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Martin Seligman

“Use your signature strengths and virtues in the service of something

much larger than you are.”

Martin Seligman & Positive Psychology

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Martin Seligman is a pioneer of Positive Psychology (the
term itself was coined by Abraham Maslow), not simply
because he has a systematic theory about why happy
people are happy, but because he uses the scientific
method to explore happiness. Through the use of
exhaustive questionnaires, Seligman found that the most
satisfied, upbeat people were those who had discovered
and exploited their unique combination of “signature
strengths,” such as humanity, temperance and persistence.
This vision of happiness combines the virtue ethics of
Confucius, Mencius and Aristotle with modern
psychological theories of motivation. Seligman’s conclusion
is that happiness has three dimensions that can be
cultivated: the Pleasant Life, the Good Life, and the
Meaningful Life.

The Pleasant Life is realised if we learn to savour and appreciate such basic pleasures as companionship, the natural
environment and our bodily needs. We can remain pleasantly stuck at this stage or we can go on to experience the Good Life,
which is achieved through discovering our unique virtues and strengths, and employing them creatively to enhance our lives.
According to modern theories of self-esteem life is only genuinely satisfying if we discover value within ourselves. Yet one of the
best ways of discovering this value is by nourishing our unique strengths in contributing to the happiness of our fellow humans.
Consequently the final stage is the Meaningful Life, in which we find a deep sense of fulfilment by employing our unique
strengths for a purpose greater than ourselves. The genius of Dr. Seligman’s theory is that it reconciles two conflicting views of
human happiness, the individualistic approach, which emphasizes that we should take care of ourselves and nurture our own
strengths, and the altruistic approach, which tends to downplay individuality and emphasizes sacrifice for the greater purpose.
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The very good news is there is quite a number of internal circumstances […] under your voluntary control. If
you decide to change them (and be warned that none of these changes come without real effort), your level
of happiness is likely to increase lastingly.

(Seligman 2002, p. xiv)

Some detractors have criticized Positive Psychology as being intentionally oblivious to stark realities. And though Seligman
ventures into the area of pleasure and gratification through his research in the area of positive emotion, there is much more to his
work beyond this. In his study of the Good Life (cultivating strengths and virtues) and the Meaningful Life (developing meaning
and purpose), positive psychology seeks to help people acquire the skills to be able to deal with the stuff of life in ever fuller,
deeper ways.

Martin Seligman: A Little Background

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Born in 1942, Seligman is credited the fatherScience of Psychology
of Positive Happiness and
Introits&efforts
Certificate Coursesexplore human potential. In
to scientifically
Authentic Happiness (2002), he explains that his journey towards this new field in psychology started off in a study on learned
helplessness in dogs.

During the course of the study, he noticed that, in spite of numerous

configurations, some dogs would not quit and did not “learn”
helplessness. This intrigued and excited the self-proclaimed
pessimist and he drew parallels between dogs and learned
helplessness with depression in humans (Seligman 2002, p. 20-23).
This shaped his work and he has since become one of the most
often-cited psychologists not only in positive psychology but
psychology in general.

A significant moment in Seligman’s life was his landmark speech in 1998, at the time of his inauguration as the president of the
American Psychological Association (APA) when he declared that psychologists need to study what makes happy people happy!
He noted, “The most important thing, the most general thing I learned, was that psychology was half-baked, literally half-baked.
We had baked the part about mental illness […] The other side’s unbaked, the side of strength, the side of what we’re good at.”
(Address, Lincoln Summit, Sep. 1999.) In many ways, this signaled the opening of a new perspective for the field of psychology.

One of Seligman’s forerunners, Abraham Maslow, helped to call attention to humanistic psychology, which focused on human
strengths and potential rather than neuroses and pathologies. Yet, Maslow was an intuitively inspired theorist with little
methodologically sound, empirical evidence to support his claims. The next generation of psychologists such as Seligman, Ed
Diener, and Mihaly Csiskzenmihalyi are working to scientifically study the effects of positive emotions and the ways in which they
affect health, performance, and overall life satisfaction. More importantly for us, their studies have shown that happiness can be
taught and learned.
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The Three Dimensions of Happiness

[Positive Psychology] takes you through the countryside of pleasure and gratification, up into the high
country of strength and virtue, and finally to the peaks of lasting fulfillment: meaning and purpose.

