Acacia Parks

Disseminating Self-Help: Positive Psychology Exercises in an Online Trial

Background The recent growth of positive psychology has led to a proliferation in exercises to increase positive thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Preliminary evidence suggests that these exercises hold promise as an approach for reducing depressive symptoms. These exercises are typically researched in isolation as single exercises. The current study examined the acceptability of several multi-exercise packages using online dissemination. Objective The purpose of this study was to investigate methods of dissemination that could increase the acceptability and effectiveness of positive psychology exercises. To achieve this goal, we compared the use of positive psychology exercises when delivered in packages of 2, 4, or 6 exercises. Methods Self-help–seeking participants enrolled in this study by visiting an online research portal. Consenting participants were randomly assigned to receive 2, 4, or 6 positive psychology exercises (or assessments only) over a 6-week period. These exercises drew from the content of group positive psychotherapy. Participants visited an automated website that distributed exercise instructions, provided email reminders, and contained the baseline and follow-up assessments. Following each exercise, participants rated their enjoyment of the exercise, answered how often they had used each technique, and completed outcome measures. Results In total, 1364 individuals consented to participate. Attrition rates across the 2-, 4-, and 6-exercise conditions were similar at 55.5% (181/326), 55.8% (203/364), and 52.7% (168/319) respectively but were significantly greater than the attrition rate of 42.5% (151/355) for the control condition (χ2 3 = 16.40, P < .001). Participants in the 6-exercise condition were significant more likely than participants in the 4-exercise condition to use both the third (F 1,312 = 5.61, P = .02) and fourth (F 1,313 = 6.03, P = .02) exercises. For 5 of the 6 exercises, enjoyment was related to continued use of the exercise at 6-week follow-up (r’s = .12 to .39). All conditions produced significant reductions in depressive symptoms (F 1,656 = 94.71, P < .001); however, a significant condition by time interaction (F 3,656 = 4.77, P = .003) indicated that this reduction was larger in the groups that received 2 or 4 exercises compared with the 6-exercise or control condition. Conclusion Increasing the number of exercises presented to participants increased the use of the techniques and did not increase dropout. Participants may be more likely to use these skills when presented with a variety of options. Increasing the number of exercises delivered to participants produced a curvilinear relationship with those in the 2- and 4-exercise conditions reporting larger decreases in depressive symptoms than participants in the 6-exercise or control conditions. Although research generally offers a single exercise to test isolate effects, this study supports that studying variability in dissemination can produce important findings.

Positive living: A pilot study of group positive psychotherapy for people with schizophrenia

Positive psychology interventions target positive emotions in order to increase happiness, engagement in life, and well being while also ameliorating the impact of symptoms on a persons life. We examined an adapted version of group positive psychotherapy for people with schizophrenia (Positive Living (PL)) in a pilot study. Sixteen participants were recruited to participate in two separate PL groups and were assessed at baseline, post-intervention and at 3-month follow-up. We examined feasibility of this intervention in addition to a preliminary exploration of well-being outcomes including psychological well-being, hope, savoring, and self-esteem as well as clinically related outcomes including symptoms, psychological recovery, and social functioning. Findings indicate that the PL group was feasible and associated with possible improvements in psychological well-being, hope, savoring, psychological recovery, self-esteem, and psychiatric symptoms.

Positive psychotherapy for smoking cessation: Treatment development, feasibility, and preliminary results

Low positive and high negative affect (NA) predict low rates of smoking abstinence among smokers making a quit attempt. Positive psychotherapy can both increase positive affect (PA) and decrease NA and, therefore, may be a useful adjunct to behavioral smoking counseling. The purpose of the present study was to assess the feasibility and acceptability of a positive psychotherapy for smoking cessation (PPT-S) intervention that integrates standard smoking cessation counseling with nicotine patch and a package of positive psychology interventions. We delivered PPT-S to 19 smokers who were low in PA at baseline. Rates of session attendance and satisfaction with treatment were high, and most participants reported using and benefiting from the positive psychology interventions. Almost one-third of the participants (31.6%) sustained smoking abstinence for six months after their quit date. Future studies to assess the relative efficacy of PPT-S compared to standard smoking cessation treatment are warranted.

Assessing the efficacy and effectiveness of a Positive Psychology-based self-help book

El presente articulo analiza la utilidad potencial de los libros de auto-ayuda como medio de difusion de las intervenciones psicologicas positivas, y presenta datos comparando libro de autoayuda basado en psicologia positiva, un libro de autoayuda cognitivo-conductual, y una condicion de control de auto-monitorizacion. Participaron estudiantes universitarios de primer ano (N = 58), y defendemos que esta poblacion es un objetivo particularmente apropiado para intervenciones centradas en el bienestar. Las medidas de resultado incluyeron tanto indices de eficacia (sintomas depresivos y satisfaccion con la vida) como de efectividad (por ejemplo, el grado en el que los participantes juzgaron que sus actividades asignadas tenian sentido). Los dos grupos de libros superaron al grupo control y fueron igualmente eficaces en la reduccion de los sintomas. Respecto a la satisfaccion vital, el grupo de autoayuda positiva supero al cognitivo-conductual, pero solo a los 6 meses de seguimiento. La intervencion positiva de auto-ayuda tambien fue superior a la cognitivo-conductual en los indices de efectividad. Se discuten las posibilidades de futuras direcciones, enfatizando las realidades de la difusion practica tanto en estudiantes universitarios como al publico en general.

