A Psychology of Human Strengths
In A Psychology of Human Strengths: Fundamental Questions and Future Directions for a Positive Psychology, leading scholars of contemporary psychology set a research agenda for the scientific study of human strengths. The book features contributors who bring both supportive and challenging voices to this emerging field to stimulate discourse. In many cases, their findings have turned "established wisdom" on its head. What results is a comprehensive volume that provides a forward-looking forum for the discussion of the purpose, pitfalls, and future of the psychology of human strengths.
This volume offers commentary on positive psychology and its antecedents. It is a must-read for those looking for new ways of thinking about such topics as intelligence, judgment, volition, social behavior, close relationships, development, aging, and health as well as applications to psychotherapy, education, organizational psychology, gender, politics, creativity, and other realms of life.
Contributors
Preface
Introduction
- A Psychology of Human Strengths: Some Central Issues of an Emerging Field
—Lisa G. Aspinwall and Ursula M. Staudinger - Human Strengths as the Orchestration of Wisdom and Selective Optimization With Compensation
—Paul B. Baltes and Alexandra M. Freund - The Human's Greatest Strength: Other Humans
—Ellen Berscheid - Constructive Cognition, Personal Goals, and the Social Embedding of Personality
—Nancy Cantor - A Conception of Personality for a Psychology of Human Strengths: Personality as an Agentic, Self-Regulating System
—Gian Vittorio Caprara and Daniel Cervone - Human Aging: Why Is Even Good News Taken as Bad?
—Laura L. Carstensen and Susan T. Charles - Three Human Strengths
—Charles S. Carver and Michael F. Scheier - The Malleability of Sex Differences in Response to Changing Social Roles
—Alice H. Eagly and Amanda B. Diekman - Toward a Positive Psychology: Social Developmental and Cultural Contributions
—Nancy Eisenberg and Vivian Ota Wang - Light and Dark in the Psychology of Human Strengths: The Example of Psychogerontology
—Rocío Fernández-Ballesteros - Intervention as a Major Tool of a Psychology of Human Strength: Examples from Organizational Change and Innovation
—Dieter Frey, Eva Jonas, and Tobias Greitemeyer - Judgmental Heuristics: Human Strengths or Human Weaknesses?
—Dale Griffin and Daniel Kahneman - Positive Affect as a Source of Human Strength
—Alice M. Isen - The Parametric Unimodel of Human Judgment: A Fanfare to the Common Thinker
—Arie W. Kruglanski, Hans-Peter Erb, Scott Spiegel, and Antonio Pierro - Turning Adversity to Advantage: On the Virtues of the Coactivation of Positive and Negative Emotions
—Jeff T. Larsen, Scott H. Hemenover, Catherine J. Norris, and John T. Cacioppo - A Holistic Person Approach for Research on Positive Development
—David Magnusson and Joseph L. Mahoney - Harnessing Willpower and Socioemotional Intelligence to Enhance Human Agency and Potential
—Walter Mischel and Rodolpho Mendoza-Denton - The Motivational Sources of Creativity as Viewed From the Paradigm of Positive Psychology
—Jeanne Nakamura and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Ironies of the Human Condition: Well-Being and Health on the Way to Mortality
—Carol D. Ryff and Burton Singer - Political Symbols and Collective Moral Action
—David O. Sears - Positive Clinical Psychology
—Martin E. P. Seligman and Christopher Peterson - Driven to Despair: Why We Need to Redefine the Concept and Measurement of Intelligence
—Robert J. Sternberg - The Ecology of Human Strengths
—Daniel Stokols
Author Index
Subject Index
About the Editors
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title!
Although positive psychology only recently reached its five-year mark, the study of psychological factors that "make life worth living" is flourishing. This tightly edited book tackles human strengths, the qualities and processes that promote well-being and health while preventing pathology. The editors invited leading researchers to explore the role strengths play in a variety of topics, including personality, aging, sex differences, close relationships, intelligence, creativity, judgment, affect…This excellent, 23-chapter moveable feast of theory and data is by no means a united front; constructive criticism of the young discipline's possible directions and problems are offered alongside more embracing perspectives. Summing up: Essential.
—CHOICE Magazine
