Positive psychology needs an agreed-upon way of classifying positive traits as a backbone for research, diagnosis, and intervention. As a 1st step toward classification, the authors examined philosophical and religious traditions in China (Confucianism and Taoism), South Asia (Buddhism and Hinduism), and the West (Athenian philosophy, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) for the answers each provided to questions of moral behavior and the good life. The authors found that 6 core virtues recurred in these writings: courage, justice, humanity, temperance, wisdom, and transcendence. This convergence suggests a nonarbitrary foundation for the classification of human strengths and virtues.

Psychology since World War II has been largely devoted to repairing weakness and understanding suffering. Towards that end, we have made considerable gains. We have a classification of mental illness that allows international collaboration, and through this collaboration we have developed effective psychotherapeutic or pharmacological treatments for 14 major mental disorders. However, while building a strong science and practice of treating mental illness, we largely forgot about everyday well-being. Is the absence of mental illness and suffering sufficient to let individuals and communities flourish? Were all disabling conditions to disappear, what would make life worth living? Those committed to a science of positive psychology can draw on the effective research methods developed to understand and treat mental illness. Results from a new randomized, placebo-controlled study demonstrate that people are happier and less depressed three months after completing exercises targeting positive emotion. The ultimate goal of positive psychology is to make people happier by understanding and building positive emotion, gratification and meaning. Towards this end, we must supplement what we know about treating illness and repairing damage with knowledge about nurturing well-being in individuals and communities.

We investigated the relationship between various character strengths and life satisfaction among 5,299 adults from three Internet samples using the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths. Consistently and robustly associated with life satisfaction were hope, zest, gratitude, love, and curiosity. Only weakly associated with life satisfaction, in contrast, were modesty and the intellectual strengths of appreciation of beauty, creativity, judgment, and love of learning. In general, the relationship between character strengths and life satisfaction was monotonic, indicating that excess on any one character strength does not diminish life satisfaction.

We took a closer look at the link between character strengths and well-being by following up on suggestions by Snyder (this issue) and Harvey and Pauwels (this issue). We explored the simultaneous association between 24 strengths of character and life satisfaction and found that a number of different strengths independently predicted life satisfaction. Hope was among the important predictors, as Snyder proposed, but it was no more robust a predictor than the character strengths of gratitude, love, and zest. We also found that trauma moderated the association between modesty and well-being, as Harvey and Pauwels hypothesized. With increasing trauma, the correlation between modesty and enthusiasm about life increased in magnitude. These new analyses further our comparative investigation of character strengths and imply that there are different routes to a satisfied life.

Cognitive styles are the lenses through which individuals habitually process information from their environment. In this study, we evaluated whether different cognitive style individual difference variables, such as explanatory style and dispositional optimism, could predict changes in affective state over time in community-dwelling older adults. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that an optimistic explanatory style would be adaptive except when combined with life stressors, but that dispositional optimism would predict positive affective states regardless of life events. We found that older adults with a more optimistic explanatory style for health/cognitive events actually appeared to develop more depressive symptoms over six months of follow-up. However, dispositional optimism and orientation toward the future predicted a better affective profile over time.

This study examined two senses in which pessimism might be a risk factor for depressive mood among older adults. The first was that a pessimistic explanatory style would predict changes toward depressive mood when combined with stressful life events. The second was that predictive pessimism, or thinking that bad events will happen in the future, would predict changes in depressive symptoms. We found an interaction between explanatory style and life stressors, but it was the optimists who were at higher risk for depressive symptoms after negative life events. We also found support for predictive pessimism, however, as a predictor of depressive symptoms over time.

The role of a cognitive diathesis-stress model in predicting changes in alcohol consumption was examined. This study evaluated the interaction of attributional style with negative life events in predicting changes in beer, wine, spirits, and overall alcohol consumption. 93 undergraduate participants completed the Khavari Alcohol Test, Negative Life Events Questionnaire, and Attributional Style Questionnaire. The interaction of attributional style with negative life events predicted increases in spirits consumption between Time 1 and Time 2.

