Criticisms of positive psychology PDF

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Criticisms of positive psychology...

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Criticisms of positive psychology -Lazarus – aim of positive psychology is to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative and don’t mess with Mr-In-Between. Simplistic polarity between positive and negative. Victims are blamed for their own misery, rather than social or environmental factors. This in itself may be a source of unhappiness. Neglects the spiritual happiness of a person. Methodology Disadvantages of psychometric testing, in measuring well-being. Social desirability bias, researcher bias Objective report on a subjective topic. Leading questions Disregard for qualitative research. Separatist approach Doesn’t adnkowledge its debt to Maslow and Humanistic psychology in general. False notion that positive psychology is a new and revolutionary area of psychology. Social constructionism Theoretical orientations which underpin all of the newer approaches which are currently offering radical and critical alternatives in psychology and social psychology. No single definition what links the psychological writer together is a kind of family resemblance – all are members of the same family but they differ in the characteristics they possess. 4 common themes critical stance towards a taken-for-granted knowledge. Historical and cultural specificity Knowledge is sustained by social processes Knowledge and social action go together Our observations of the world suggest to us that there are two categories of human being, man and woman. Social constructionism bids us to question whether these categories are a reflection of naturally occurring types of human being. Greyness of such categories when we look at gender re-assignment surgery. Consider that these seemingly natural categories may be inevitably bound up with genderthe normative prescriptions of masculinity and femininity in a culture, so these categories of personhood have been built upon them....