(Seligman 2002, p. 61)

According to Seligman, we can experience

three kinds of happiness:

1) Pleasure and Gratification 2) Embodiment of Strengths and 3) Meaning and Purpose. 

Virtues
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emotion but of Happiness
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see that in his mind there is a progression from
the first type of happiness of pleasure/gratification to strengths/virtues and finally meaning/purpose.

The Pleasant Life: Past, Present & Future

Seligman provides a mental “toolkit” to achieve what he calls the pleasant life by enabling people to think constructively about
the past, gain optimism and hope for the future and, as a result, gain greater happiness in the present.

Dealing with the Past Happiness in the Optimism of the

Present Future

Among Seligman’s arsenal for

combating unhappiness with the past After making headway with these When looking to the future, Seligman
is that which we commonly and strategies for dealing with negative recommends an outlook of forward
curiously find among the wisdom of emotions of the past and building leaning hope and optimism.
the ages: gratitude and forgiveness. hope and optimism for the future,
Seligman refers to American society Seligman recommends breaking
as a “ventilationist society” that habituation, savoring experiences and
“deem[s] it honest, just and even using mindfulness as ways to
healthy to express our anger.” He increase happiness in the present.
notes that this is often seen in the
types of therapy used for issues,
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problems and challenges. In contrast,
Seligman extols the East Asian
tendency to quietly deal with difficult
situations. He cites studies that find
that those who refrain from
expressing negative emotions and in
turn use different strategies to cope
with the stresses of life also tend to
be happier (Seligman 2002, p. 69).

The Role of Positive Emotion

Many studies have shown that positive emotions are frequently accompanied by fortunate circumstances (e.g., longer life, health,
large social networks, etc). For example, one study observed nuns who were, for the most part, leading virtually identical
lifestyles. It seemed that the nuns who expressed positive emotions more intensely and more frequently in their daily journals
also happened to outlive many of the nuns who clearly did not. Another study used high school yearbook photos of women to
see if the ultimate expression of happiness (a smile) might also be used as an indicator as to how satisfied they might be 20 years
later. When surveyed, those who were photographed with genuine, “Duchenne” smiles were more likely to find themselves, in
their mid-life, married with families and involved in richer social lives.
In short, positive emotions are frequently paired with happy circumstances. And while we might be tempted to assume that
happiness causes positive emotions, Seligman wonders, instead, whether positive emotions cause happiness. If so, what does
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this mean for our life and our happiness?

The Good Life: Embodying the 6 Virtues & Cultivating the 24

Strengths

The strengths and virtues […] function against misfortune and against the psychological disorders, and they
may be the key to building resilience.

(Seligman 2002, p. xiv)

Virtues

One notable contribution that Seligman has made for Positive Psychology is his cross-cultural study to create an “authoritative
classification and measurement system for the human strengths”. He and Dr. Christopher Peterson, a top expert in the field of
hope and optimism, worked to create a classification system that would help psychologists measure positive psychology’s
effectiveness. They used good character to measure its efficacy because good character was so consistently and strongly linked
to lasting happiness. In order to remain true to their efforts to create a universal classification system, they made a concerted
effort to examine and research a wide variety of religious and philosophical texts from all over the world (Seligman 2002, p. 132).
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They were surprised to find 6 particular virtues that were valued in almost every culture, valued in their own right (not just as
a means to another end) and are attainable.

1. Wisdom & Knowledge.

2. Courage

3. Love & Humanity

4. Justice

5. Temperance

6. Spirituality & Transcendence

Strengths

For Seligman, the strengths are the “route” through we achieve virtues in our life.
Seligman clarifies the difference between talents and strengths by defining strengths as moral traits that can be developed,
learned, and that take effort. Talents, on the other hand, tend to be inherent and can only be cultivated from what exists rather
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than what develops through effort (Seligman 2002, p. 134). For example, many people consider musical ability as more or less
inherent and can only be strengthened. On the other hand, one can cultivate the strength of patience, which can lead to the
virtue of temperance.