Participants in the Terman Life-Cycle Study completed open-ended questionnaires in 1936 and 1940, and these responses were blindly scored for explanatory style by content analysis. Catastrophizing (attributing bad events to global causes) predicted mortality as of 1991, especially among males, and predicted accidental or violent deaths especially well. These results are the first to show that a dimension of explanatory style is a risk factor for mortality in a large sample of initially healthy individuals, and they imply that one of the mechanisms linking explanatory style and death involves lifestyle.

A total of 613 subjects, including257 White American students, 312 mainland Chinese students, and 44 Chinese American students, completed the Attributional Style Questionnaire. It was found that (a) mainland Chinese were more pessimistic than Chinese Americans, who were more pessimistic than White Americans, (b) mainland Chinese were less self-blaming (i.e., attributed their failure less internally than the traditional Chinese culture expects) and attributed their success to other people or circumstances, and (c) White Americans had more lopsidedness or self-serving bias than Chinese Americans and mainland Chinese-that is, White Americans attributed their success to themselves and their failure to others or circumstances more often than did mainland Chinese. The authors also found that mainland Chinese optimism was associated more with academic and financial accomplishment, psychological confidence and persistence, and physical health.

After teaching cognitive and social-problem-solving techniques designed to prevent depressive symptoms, we followed 69 fifth- and sixth-grade children at risk for depression for 2 years We compared these children with 49 children in a matched no-treatment control group The prevention group reported fewer depressive symptoms through the 2-year followup, and moderate to severe symptoms were reduced by half Surprisingly, the effects of the prevention program grew larger after the program was over We suggest that psychological immunization against depression can occur by teaching cognitive and social skills to children as they enter puberty

In Optimism and Fundamentalism, we (Sethi & Seligman, 1993) indicated that members of the fundamentalist faiths (e.g., Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and Calvinists) are more optimistic than members of moderate faiths (e.g., Conservative Jews, Catholics, Lutherans, and Methodists), who are in turn more optimistic than members of liberal faiths (e.g., Reform Jews and Unitarians). Following the recommendation of Kroll (this issue, pp. 56-57), we now present the data about which dimensions led to greater optimism with more fundamentalism. There are three dimensions of explanatory style: internality, stability, and globality. Kroll asks if the differences with fundamentalism still hold when internality is excluded. There are two widely used statistics of the data that exclude internality: Hopefulness (HP) is derived through summing dimensions of stability-instability and globality-specificity for positive events within the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ). The hopelessness (HN) score sums across these dimensions for negative events. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed significant differences among the fundamentalists, moderates, and liberals in their HP scores for positive events, F(2, 601) = 6.32, p < .002. The mean HN score for negative events also showed significant differences among the fundamentalists, moderates, and liberals, F(2, 601) = 2.65, p < .007. As shown in the paired comparisons of Table 1, fundamentalists had significantly higher HP scores than moderates nd liberals, while liberals had significantly higher HN scores than fundamentalists. These findings indicate that even after internality-externality is removed, fundamentalism is associated with higher levels of optimism and hope. A separate analysis was conducted on the third dimension of the questionnaire, internality-externality. ANOVA indicated that the internality score for negative events (IN) significantly differed across the three groups, F(2, 601) = 10.96, p < .00001 . As Table 1 shows, fundamentalists and moderates had more optimistic IN scores than liberals. This result suggests that fundamentalists and moderates are less likely to attribute their failures to themselves. The internality score for positive events (IP), however, did not differ across the fundamentalists, moderates, and liberals, F(2, 601) = 0.01, n.s. This finding suggests that fundamentalists are no more likely than moderates and liberals to attribute their successes to themselves.

