Martin Seligman
Encyclopedia
Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman (born August 12, 1942) is an American psychologist
, educator, and author of self-help books
. His theory of "learned helplessness
" is widely respected among scientific psychologists.
According to Haggbloom et al.'s study of the most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, Seligman was the 13th most frequently cited psychologist in introductory psychology textbooks throughout the century, as well as the 31st most eminent overall.
Seligman is the Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology in the University of Pennsylvania
's Department of Psychology. He was previously the Director of the Clinical Training Program in the department. He is the director of the university's Positive Psychology Center.Seligman was elected President of the American Psychological Association
by the widest margin in its history and served in that capacity during the 1998 term. He is the founding editor-in-chief of Prevention and Treatment Magazine (the APA electronic journal) and is on the board of advisers of Parents
magazine.
Seligman has written about positive psychology topics such as The Optimistic Child, Child's Play, Learned Optimism, Authentic Happiness, and Flourish.
, New York
. He earned a bachelors degree at Princeton University
in 1964, graduating Summa Cum Laude (Philosophy). He earned his Ph.D. in Psychology at University of Pennsylvania in 1967.
. Quite by accident, Seligman and colleagues discovered that the conditioning
of dogs led to outcomes that were opposite to the predictions of B.F. Skinner's behaviorism
, then a leading psychological theory.
Seligman developed the theory further, finding learned helplessness to be a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to act or behave helplessly in a particular situation — usually after experiencing some inability to avoid an adverse situation — even when it actually has the power to change its unpleasant or even harmful circumstance. Seligman saw a similarity with severely depressed patients, and argued that clinical depression
and related mental illnesses result in part from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.
According to author Jane Mayer
, Seligman gave a talk at the Navy SERE school in San Diego in 2002, which he said was a three-hour talk on helping US soldiers to resist torture
, based on his understanding of learned helplessness.
to create what they describe as a 'positive' counterpart to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM). While the DSM focuses on what can go wrong, Character Strengths and Virtues is designed to look at what can go right. In their research they looked across cultures and across millennia to attempt to distill a manageable list of virtues that have been highly valued from ancient China and India, through Greece and Rome, to contemporary Western cultures. Their list includes six character strengths: wisdom
/knowledge, courage
, humanity
, justice
, temperance, and transcendence
. Each of these has perhaps a half-dozen sub-entries; for instance, temperance includes forgiveness, humility, prudence, and self-regulation. One of their key points is that they do not believe that there is a hierarchy for the six virtues; no one is more fundamental than or a precursor to the others.
Quite recently at the time of typing (July 2011), Martin Seligman has encouraged David Cameron
to look into well-being as well as financial wealth in ways of assessing the posterity of a nation. On July 6, 2011, he appeared on Newsnight
and was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman
about his ideas and his interest in the concept of well-being.
While presenting "Flourish" to the Royal Society of Arts
, Seligman articulated an account of the good life
, which consisted of five elements:
to try to change gay men's sexual orientation to heterosexual was controversial, in some instances, the process "worked surprisingly well", with up to 50% of men subjected to such therapy not acting on their homosexual urges. These results produced what Seligman described as "a great burst of enthusiasm about changing homosexuality that swept over the therapeutic community" after the results were reported in 1966. However, Seligman notes that the findings were later demonstrated to be flawed: most of the men treated with aversion therapy who did in fact stop homosexual behavior were actually bisexual. Among men with an exclusive or near-exclusive homosexual orientation, aversion therapy was far less successful.
was his favorite color because of the amazing calming effects of the color on the human body. He plays bridge
, and finished second in one of the three major North American pair championships, the Blue Ribbon Pairs
(1998), and has won over 50 regional championships He has seven children, four grandchildren and three dogs, Rosie, Lily, and Rollo.
Seligman was inspired by the work of the psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck at the University of Pennsylvania in refining his own cognitive techniques and exercises.
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
, educator, and author of self-help books
Self-help
Self-help, or self-improvement, is a self-guided improvement—economically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis. There are many different self-help movements and each has its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents and in some cases, leaders...
. His theory of "learned helplessness
Learned helplessness
Learned helplessness, as a technical term in animal psychology and related human psychology, means a condition of a human person or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance...
" is widely respected among scientific psychologists.
According to Haggbloom et al.'s study of the most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, Seligman was the 13th most frequently cited psychologist in introductory psychology textbooks throughout the century, as well as the 31st most eminent overall.
