

consists of four agency, four pathways, and four

distracter items.
 State Hope Scale:

 The State Hope Scale (Snyder et al., 1996) has

three agency and three pathways items in which

respondents describe themselves in terms of
how they are “right now.”
 Children’s Hope Scale:
 The Children’s Hope Scale (for ages 8 to 16) (Snyder,
Hoza, et al., 1997) comprises three agency and three
pathways items.
 Similarities Between Hope Theory and Other
Positive Psychology Theories:
 Optimism: Seligman`s optimistic attributional style is the
pattern of external, variable, and specific attributions for
failures instead of internal, stable, and global attributes
that were the focus in the earlier helplessness model.
 In hope theory, however, the focus is on reaching desired
future positive goal-related outcomes, with explicit
emphases on the agency and pathways thoughts about
the desired goal.
 In both theories, the outcome must be of high
importance, although this is emphasized more in hope
theory.
 Self-Efficacy: Bandura According to Bandura (1982,
1997), for self efficacy to be activated, a goal-related
outcome must be important enough to capture attention.
This premise is similar to that held in hope theory.
 Although psychologists have devised a trait measure

of self-efficacy.
 Self-Esteem

 Hewitt (1998) concludes that self-esteem reflects the

emotions flowing from persons’ appraisals of their overall

effectiveness in the conduct of their lives. In the words of
Cooper smith (1967), “Self-esteem is the personal
judgment of worthiness” .
 In problem-solving theory, the person’s identification of a
desired goal (a problem solution) is explicitly noted, and it
is assumed implicitly that an important goal is involved .
 Significant positive correlations (r of .40 to .50) have been
found between hope and problem solving (Snyder, Harris,
et al., 1991).
 Importance for Academics: Academics Learning and
performing well in educational settings are important
avenues for thriving (flourishing) in American society.
 By applying hopeful thinking, students should enhance
their perceived capabilities finding multiple pathways to
desired educational goals, along with the motivations to
pursue those goals. Also, through hopeful thinking,
students should be able to stay “on task” and not be
blocked by interfering self-deprecatory (apologetic/critical)
thoughts and negative emotions (Snyder, 1999a).e.g Mana
Ke ………….
 Hope relates to higher achievement test scores in
school children and higher semester grade point
averages in college students.
 In a 6year longitudinal study, Hope Scale scores
taken at the beginning of students’ very first
semester in college predicted higher cumulative
grade point average and graduation rate, as well
as lower attrition as tapped by dropout rate;
 Imagine the negative ripple (wave/ flow)—lost
opportunities, unfulfilled talents, and sense of
failure— that may flow over a lifetime for some
students who drop out of high school or college.
So, Hope may offer a potential antidote (remedy).
 Given the predictive power of the Hope Scale for
academics, perhaps it also could be used to identify
academically at-risk low-hope students who would
especially profit by interventions to raise their hopeful
thinking.
 Psychological Adjustment
 Hope should bear strong relationships with affectivity, and
we have found that hope is related positively with positive
affect and negatively with negative affect (correlations in .
55 range).
 Furthermore, high-hope as compared with low-hope
college students have reported feeling more inspired,
energized, confident, and challenged by their goals
(Snyder, et. al 1991), along with having elevated feelings
of self-worth and low levels of depression
 Human Connection:
 Researchers also have found that higher levels of hope
are related to more perceived social support (Barnum et
al., 1998), more social competence (Snyder, Hoza, et al.,
1997), and less loneliness (Sympson, 1999).
 They appear to truly enjoy their interactions with others
(Snyder, Hoza, et al., 1997), and they are interested in
their goals and the goals of others around them (Snyder,
1994b)
 Meaning in Life Viktor Frankl (1965, 1992) has provided
an eloquent voice on the “What is the nature of meaning?”
question. To answer this query, he advanced the concept
of the “existential vacuum”—
the perception that there is no meaning or purpose in the
universe.
 Hope for the Many Rather Than the Few
 Whether it is a business, city council, state
legislature, or national or international
organization, there is enormous potential in
working together in the spirit of hope.
21. Problem-Solving Appraisal and
Psychological Adjustment
The research evidence in this chapter will clearly
indicate that how people appraise their problem solving
affects not only how they cope with problems, but also
their psychological adjustment.*
The importance of higher order or meta-cognitive
variables in various cognitive processes.
Problem Solving Inventory
In the PSI, perceptions of one’s problem-solving ability
style, behavior, and attitudes are assessed (Heppner,
1988; Heppner & Baker, 1997).
 The PSI consists of 35 six-point Likert-type items (1
“strongly agree” to 6 • “strongly disagree”), with a total
score and three subscale scores .
 The three subscales tap Problem-Solving Confidence (11
items), Approach-Avoidance Style (16 items), Personal Control
(5 items), and 3 filler items.
 Problem-Solving Confidence is defined as an individual’s