The state of positive psychology in higher education: Introduction to the special issue

Over the last decade, the field of positive psychology has experienced rapid growth and expansion. We have seen significant theoretical advancements, have developed myriad techniques for increasing happiness, and have made major strides in the dissemination of both research and practice to the general public. In no area of application has positive psychology flourished more, however, than in higher education. More departments than ever are offering courses in positive psychology, and demand for these courses is consistently high. Graduate programs offering concentrations in positive psychology have appeared both at the masters and doctoral level. Educational institutions have expressed interest in using principles of positive psychology to inform institutional structure, faculty development, and pedagogy. Positive psychology has been taught and applied in higher education for almost as long as it has existed as a field, and yet, with few exceptions, there is little in the way of published literature that brings all of these developments together. It is this observation that motivated this special issue on Positive Psychology in Higher Education. When I first issued the call for proposals, it was my goal to provide an up-to-date picture of the advancements positive psychology has made in the arena of higher education. As a graduate student at the Positive Psychology Center, I witnessed firsthand the birth and development of the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program. I often heard by word-of-mouth about projects putting positive psychology into practice in schools across the globe. I even received a few inquiries myself from programs hoping to use a positive psychology approach to foster personal development among students. Furthermore, as someone who has been teaching positive psychology in various forms for 8 years, I found myself curious about what other teachers of positive psychology were up to. The existence of six (!!!) positive psychology textbooks suggested that other teachers of positive psychology were out there, and numerous; however, I could count on one hand the number of conversations I had ever had with colleagues about teaching positive psychology. It seemed to me quite unfortunate that although positive psychology has clearly established itself in higher education, there was no forum in which to discuss what we are doing, why we are doing it, and how it is working for us. A secondary goal surfaced for me as I began to put the special issue together. After the Call for Proposals went out, I received numerous emails, not only from potential contributors but from people looking forward to the special issue. It became clear to me that there is a thirst for information on best practices for teaching positive psychology. Anecdotal evidence from the FRIENDS-OF-PP and PSYTEACH listservs supports this impression; each time that I have offered my syllabus to one of these lists, I have received dozens and dozens of requests and questions from eager positive psychology instructors and instructors-to-be. For every instructor out there teaching positive psychology, there appear to be three more who would like to teach positive psychology, but do not know where to start. I selected articles for the special issue, then, with these two goals in mind: first, to open up a discussion among those who are currently teaching and otherwise applying positive psychology in higher education and, second, to provide a resource for people who want to learn more about how positive psychology is taught, and how positive psychology might fit into their academic departments and institutions. I could not be more satisfied with the results. The following 15 articles represent the use of positive psychology at all levels of higher education – from institutional practices and curricular development to pedagogy and the teaching of positive psychology content itself. It is with great pleasure that I introduce them in the paragraphs that follow. In the opening piece, Lindsay Oades, Paula Robinson, Suzy Green, and Gordon Spence provide a rationale for implementing positive psychology principles at different levels of higher education: in the classroom, in the social milieu on-campus, in the surrounding community, among the faculty and administration, and in student residential environments. Citing evidence that positive states lead to better academic outcomes, they provide specific examples of how these can be fostered through institution-level practices. Chuck Walker follows with a description of techniques for assessing students’ realtime experiences of two positive states – positive emotion and engagement – in the classroom.

Seeing the “Big” Picture: Big Data Methods for Exploring Relationships Between Usage, Language, and Outcome in Internet Intervention Data

Background Assessing the efficacy of Internet interventions that are already in the market introduces both challenges and opportunities. While vast, often unprecedented amounts of data may be available (hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of participants with high dimensions of assessed variables), the data are observational in nature, are partly unstructured (eg, free text, images, sensor data), do not include a natural control group to be used for comparison, and typically exhibit high attrition rates. New approaches are therefore needed to use these existing data and derive new insights that can augment traditional smaller-group randomized controlled trials. Objective Our objective was to demonstrate how emerging big data approaches can help explore questions about the effectiveness and process of an Internet well-being intervention. Methods We drew data from the user base of a well-being website and app called Happify. To explore effectiveness, multilevel models focusing on within-person variation explored whether greater usage predicted higher well-being in a sample of 152,747 users. In addition, to explore the underlying processes that accompany improvement, we analyzed language for 10,818 users who had a sufficient volume of free-text response and timespan of platform usage. A topic model constructed from this free text provided language-based correlates of individual user improvement in outcome measures, providing insights into the beneficial underlying processes experienced by users. Results On a measure of positive emotion, the average user improved 1.38 points per week (SE 0.01, t122,455=113.60, P<.001, 95% CI 1.36–1.41), about a 27% increase over 8 weeks. Within a given individual user, more usage predicted more positive emotion and less usage predicted less positive emotion (estimate 0.09, SE 0.01, t6047=9.15, P=.001, 95% CI .07–.12). This estimate predicted that a given user would report positive emotion 1.26 points higher after a 2-week period when they used Happify daily than during a week when they didn’t use it at all. Among highly engaged users, 200 automatically clustered topics showed a significant (corrected P<.001) effect on change in well-being over time, illustrating which topics may be more beneficial than others when engaging with the interventions. In particular, topics that are related to addressing negative thoughts and feelings were correlated with improvement over time. Conclusions Using observational analyses on naturalistic big data, we can explore the relationship between usage and well-being among people using an Internet well-being intervention and provide new insights into the underlying mechanisms that accompany it. By leveraging big data to power these new types of analyses, we can explore the workings of an intervention from new angles, and harness the insights that surface to feed back into the intervention and improve it further in the future.

