5.2 Positive Psychology

Explain how positive psychology approaches the study of behavior and mental processes.

• Positive psychology seeks to identify factors that lead to well-being, resilience, positive emotions, and psychological health.

Explain how positive subjective experiences apply to behavior and mental processes.

• Expressing gratitude, a positive subjective experience, increases subjective well-being.
• People who exercise their signature strengths or virtues report higher levels of positive objective experiences such as happiness and subjective well-being. A classification of character strengths has been developed around 6 categories of virtues: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.
• Posttraumatic growth, a positive subjective experience, may result after the experience of trauma or stress.