Seligman is the Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology in the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
's Department of Psychology. He was previously the Director of the Clinical Training Program in the department. He is the director of the university's Positive Psychology Center.Seligman was elected President of the American Psychological Association
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...
by the widest margin in its history and served in that capacity during the 1998 term. He is the founding editor-in-chief of Prevention and Treatment Magazine (the APA electronic journal) and is on the board of advisers of Parents
Parents (magazine)
Parents, published by Meredith Corporation, is the oldest parenting publication in the U.S. It was first published in October 1926.Its editorial focus is on the daily needs and concerns of mothers with young children. The glossy monthly features information about child health, safety, behavior,...
magazine.
Seligman has written about positive psychology topics such as The Optimistic Child, Child's Play, Learned Optimism, Authentic Happiness, and Flourish.
Early life and education
Seligman was born in AlbanyAlbany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. He earned a bachelors degree at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1964, graduating Summa Cum Laude (Philosophy). He earned his Ph.D. in Psychology at University of Pennsylvania in 1967.
Learned helplessness
Seligman's foundational experiments and theory of "learned helplessness" began at University of Pennsylvania in 1967, as an extension of his interest in depressionClinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
. Quite by accident, Seligman and colleagues discovered that the conditioning
Classical conditioning
Classical conditioning is a form of conditioning that was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov...
of dogs led to outcomes that were opposite to the predictions of B.F. Skinner's behaviorism
Behaviorism
Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior...
, then a leading psychological theory.
Seligman developed the theory further, finding learned helplessness to be a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to act or behave helplessly in a particular situation — usually after experiencing some inability to avoid an adverse situation — even when it actually has the power to change its unpleasant or even harmful circumstance. Seligman saw a similarity with severely depressed patients, and argued that clinical depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
and related mental illnesses result in part from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.
According to author Jane Mayer
Jane Mayer
Jane Mayer is an American investigative journalist who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since 1995...
, Seligman gave a talk at the Navy SERE school in San Diego in 2002, which he said was a three-hour talk on helping US soldiers to resist torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
, based on his understanding of learned helplessness.
Positive psychology
Seligman worked with Christopher PetersonChristopher Peterson
Christopher Peterson, is the Arthur F. Thurnau professor of psychology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan and the former chair of the clinical psychology area. He is one of the 100 most cited psychologists in the world, Science Director of the VIA Institute on Character, and...
to create what they describe as a 'positive' counterpart to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders...
(DSM). While the DSM focuses on what can go wrong, Character Strengths and Virtues is designed to look at what can go right. In their research they looked across cultures and across millennia to attempt to distill a manageable list of virtues that have been highly valued from ancient China and India, through Greece and Rome, to contemporary Western cultures. Their list includes six character strengths: wisdom
Wisdom
Wisdom is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgements and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one's emotional reactions so that universal principles, reason and...
/knowledge, courage
Courage
Courage is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation...
, humanity
Humanitarianism
In its most general form, humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings. Humanitarianism has been an evolving concept historically but universality is a common element in its evolution...
, justice
Justice
Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...
, temperance, and transcendence
Transcendence (philosophy)
In philosophy, the adjective transcendental and the noun transcendence convey the basic ground concept from the word's literal meaning , of climbing or going beyond, albeit with varying connotations in its different historical and cultural stages...
. Each of these has perhaps a half-dozen sub-entries; for instance, temperance includes forgiveness, humility, prudence, and self-regulation. One of their key points is that they do not believe that there is a hierarchy for the six virtues; no one is more fundamental than or a precursor to the others.
Quite recently at the time of typing (July 2011), Martin Seligman has encouraged David Cameron
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....
to look into well-being as well as financial wealth in ways of assessing the posterity of a nation. On July 6, 2011, he appeared on Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
and was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman
Jeremy Paxman
Jeremy Dickson Paxman is a British journalist, author and television presenter. He has worked for the BBC since 1977. He is noted for a forthright and abrasive interviewing style, particularly when interrogating politicians...
about his ideas and his interest in the concept of well-being.
While presenting "Flourish" to the Royal Society of Arts
Royal Society of Arts
The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce is a British multi-disciplinary institution, based in London. The name Royal Society of Arts is frequently used for brevity...
, Seligman articulated an account of the good life
The good life
The good life is a term for the life that one would like to live, or for happiness, associated with the work of Aristotle and his teaching on ethics.-Religious approaches:...