self-assurance in a wide range of problem-solving activities, a

belief and trust in one’s problem-solving abilities (general
problem-solving self-efficacy), and coping effectiveness.
 The Approach-Avoidance Style, as the label implies, refers to a
general tendency to approach or avoid different problem-solving
activities.
 Personal Control is defined as a belief in one’s emotional and
behavioral control (thereby reflecting emotional over reactivity
and behavioral control; Heppner, 1988; Heppner & Baker,
1997).
 Higher scores on the PSI indicate a lack of problem solving
confidence, an avoidant problem solving style, and an absence
of personal control.
 Summary of the Problem-Solving Appraisal
Literature
 Problem-solving appraisal using the PSI has been the focus of
over 100 empirical investigations.
 Psychological Adjustment
 Early in the evolution of this topic, researchers claimed that
problem solving was linked to psychological adjustment
(D’Zurilla & Goldfried,1971).
 In over 50 studies now, researchers have examined the link
between problem-solving appraisal and psychological health.
We will briefly discuss the literature specifically related to (a)
general psychological adjustment, perceived effective (as
compared with ineffective) problem solvers report themselves to
be more adjusted on (a) general measures such as the
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality, (b) specific measures of
personality variables such as positive self-concepts (c) personal
problem inventories.
 For example, perceived effective (as compared
with ineffective) problem solvers reported having
(a) more social skills (b) less social uneasiness/
distrust/ distress (c) social support.
 Thus, there is a well-established association
between positive problem-solving appraisal and
better social and psychological adjustment.
 (b) Depression the link between a more positive
problem-solving appraisal and lower depression
appears across populations and cultures. (studies
in different environments e. g Prison, on students,
on adults with spinal cord injuries and in different
cultures)
(c) hopelessness and suicidal behavior, there was a
stronger association between problem-solving
appraisal and hopelessness (rs .48 to .62) than
between problem solving appraisal and suicidal
ideation (rs .11 to .43).
 Alcohol Use/ Abuse The proponents of cognitive-
social learning approaches propose that individuals
who abuse drugs and alcohol do so because they lack
a sense of self-efficacy for coping with stressful
situations. Thus, alcohol and drug consumption may
be their coping strategy for altering feelings of
personal inadequacy. Related to this thesis, support
for this relationship between problem-solving appraisal
and alcohol/ drug usage emerges in several studies. It
is found a significant linear relationship between more
positive problem-solving appraisal and less alcohol
use/ abuse.
 (e) Personality variables, a consistent association
between a more positive problem-solving appraisal
and lower anxiety . Moreover, a more positive problem
solving appraisal has been related to lower anger and
higher curiosity.
 (f) Parental associations: It is found that the more
positively the mothers appraised their own problem-
solving style, the more positive were their preschool
children’s social and emotional development
behaviors, such as more direct coping behaviors in
incest victims.
 use of parental punishment in child-rearing situations.
(-r)
 Physical Health
 Problem-Solving Training Interventions Problem-
solving training (PST) has involved teaching (a)
specific component skills (e. g., problem definition
and formulation),
 (b) a general problem-solving model; and,
 (c) specific problem-solving skills in conjunction
with other interventions.
 Future Research Directions
 22. Setting Goals for Life and Happiness
 Thinking: To achieve happiness, individuals must
understand their own natures, and especially their
needs.
 “Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-
generated action”
 Need ( Maslow`s view)
 Values:
 It is now necessary to distinguish needs from values.
 Needs as such are inborn and they are part of an
organism’s nature.
 Values are acquired, that is, learned (Rokeach, 1972).
 Needs exist even if one is not aware of them; values
exist in consciousness (or the subconscious).
 A value is “that which one acts to gain and/ or keep.
It is that which one regards, consciously
subconsciously, as conducive to one’s welfare.
 The most fundamental of all values are moral values
— that which the individual considers good or right. A
moral code is a code of values accepted by choice .
 Emotions:
 Emotions are the form in which people experience
automatized, subconscious value judgments
(Lazarus, 1991; Locke, 1969).
 Emotions reflect subconscious knowledge and also
one’s subconsciously held values and value
hierarchy.
 Every emotion reflects a particular type of value
appraisal.
 Fear is the response to physical threat,

