Martin Seligman Wants to Apply Positive Psychology to Games, the Army

Martin Seligman. From Princeton.

Martin Seligman, considered to be the father of positive psychology, is still pushing the science in new and interesting directions, according to Gamasutra. His recipe for happiness is PERMA, or positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement. Seligman is now assisting the U.S. Army in teaching PERMA to soldiers in an attempt to alleviate common problems that soldiers have, like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, drug abuse, and divorce.

The Army will ship drill sergeants to the University of Pennsylvania, where Seligman teaches. The effectiveness of PERMA techniques will then be measured on one million soldiers over their entire careers. The whole program will cost $150 million.

On the topic of games, Seligman mentions a lot of untapped potential. Though he hasn't seen any games that relate to positive psychology thus far, he says, "I believe that PERMA's future...might be that gaming will be the great, exponential amplifier. Teaching emotional literacy to young people throughout the entire world [through gaming]." He also mentions a lack of research on this topic, but that there is some evidence of Bridge's positive effect in preventing dementia.

For more on positive gaming, you might check out Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal. I haven't read it, but I'd really like to. You can also click on my Martin Seligman tag.

Children Apparently DO Make Parents Happier, Just Later in Life

Look on the bright side:  someone else will
probably deal with messes like this after you're 40.
From the Missourian.

In spite of the common wisdom that children bring happiness to their parents, psychologists have long known that parents' happiness scores actually drop the more children they have. Now, however, Medical News Daily reports that this trend reverses after age 40. Once parents reach that age, they become happier with up to three children, and after age 50, they become happier no matter how many children they have, all independent of sex, income, or partnership status.

This information comes from a survey by the University of Pennsylvania and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR). The survey covered around 200,000 men and women in 86 countries from 1981 to 2005.

MPIDR demographer Mikko Myrskylä theorizes that the change in happiness has to do with life stages of the parents, saying, "Seeing the age trend of happiness independent of sex, income, partnership status and even fertility rates shows that one has to explain it from the perspective of the stage of parents' life." The negative aspects of early childhood--like messes, troublemaking, and safety concerns--often overshadow the positive aspects, but as children mature, parents can rest easy and enjoy the benefits. Researchers also believe that the financial burdens of early childhood weigh on young parents, because countries with better-developed welfare systems show less difference in happiness between people with children and those without.

People's decision to have children is usually independent of what science shows, but in case it does affect your decision, this stuff is good to know anyway!

African Americans Closing Racial Gap in Happiness

Source:  New York Times. Click here for the full image.

Black people have long gotten the short end of the stick in America. To this day, black unemployment is double that of whites, just like it was in 1975. The income gap between races is also growing. Today, however, David Leonhardt of The New York Times reports that African Americans are making significant progress in one important category:  levels of happiness.

A new study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, economists from the University of Pennsylvania, finds that levels of happiness in Caucasians have stayed pretty much the same since the '70s. On the other hand, happiness in African Americans has risen by at least 5% in that same time period. This may not seem like much, but Mr. Wolfers explains that it is "one of the most dramatic gains in the happiness data that you’ll see."

As you can see from the graph, a significant happiness gap still exists, but if Caucasian happiness stays the same (which is likely), the gap may close within the next few decades. The study does not claim to know why the gap is closing, but one theory is the huge drop in racism from the 1970s to now (though of course we still have a ways to go before racism is gone completely).