ABSTRACT

A recurring theme in positive psychology is the notion of "upward spirals" of mutually reinforcing desirable outcomes, whose common theme is the power of positive emotions. The ethical issues involved here are sometimes complex, yet they are potentially of more than just academic interest for master of applied positive psychology students, with demand for interventions by positive psychology graduates being high. Since the Master of Applied Positive Psychology course at the University of Pennsylvania admitted its first cohort of students in 2005, more than a thousand people have graduated from the various master's level and other graduate diploma programs in positive psychology at universities worldwide Psychology is regarded as "soft" sciences, but as the play on words in the title of this section suggests, it is a field in which making genuine progress is not easy, because its objects of study are so complex and unpredictable. Scientists typically start out by observing phenomena and then trying to explain them.