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Martin Elias Peter Seligman (/ ˈ s ɛ l ɪ ɡ m ə n /; born August 12, 1942) is an American psychologist, educator, and author of self-help books. Seligman is a strong promoter within the scientific community of his theories of well-being and positive psychology. [1] His theory of learned helplessness is popular among scientific and clinical ...
It was created by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, researchers in the field of positive psychology, in order to operationalize their handbook Character Strengths and Virtues (CSV). [1] The CSV is the positive psychology counterpart to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM ) used in traditional psychology.
Positive psychology began as a new domain of psychology in 1998 when Martin Seligman chose it as the theme for his term as president of the American Psychological Association. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] It is a reaction against past practices that tended to focus on mental illness and emphasized maladaptive behavior and negative thinking.
According to Martin Seligman, anyone can learn optimism. Whether currently an optimist or a pessimist, benefits can be gained from exposure to the process of learned optimism to improve response to both big and small adversities. A learned optimism test (developed by Seligman) is used to determine an individual's base level of optimism.
Learned helplessness is the behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control. It was initially thought to be caused by the subject's acceptance of their powerlessness, by way of their discontinuing attempts to escape or avoid the aversive stimulus, even when such alternatives are unambiguously presented.
The theory of evolution has wide-ranging implications on personality psychology. Personality viewed through the lens of evolutionary biology places a great deal of emphasis on specific traits that are most likely to aid in survival and reproduction, such as conscientiousness, sociability, emotional stability, and dominance. [54]
Resilience – Is defined in Positive Psychology as a positive way of coping with adversity or distress. In organizational aspect, it is defined as an ability to recuperate from stress, conflict, failure, change or increase in responsibility. Optimism – was defined by Seligman by Attribution theory (Fritz Heider, 1958). An Optimistic person ...
In 1998 Martin Seligman won election to a one-year term as President of the American Psychological Association and proposed a new focus: on healthy individuals [37] [38] rather than on pathology (he created the "positive psychology" current)