Research based on Seligman's model indicates that a pessimistic explanatory style predicts increased frequency of depression, poorer physical health, and lower levels of achievement. The data show that persons who have a pessimistic outlook on life are more frequent users of the medical and mental health care delivery systems. This paper describes the development of a bipolar MMPI Optimism-Pessimism (PSM) scale that is based on the results of a technique-Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanation (CAVE)-applied to the MMPI. Reliability and validity indices show that the PSM scale is highly accurate and consistent with Seligman's theory. Identification of the patient's explanatory style may lead to improved management because intervention measures can be directed more accurately according to the patient's personality style. The new scale also will allow researchers to use existing MMPI data to explore relationships between explanatory style and various outcome variables and behavioral correlates.

This paper describes the development and preliminary efficacy of a program designed to prevent depressive symptoms in at-risk 10-13 year-olds, and relates the findings to the current understanding of childhood depression. The treatment targets depressive symptoms and related difficulties such as conduct problems, low academic achievement, low social competence, and poor peer relations, by proactively teaching cognitive techniques. Children were identified as 'at-risk' based on depressive symptoms and their reports of parental conflict. Sixty-nine children participated in treatment groups and were compared to 73 children in control groups. Depressive symptoms were significantly reduced and classroom behavior was significantly improved in the treatment group as compared to controls at post-test. Six-month follow-up showed continued reduction in depressive symptoms, as well as significantly fewer externalizing conduct problems, as compared to controls. The reduction in symptoms was most pronounced in the children who were most at risk.

Explanatory style from nine religious groups, representing fundamentalist, moderate, and liberal viewpoints, was investigated by questionnaire and by blind content analysis of their sermons and liturgy. Fundamentalist individuals were significantly more optimistic by questionnaire than those from moderate religions, who were in turn more optimistic than liberals. The liturgy and sermons showed the parallel pattern of optimism. Regression analyses suggested that the greater optimism of fundamentalist individuals may be entirely accounted for by the greater hope and daily influence fundamentalism engenders, along with the greater optimism of the religious services they hear.

A 5-year longitudinal study investigated the interrelationships among children's experiences of depressive symptoms, negative life events, explanatory style, and helplessness behaviors in social and achievement situations. The results revealed that early in childhood, negative events, but not explanatory style, predicted depressive symptoms; later in childhood, a pessimistic explanatory style emerged as a significant predictor of depressive symptoms, alone and in conjunction with negative events. When children suffered periods of depression, their explanatory styles not only deteriorated but remained pessimistic even after their depression subsided, presumably putting them at risk for future episodes of depression. Some children seem repeatedly prone to depressive symptoms over periods of at least 2 years. Depressed children consistently showed helpless behaviors in social and achievement settings.

Correlated pessimistic explanatory style--the belief that negative events are caused by internal, stable, and global factors--with lowered immunocompetence in a sample of 26 older adults. Two measures of cell-mediated immunity--T-helper cell/T-suppressor cell ratio and T-lymphocyte response to mitogen challenge--were lower in individuals with a pessimistic style, controlling for the influence of current health, depression, medication, recent weight change, sleep, and alcohol use. A relative increase in the percentage of T-suppressor cells seemed to underlie this immunosuppression. Although the mechanism by which explanatory style might influence immune function remains unknown, we speculate that a pessimistic style might be an important psychological risk factor--at least among older people--in the early course of certain immune-mediated diseases.

AbstractQuantified behavioural signs of depression in relation to pessimism across cultures. First, by observing workmen in 1985 East and West Berlin bars, we found more behaviour consistent with depression in East Berliners than in West Berliners. We then measured pessimism in both cultures by assessing explanatory style in newspaper reports of the 1984 Winter Olympic Games. Despite having more Olympic victories to report, East Berlin newspaper accounts were more pessimistic than West Berlin reports. We suggest that, with proper controls, convergent measurements of explanatory style and behavioural signs consistent with depression allow to quantify pessimism and depression across culture and time.