 anxiety to an uncertain threat or a self esteem ;

threat, guilt to the breach of a moral value,
satisfaction to value achievement;
 Anger to another person doing something he
should not have done,
jealousy to another person having a value one
wants for oneself, and so forth.
 It should be obvious from this discussion that
setting priorities in values and goals is critical to
managing one’s life, both in the short range and in
the long range.
 Goal setting theory
 Difficulty
 Specificity
 Feedback
 Commitment
 Self efficacy
 Task knowledge
 Incentives & personality
 Affect
 work
 Blocks to goal achievement:
 It should be clear from the foregoing discussion that goal
setting— which means fundamentally purposefulness— is
necessary for living a successful happy life.
 Most people, at some level, seem to know this. Why, then, are
so many people unhappy? Three reasons are primary:
 1. The most fundamental reason is irrationalism;
 2. A second reason is the unwillingness to put forth mental (and
physical) effort—
 3 The third reason is fear: fear of change, fear of telling the
truth, fear of being wrong, fear of being different, fear of thinking
for oneself, fear of failure, fear of the subconscious and of
knowing one’s own motives, fear of disappointment, fear of
disapproval, fear of being hurt, fear of being vulnerable, fear of
the new, and fear of standing up for one’s values.
 Conclusion :
 Goals are the means by which values and
dreams are translated into reality. Happiness
does not just happen. It has to be earned by
thinking, planning, and the constant pursuit of
values— both in work and in love— over the
course of a lifetime. Goal-directed action is
therefore critical to positive psychology.
 The Passion To Know
•Stimulus seeking organisms
•Arousal-optimizing organisms

