Applied Positive Psychology: Improving Everyday Life, Health, Schools, Work, and Society

Positive Psychology has experienced extraordinary growth over the past decade. Emerging research in this area is suggesting new strategies for improving everyday life, healthcare, education systems, organizations and work life, and societies across the globe. This book will be of interest to all applied psychologists, applied researchers, social and organizational psychologists, and anyone interested in applying the science of positive psychology to improvement of the human condition.

Stewart I. Donaldson is Professor and Chair of Psychology, Director of the Institute of Organizational and Program Evaluation Research, and Dean of the School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences at Claremont Graduate University. Dean Donaldson continues to develop and lead one of the most extensive and rigorous graduate programs specializing in applied psychology, positive psychology, and evaluation science. He has taught numerous university courses, professional development workshops, and has mentored and coached more than 100 graduate students and working professionals during the past two decades. Dr. Donaldson has also provided organizational consulting, applied research, or program evaluation services to more than 100 different organizations. He has been Principal Investigator on more than 30 extramural grants and contracts to support research, evaluations, scholarship, and graduate students at Claremont Graduate University.

Dr. Donaldson is a fellow of the Western Psychological Association, is serving a three-year elected term on the Board of the American Evaluation Association, and is on the Editorial Boards of the American Journal of Evaluation, New Directions for Evaluation, and the SAGE Research Methods Online. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 evaluation reports, scientific journal articles, and chapters, including his latest article in the Journal of Positive Psychology (2010; with Ia Ko) entitled Positive organizational psychology, behavior, and scholarship: A review of the emerging literature and evidence base. His recent books include: Applied Positive Psychology: Improving Everyday Life, Health, Schools, Work, and Society (this volume; with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura); Social Psychology and Evaluation (forthcoming; with Melvin M. Mark and Bernadette Campbell); What Counts as Credible Evidence in Applied Research and Contemporary Evaluation Practice? (2008; with Christina A. Christie and Melvin M. Mark); Program Theory-Driven Evaluation Science: Strategies and Applications (2007); Applied Psychology: New Frontiers and Rewarding Careers (2006; with Dale E. Berger and Kathy Pezdek); and Evaluating Social Programs and Problems: Visions for the New Millennium (2003; with Michael Scriven). Dr. Donaldson has been honored with Early Career Achievement Awards from the Western Psychological Association and the American Evaluation Association.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (CHEEK sent me high ee) was born in Italy where his father was serving as a consul for the Hungarian government. During World War II as a pre-teen child, he witnessed the crash of European society and wondered why grown-ups had not found a better way to live. While one older brother was killed and the other taken prisoner for many years in the Russian gulags, he was lucky to escape from the war relatively unscathed. He had to work, however, at many jobs instead of finishing high school. The quest to understand how to improve life led him through religion, philosophy, literature, and art, before coming to rest on psychology, which promised more empirically based answers to his questions.

He came to the USA in 1956, with $1.25 to his name and almost no English. While working at night (11pm–7am) as a hotel auditor, he enrolled at the University of Illinois in Chicago. For his ESL class he wrote the first of two autobiographical short stories that were published in the New Yorker. He then transferred to the University of Chicago, where he received his PhD in Human Development in 1965, with a thesis on artistic creativity. After graduation he started teaching at Lake Forest College, where he became Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology; here he wrote his first papers on what later became known as the flow experience. After five years he returned to the University of Chicago in a faculty position; he taught there for 30 years, eventually becoming Chair of the Psychology Department. He wrote several books and over 200 articles while at Chicago. In 1999 he accepted a Chair in the Drucker School of Management in Claremont, California, where he taught for eight years before transferring to the Psychology Department in the same University. Besides writing numerous books and articles on the topics of creativity and flow, Csikszentmihalyi has developed the Experience Sampling Method as a way to measure people’s activities and experiences in their natural environment.

Jeanne Nakamura is Assistant Professor of Psychology, Co-Director of the Positive Psychology concentration, and Co-Director of the Quality of Life Research Center in the School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences at Claremont Graduate University. She received her BA and PhD from the University of Chicago. She helped direct the GoodWork Project, a series of studies of excellence and social responsibility in professional life, including the Study of the Transmission of Excellence. She investigates positive psychology in a developmental context, including engagement and creativity, mentoring and good work, and aging well. She is the co-author of Good Mentoring and Creativity and Development, and co-editor of Supportive Frameworks for Youth Engagement.