Use of Psychology in Change
Introduction
Using psychology in change has its limitation; generally psychology comes from a negative approach, ie what is wrong?
While this is an important question but it can limit your understanding and knowledge; you need to devote more attention to factors that makes life worth living or what is going well, ie .
Focusing on what is wrong, ie a weakness focus or disease model which
"...means a focus on what is wrong rather than what is right......place attention on the negative aspects of individual. In the context of work and performance, a weakness focus means that we are primary concern with behaviour that is causing sub optimal or low performance. For example, during a performance evaluation, employers are is only focused on why an employee is not reaching his sales targets, or why he is not able to communicate well with customers..."
PositivePsychology, 2020
This has led to misconceptions
Misconceptions (5)
i) Fixing what is wrong leads to well-being (positive impacts are not the opposite of negative impacts, ie
"...Getting rid of anger, fear, and depression will not automatically lead to peace, love, and joy. In a similar way, strategies to reduce fear, anger, or depression are not identical to strategies to maximise peace, joy, or meaning......health is not merely the absence of illness or something negative, but instead is the presence of something positive..."
PositivePsychology, 2020
Something positive can include realising your own abilities, able to cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and make a meaningful contribution to your community.)
ii) Effective coping is reflected by a reduction in negative states (psychological intervention aimed to reduce aversive states, like negative emotions or stress; it rests
"...on the assumption that a reduction in aversive state reflects both effective coping and enhanced well-being (or fewer problems). Interestingly, previous findings have repeatedly shown that effective coping does necessarily mean a reduction in aversive states, like stress or negative emotions..."
PositivePsychology, 2020
Some examples
- dieting
"...research has revealed that it is not the absence of stress that is related to successful weight management, rather, but rather the ability to effectively deal with stress..."
PositivePsychology, 2020
- work, ie the negative consequence of stress in the workplace; research has shown
"...it is not experiencing stress that is responsible for its acclaimed negative effect on health, but it's the way employees deal with perceived stress. For some individuals, stress can lead to positive consequences..."
PositivePsychology, 2020
In other words, it is the way people deal with perceive and difficult experiences, rather than their occurrence that is the indicator of coping successfully.
There are benefits in focusing on building people's strengths and develop skills so they can cope with difficult experiences rather than purely focusing on reducing negative experiences.)
iii) correcting weakness creates optimal performance (there is a misconception that optimal performance results in fixing weaknesses, eg professional development training that focuses on correcting people's weaknesses, evaluation interviews focusing on areas that need improvement.
At best, fixing weaknesses will only help individuals or organisations become normal or average; it is better to work on boosting people strengths to get optimal performance and engagement.)
iv) weaknesses deserve more attention because strengths will take care of themselves (it is better to focus on boosting strengths to help build new habits, eg people can learn to become more optimistic
"...Boosting strengths means that not only is the frequency of use increased, but also the number of different situations strengths applied......many strengths are already present at a very young age, they need to be nurtured to realise their full potential..."
PositivePsychology, 2020)
v) a deficit focus can help prevent problems (need to be proactive and preventative rather than reactive, ie rather than trying to fix the problem (intervention are aimed at fixing things that have already gone wrong), how can we prevent the problem happening; need to systematically built competencies rather than correct weaknesses; questions to help:
- Why do some people flourished despite difficult circumstances?
- How do you avoid burnout symptoms?
- Why do some employees show high levels work engagement?
- What can we learn from the characteristics of resilience and flourishing individuals?
- How can we use this knowledge to design interventions that will help people become resilient so that they are capable of bouncing back when going gets tough?
A way to handle these misconceptions is an approach called Positive Psychology, ie move away from focusing on what is wrong with people and fixing their problems to focus on that what is right with people and boosting their strengths. Some questions to help this include
- What characteristics do people with high levels of happiness possess?
- What qualities, ie strengths, do these 'happy' people have to manage their troubles effectively?
NB It is basically asking what is right with people
"...if we learn what differentiates happy and resilient people from unhappy and unresilient people, then we can use this knowledge increase happiness and boost the resilience of others..."
PositivePsychology, 2020
Summary
Need to get the balance right of correcting weaknesses and focusing on human strength, ie
"...Attention must be paid to processes of building the positive and to processes of coping with the negative..."
PositivePsychology, 2020