Positive Psychology

At the core of positive psychology is the power of understanding yourself. Understanding yourself is the first step toward understanding of others – colleagues, partners, family members and customers – and improving your well-being. Positive psychology researchers have developed several models of well-being, including PERMA. The PERMA model identifies positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and achievement as components of well-being and happiness. Positive psychology interventions support the building of PERMA to help each of us live our optimal life.

The majority of research within positive psychology focuses on the general population, and the resulting interventions can be modified to meet the specific needs of people with disabilities. There are several positive psychology researchers and practitioners who have designed and tested theories and positive interventions with and for several subsets of the broader disability community. Their work has explored self-determination (Shogren, Wehmeyer, Buchanan, & Lopez, 2006), hope (Snyder et al., 2006), proactive coping (Phillips, Smedema, Fleming, Sung, & Allen, 2016), mindfulness (Singh et al., 2006), positive group psychotherapy (Tomasulo, 2014) and character strengths (Niemiec, Shogren, & Wehmeyer, 2017), including the validation of the character strengths survey, the VIA Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) for Youth with Intellectual Disabilities (Shogren, Wehmeyer, Forber-Pratt, & Palmer, 2015).

Positive Organizational Scholarship focuses on increasing what is going well within an organization, positive processes and patterns, and interactions between staff and the organization. Simply put, Positive Organizational Scholarship is a pathway to organizational flourishing that leverages multiple aspects of the organization’s culture, behaviors and functional capabilities.

The Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan, Ross School of Business, is a hub of research on Positive Organizational Scholarship, including Positive Culture, Positive Ethics and Virtues, Positive Leadership, Positive Meaning and Purpose, Positive Practices and Positive Relationships in an organizational setting.

For a comprehensive overview of positive psychology, including emerging research, visit the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

For a free assessment of your Character Strengths and free resources to use your character strengths to better understand those around you, build new habits and/or achieve your goals, visit the VIA Institute on Character.

• Character strengths offer a framework for understanding who we are at our core and how to leverage our strengths to improve outcomes in multiple areas of life.
• People who use their strengths every day are three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life and six times more likely to be engaged at work (VIA Institute, 2018).
• The VIA Institute offers a free guide to using the VIA Survey with youth with intellectual disabilities.

For information on Positive Organizational Scholarship, the study of positive psychology in the workplace, visit the Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan, Ross School of Business.

For practical tools to better understand and apply positive psychology to your life and to your work, visit the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

NDI has provided presentations on positive psychology research and interventions to case managers, employment consultants, job and living coaches, workforce professionals, Vocational Rehabilitation counselors and state and federal administrators.

NDI is reviewing models for using positive psychology interventions to improve the lives of professionals, improve outcomes for the long-term unemployed, and to increase individual hope and self-efficacy to improve goal setting and achievement.

If your organization would like a presentation on positive psychology research and interventions or to pilot positive interventions, please contact Elizabeth Jennings at ejennings@ndi-inc.org.