Martin Seligman
and positive psychology
QUID+ has learned from Martin Seligman the importance of optimism and an attributional style that enables us to explain events with an optimistic approach, in order to grow and face life with a positive attitude.
Martin Seligman is an American psychologist and author. He is considered the founder of positive psychology, which focuses on how to improve personal well-being. Seligman is one of the most prominent psychologists of the 20th century: he is a former President of the American Psychological Association (APA) Division of Clinical Psychology and, in 1998, he was elected President of the APA by the largest margin in the Association’s history. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Prevention and Treatment Magazine (the APA's online journal) and the author of many best-selling books. According to Seligman, people who experience positive emotions live longer and healthier lives and have better-than-average interpersonal relationships and professional performance. He argues that in order to increase our level of happiness, we must, among other things, become more optimistic by changing our attributional style, i.e. the way we habitually explain to ourselves why events that affect us happen. For Seligman, optimistic people are those who attribute positive life events to personal, lasting characteristics that concern their whole being.