•Competence –seeking organisms

•Information seeking organisms

•Born to know

•Developmental research reveals that babies are

surprisingly capable learners, as well as energetic
and determined pursuers of information.
(Schulman1991)
 In a television interview, a reporter asked the Nobel
physicist Richard Feynman what he wanted to know
about the world. Feynman thought for a moment,
then exclaimed “Everything!”
 (a) identify and classify the phenomena we
encounter,
 (b) discern temporal patterns between some of those
phenomena,
 (c) determine causal relationships behind some of
those temporal patterns,
 (d) discover how to enter into the antecedent-
consequent chain and become causal agents
ourselves.
 The function of intelligence is to gain information in
each of these domains.
 Wisdom
 Toward a Positive Psychology of Optimal
Development.
 Perfection and Optimality: A Dilemma for
Psychology
 On Positive Psychology :The understanding of
three contributors to a good life: positive subjective
experiences, desirable individual traits, and civic
virtues.
 Table 24.1 General Criteria Derived from an Analysis
of Cultural-Historical and Philosophical Accounts of
Wisdom
 Wisdom addresses important and difficult questions
and strategies about the conduct and meaning of life.
 Wisdom includes knowledge about the limits of
knowledge and the uncertainties of the world.
 Wisdom represents a truly superior level of
knowledge, judgment, and advice.
 Wisdom constitutes knowledge with extraordinary
scope, depth, measure, and balance.
 Wisdom involves a perfect synergy of mind and
character, that is, an orchestration of knowledge and
virtues.
 Wisdom represents knowledge used for the good or
well-being of oneself and that of others.
 Wisdom, though difficult to achieve and to specify, is
easily recognized when manifested.
 Psychological Theories of Wisdom: From Implicit
to Explicit Theories
 Implicit Theories :All conceptions include cognitive as
well as social, motivational, and emotional
components
 The cognitive components usually include strong
intellectual abilities, rich knowledge and experience
in matters of the human condition, and an ability to
apply one’s theoretical knowledge practically.
 A second basic component refers to reflective
judgment that is based on knowledge about the world
and the self, an openness for new experiences, and
the ability to learn from mistakes.
 Socio-emotional components generally include good
social skills, such as sensitivity and concern for others
and the ability to give good advice.
 A fourth motivational component refers to the good
intentions that usually are associated with wisdom.
That is, wisdom aims at solution that optimize the
benefit of others and oneself.
 Implicit Beliefs about Wise People: Four
Dimensions
 1.Exceptional knowledge about wisdom acquisition
comprehends the nature of human existence tries
to learn from his or her own mistakes
 2.Exceptional knowledge about use of wisdom
knows when to give/ withhold advice is a person
whose advice one would solicit for life problems
 3.Exceptional knowledge about context of life
knows that life priorities may change during the life
course knows about possible conflicts among
different life domains
 4.Exceptional personality and social functioning
- is a good listener
- is a very humane person
 Explicit Theories:
 To date, the theoretical and empirical work on explicit
psychological conceptions of wisdom can be divided
roughly into three groups:
 (a) the conceptualization of wisdom as a personal
characteristic or a personality disposition
 (b) the conceptualization of wisdom in the neo
Piagetian tradition of post formal and dialectical
thinking
 (c) the conceptualization of wisdom as an expert
system dealing with the meaning and conduct of life,
as advocated in the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm.
 Berlin Wisdom Paradigm
 The contents to which this expertise of wisdom refers
are the “fundamental pragmatics of life,” that is,
knowledge about the essence of the human condition
and the ways and means of planning, managing, and
understanding a good life
 First, as is typical for the development of expertise, we
assume that wisdom is acquired through an extended
and intense process of learning and practice.
 Second, wisdom is a complex and multifaceted
phenomenon; therefore, for wisdom to emerge, a
variety of experiential factors and processes on micro
and macro-levels are required to interact and
collaborate.
 Third, given that wisdom involves the orchestration
of cognitive, personal, social, interpersonal, and
spiritual factors, its antecedents are diverse in
nature.
 Fourth, because developmental tasks and adaptive
challenges change across life, and the human
condition is inherently a life-course phenomenon,
we expect wisdom to reach its peak relatively late
in adult life.
 Fifth, we believe that, as with other fields of
expertise, the guidance of mentors, as well as the
experience and mastery of critical life experiences,
are conducive to individual manifestations of
wisdom.
 Our paradigm for assessing wisdom comprises
 the following three core features:
 (a) Study participants are confronted with difficult life
problems of fictitious people under standardized
conditions. Specifically, they are asked to read short
vignettes about problems of life management,
planning, and review.
 (b) Participants are then instructed to think aloud
about those life problems, and their responses are
tape-recorded and transcribed.
 (c) A selected panel of trained judges then rates the
protocols according to five criteria ,that were
developed based on the general theoretical framework
outlined.
 e.g. A 15year-old girl wants to get married right away.
What should one/ she consider and do?
 The psychometric location of wisdom-related
performance: Unique and shared portions of
predictive variance of measures of intelligence,
personality, and the personality-intelligence
interface (Staudinger, Lopez, & Baltes, 1997).
 The three key findings of this study are :

 First, at least 10 of the 33 indicators turned out to

be significant predictors of wisdom-related
performance.
 Overall, these 10 predictors accounted for 40% of
the variance in wisdom-related performance.
 None of the indicators alone explained more than
18%.
 Interventions
 Future directions