, which consisted of five elements:
- P(ositive) emotion - tunable by writing down, every day at bed time, three things that went well, and why
- E(ngagement) - tunable by preferentially using one's highest strengths to perform the tasks which one would perform anyway
- R(elationships) - tunable, but not in a way that can be explained briefly; listen to timestamp 15:12 and following of the audio
- M(eaning) - belonging to and serving something bigger than one's self
- A(chievement) - determination is known to count for more than IQ
MAPP program
The Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program at the University of Pennsylvania was established under the leadership of Seligman as the first educational initiative of the Positive Psychology Center in 2003.On "conversion/reparative" therapy for changing homosexuality
In 1966, Martin E.P. Seligman reported that, while using aversion therapyAversion therapy
Aversion therapy is a form of psychological treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort...
to try to change gay men's sexual orientation to heterosexual was controversial, in some instances, the process "worked surprisingly well", with up to 50% of men subjected to such therapy not acting on their homosexual urges. These results produced what Seligman described as "a great burst of enthusiasm about changing homosexuality that swept over the therapeutic community" after the results were reported in 1966. However, Seligman notes that the findings were later demonstrated to be flawed: most of the men treated with aversion therapy who did in fact stop homosexual behavior were actually bisexual. Among men with an exclusive or near-exclusive homosexual orientation, aversion therapy was far less successful.
Personal life
According to an interview for his electronic journal Prevention and Treatment Seligman said magentaMagenta
Magenta is a color evoked by light stronger in blue and red wavelengths than in yellowish-green wavelengths . In light experiments, magenta can be produced by removing the lime-green wavelengths from white light...
was his favorite color because of the amazing calming effects of the color on the human body. He plays bridge
Contract bridge
Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard deck of 52 playing cards played by four players in two competing partnerships with partners sitting opposite each other around a small table...
, and finished second in one of the three major North American pair championships, the Blue Ribbon Pairs
Blue Ribbon Pairs
The Edgar Kaplan Blue Ribbon Pairs national bridge championship is held at the fall American Contract Bridge League North American Bridge Championship ....
(1998), and has won over 50 regional championships He has seven children, four grandchildren and three dogs, Rosie, Lily, and Rollo.
Seligman was inspired by the work of the psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck at the University of Pennsylvania in refining his own cognitive techniques and exercises.
Publications
- Seligman, Martin E. P. (1975). Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-0752-7 (Paperback reprint edition, W.H. Freeman, 1992, ISBN 0-7167-2328-X)
- Seligman, Martin E. P. (1991). Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-671-01911-2 (Paperback reprint edition, Penguin Books, 1998; reissue edition, Free Press, 1998)
- Seligman, Martin E. P. (1993). What You Can Change and What You Can't: The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-679-41024-4 (Paperback reprint edition, Ballantine Books, 1995, ISBN 0-449-90971-9
- Seligman, Martin E. P. (1996). The Optimistic Child: Proven Program to Safeguard Children from Depression & Build Lifelong Resilience. New York: Houghton Mifflin. (Paperback edition, Harper Paperbacks, 1996, ISBN 0-06-097709-4
- Seligman, Martin E. P. (2002). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-2297-0 (Paperback edition, Free Press, 2004, ISBN 0-7432-2298-9)
- Seligman, Martin E. P. (2004). '"Can Happiness be Taught?". DaedalusDaedalus (journal)Dædalus is a peer-reviewed academic journal founded in 1955 as the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. It is published by MIT Press on behalf of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Each issue addresses a theme with essays on the arts, sciences, and humanities. Special...
, Spring 2004. - Peterson, Christopher, & Seligman, Martin E. P. (2004). Character Strengths and Virtues. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 987-0-19-516701-6
- Seligman, Martin E. P. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-1-4391-9075-3
External links
- Authentic Happiness, Seligman's homepage at University of Pennsylvania
- "Eudaemonia, the Good Life: A Talk with Martin Seligman", an article wherein Seligman speaks extensively on the topic of eudaemonia
- "The Positive Psychology Center", a website devoted to positive psychology. Martin Seligman is director of the Positive Psychology Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
- Program description for Master of Applied Positive Psychology degree established by Seligman
- Martin E. P. Seligman's curriculum vitae at the University of Pennsylvania
- TED Talk: Why is psychology good?