engleski

Can happiness be learned and taught?

The emergence of the positive psychology represents one of the most important developments in the field of psychology at the beginning of the 21st century. Within this field concept of well-being (or happiness) constitutes the main criteria for positive functioning. There is strong evidence that happiness brings highly desirable life benefits in multiple life domains such as health, marriage, friendship, academic achievement, income and work performance. Also, happy people contribute to better society in many ways. But can happiness be learned and taught? According to conceptual model by Lyubomirsky et al. (2005) a person’s chronic happiness level is determined by three factors: a genetically based happiness set point (50%), life circumstances that affect happiness (10%), and intentional activities and practices (40). Whether these percentages hold for all countries and cultures is still controversial. But intentional activities appear to offer the good potential for lastingly increasing wellbeing. A variety of so-called positive interventions have been developed to facilitate well-being These interventions focus on positive topics, target a positive outcome variable and are designed to promote wellness rather than to fix weakness (Parks and Biswas-Diener, 2014). Many of them have been proven to increase peoples' subjective well-being. However, caution is needed when putting these positive interventions into real-world practice. Not all interventions work for all individuals and some of them can even “backfire”. In addition to individual positive interventions with adults attempts have been made to teach well-being in schools. The most important reasons for this are high prevalence of depression among young people worldwide, the small rise in life satisfaction in last half a century, low students’ satisfaction with school in many countries and the synergy between learning and positive emotion (Seligman et al. 2009. The evidence suggests that positive psychology programs are significantly related to student wellbeing, relationships and academic performance. Schools are possibly the best places to teach positive psychology to great number of students, thus helping individuals, communities, and societies to thrive.

happiness; positive interventions; school; positive psychology programs

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