A case for the advancement of the design and study of online positive psychological interventions

As PPI research embraces the use of the Internet, it is incumbent on the research community to keep up with the ever-evolving best practices in online intervention research. This paper provides an overview of current practices in online positive psychological intervention (OPPI) research and suggests improvements to those practices. Drawing from the broader online intervention literature, the paper outlines important considerations in the design of OPPIs (including user engagement, dosage, and free choice) as well as in their empirical evaluation (including sample selection, statistical approaches, and comparison groups).

Positive Psychotherapy for Smoking Cessation: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

OBJECTIVE Greater depressive symptoms and low positive affect (PA) are associated with poor smoking cessation outcomes. Smoking cessation approaches that incorporate a focus on PA may benefit smokers trying to quit. The purpose of this study was to conduct a pilot randomized clinical trial to compare standard smoking cessation treatment (ST) with smoking cessation treatment that targets positive affect, termed positive psychotherapy for smoking cessation (PPT-S). METHOD Smokers who were seeking smoking cessation treatment were assigned by urn randomization to receive, along with 8 weeks of nicotine replacement therapy, either ST (n = 31) or PPT-S (n = 35). Seven-day point prevalence smoking abstinence was biochemically confirmed at 8, 16, and 26 weeks. RESULTS Compared to ST, a greater percentage of participants in PPT-S were abstinent at 8 weeks, 16 weeks, and 26 weeks, but these differences were nonsignificant. In a more statistically powerful longitudinal model, participants in PPT-S had a significantly higher odds of abstinence (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 2.75; 95% CI = 1.02, 7.42; p = .046) across follow-ups compared to those in ST. The positive effect of PPT-S was stronger for those higher in PA (OR = 6.69, 95% CI = 1.16, 38.47, p = .03). Greater use of PPT-S strategies during the initial 8 weeks of quitting was associated with a less steep decline in smoking abstinence rates over time (OR = 2.64, 95% CI = 1.06, 6.56, p =.04). CONCLUSION This trial suggests substantial promise for incorporating PPT into smoking cessation treatment.

Illustrating positive psychology concepts through service learning: Penn teaches resilience

We describe an undergraduate service-learning research course in which undergraduates are trained to disseminate an intervention designed to promote resilience and well-being in middle-school youth. The course provides undergraduates with an opportunity for active and collaborative learning in psychology and serves as a new model for the wide-scale dissemination of evidence-based prevention programs through supervised undergraduates. We provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the course, along with some thoughts about ways that readers might implement something similar at their own institutions, using the Penn Resiliency Program or other related interventions.

Testing a positive psychological intervention for osteoarthritis

Objective Osteoarthritis is a leading cause of disability for which there is no cure. Psychosocial-oriented treatments are underexplored. We developed and tested an intervention to build positive psychological skills (e.g., gratitude) to reduce osteoarthritis symptom severity, including pain and functioning, and to improve psychosocial well-being in patients with knee or hip osteoarthritis. Design Two-arm randomized design with six-month follow-up. Setting An academic Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Subjects Patients aged 50 years or older with knee or hip osteoarthritis and pain ratings of 4 or higher. Methods Patients (N = 42) were randomized to a six-week program containing positive skill-building activities or neutral control activities tailored to the patient population. Adherence was assessed by telephone each week. We assessed osteoarthritis symptom severity (WOMAC Osteoarthritis Index) and measures of well-being (positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction) at baseline and by telephone one, three, and six months after the program ended. We used linear mixed models to examine changes over time. Results The majority (64%) of patients completed more than 80% of their weekly activities. Patients in the positive (vs neutral) program reported significantly more improvement over time in osteoarthritis symptom severity (P = 0.02, Cohens d = 0.86), negative affect (P = 0.03, Cohens d = 0.50), and life satisfaction (P = 0.02, Cohens d = 0.36). Conclusions The study successfully engaged patients with knee or hip osteoarthritis in a six-week intervention to build positive psychological skills. Improving osteoarthritis symptom severity and measures of psychosocial well-being, the intervention shows promise as a tool for chronic pain management.