intervention

The field of positive psychology was founded nearly twenty years ago when Martin Seligman, along with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, observed that psychology focused much more on pathology than on well-being. Today, there is a similar overemphasis on pathology and ill-being throughout much of the arts and humanities. This presentation will introduce the nascent field of the positive humanities, which calls for an explicit emphasis on well-being to balance current approaches in literature, music, art, movies, philosophy, history, religion, and other cultural domains. A strategic collaboration between the positive humanities and positive psychology can benefit both fields in their ability to understand, cultivate, and measure well-being. More broadly, such collaboration can benefit humanity by creating new approaches to human flourishing.

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