Seligman provides a detailed classification of the different virtues as well as a strengths survey that is available on his website:
www.authentichappiness.org.

Seligman sees the healthy exercise and development of strengths and virtues as a key to the good life – a life in which one uses
one’s “signature strengths every day in the main realms of your life to bring abundant gratification and authentic happiness.” The
good life is a place of happiness, good relationships and work, and from this point, Seligman encourages people to go further to
seek a meaningful life in the continual quest for happiness (Seligman 2002, p. 161).

The Meaningful Life

MEANING & FLOW

Positive emotion alienated from the exercise of character leads to emptiness, inauthenticity, depression and, as we age, to the
gnawing realization that we are fidgeting until we die (Seligman 2002, p. 8).
Here Seligman states, rather dismally, that there are no shortcuts to happiness. While the pleasant life might bring more positive
emotion to one’s life, to foster a deeper more enduring happiness, we need to explore the realm of meaning. Without the
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application of one’s unique strengths and the development of one’s virtues towards an end bigger than one’s self, one’s potential
tends to be whittled away by a mundane, inauthentic, empty pursuit of pleasure.

Seligman expands on the work of his contemporary and colleague, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in the area of “flow” to explain, in
part, what he means by the meaningful life. Investing oneself into creative work creates a greater sense of meaning in life and
accordingly, a greater sense of happiness.

ALTRUISM

Seligman goes one step further than Csikszentmihalyi by exploring the experience of flow and the loss of self-consciousness that
is involved in acts of altruism and of kindness.

Kindness […] consists in total engagement and in the loss of consciousness

(Seligman 2002, p. 9)

The exercise of kindness is a gratification in contrast to pleasure. As a gratification, it calls on your strengths to rise to an occasion
and meet a challenge, particularly in the service of others.
 How can we use our strengths and virtues to achieve a meaningful life? One example
could be a gifted martial artist who experiences great pleasure in perfecting her skills
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in karate and winning prizes in tournaments. Yet then she discovers that one autistic
child she is teaching shows signs of enormous improvement. This makes her feels so
good that she opens a class for children with special needs. 

Seeing these children overcome their challenges gives her still greater happiness.
Finally, she becomes so absorbed in the happiness of these children that she forgets
about her own happiness! This situation enables her to enrich the lives of others while engaging her own strengths and virtues.

Conclusion
The pleasant life: a life that successfully pursues the positive emotions about the present, past, and future.
The good life: using your signature strengths to obtain abundant gratification (through activities we like doing) in the main
realms of your life.
The meaningful life: using your signature strengths and virtues in the service of something much larger than you are.
(Seligman 2002, p. 249).
Here Seligman succinctly describes his formula for happiness in life.

Our Related Articles

The following three scientists also contributed significantly to science of happiness literature:

Viktor Frankl
Barbara Fredrickson
William James

External Videos & Recommended Reading

 Martin Seligman Ted talk on positive psychology.
Martin Seligman’s Learned Optimism is used in an intervention for a depressed elderly patient named Sigmund Freud.
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Seligman, Martin E.P. (1991). Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York, NY: Pocket Books.

Bibliography
Seligman, Martin E.P. (1991). Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York, NY: Pocket Books.
Seligman, Martin E.P. (1996). The Optimistic Child: Proven Program to Safeguard Children from Depression & Build Lifelong
Resilience. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.
Seligman, Martin E.P. (2002). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting
Fulfillment. New York, NY: Free Press.
Seligman, Martin E.P. (2004). “Can Happiness be Taught?” Daedalus, Spring 2004.
Seligman, Martin E.P. Doing the Right Thing: Measuring Well Being for Public Policy. International Journal of Wellbeing Vol. 1,
No. 1. (2011).
Dog on stand by idaeggen / SXC.hu ; Karate dojo by Jjskarate / Wikipedia.

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