Blog 10: Interacting with Danes to detect similarities and Differences

Today in class we had the wonderful opportunity to meet Danish students! One of the ways we prepared for this meeting was by creating posters to elaborate on elements of what is considered to be well-being in Denmark. We have included hedonic (food) and eudemonic (community) aspects. But the highlight of the day was the actual interaction with Danish students. We met in small groups to act out living as castaways on an island. But the most interesting part of the conversation for me was when we got to ask questions to the Danes.

Anna, our lovely Danish guide, walked us through the Danish government and election process. They talked to us about their taxation policy as well. Though we have in general discussed the Danes as an individualistic culture, their socialistic taxation policy really shows that they value the well-being of the collective. America is more of a pure individualistic culture. 

Post 9: Situated Learning and Culture

Today we discussed Situated Learning Theory in which one learns how to act within a specific group/community. There are 3 parts to this theory: 1) Social construction (the truth is what people collectively decide together to be the truth), 2) communities of practice (places where learning happens, learning happens constantly, meaning, practice, community & identity//share a common goal, shared repertoire & mutual engagement) and 3) competent and peripheral legitimate participants.

To better understand this theory, we applied this material by looking at different classroom settings. We also examined Batman and Robin to see how batman is the master of the skill and Robin strives to be the master by working with Batman. Finally we noted how our own experience at DIS applied. As Americans, we were on the outside/legitimate peripheral participation at the beginning of the session. Nearing the end of session 1, we are closer to the center/full participation. 

Post 8: Happy Documentary

Today in class we watched the happy documentary, which aims to answer, "What makes people happy?" By using an elderly Brazilian surfer as an example, among others, "Happy" argues that once the needs of sustenance and safety are med, economic factors like status and money do not increase happiness. 

This surfer lives a meager life, yet is incredibly happy. He is a big proponent of exercise which increases dopamine and leads to life longevity. Thus we can see that this surfer highly values eudemonic well-being over hedonic well-being. He says that surfing provides meaning in his life by acting as a spiritual religion for him. He also takes the most joy from building strong relationships with his children; building positive relationships is an essential component of eudamonic well-being. 

Blog 7: Well Being at Constitution Day

    During today's Constitution Day celebration in Queen Margrethe and the Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt paid special tribute to the women who fought to achieve the right to vote 100 years ago. We watched both the Queen and Prime Minister's speech on the steps of Christiansborg. I was so struck by how little security we had to pass through to see the queen and prime minster. We were right next to the the two most important people in Denmark, yet all we had to endure was a quick pocket search by the police. If this was the United States, in order to see the President, we would have to go through multiple security checks and full body scans. For the Danish people, in their small country, the leaders are much more accessible and familiar to the people. In the United States, due to the sheer size of the nation, the vast majority of citizens have never had contact with the president. But in Denmark, these leaders are deeply entrenched with the people, so it is not uncommon to see them in public. This difference is categorized in culture by Hofstede as a high power distance in the US versus a low power distance in Demark. 

Blog 6: Nudging and How Well-being is Reflected in Products

Nudging is using positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions to try to achieve non-forced compliance can influence the motives, incentives and decision-making. We use nudging to thus get people to do what we want without removing their autonomy. When people do not have the cognitive resources to deal with the multitude of decisions presented to them, the use heuristics like nudging to lessen the cognitive load so that they can focus on other things. MINDSPACE is a method for nudging. It stands for messenger, incentives, norms, defaults, salience, priming, affect, commitment, and ego. A specific technique of nudging is gasification which entails  adding elements to a an activity that provides entertainment, is used in cognitive behavioral therapy today; an example is the stair piano. 

To see how well-being is reflected in products our class took field trips to Starbucks, McDonalds, BurgerKing, Dunkin Donuts, 7/11, and KFC. We went to these American run franchises to see what changes they had made to reflect well-being in America versus in the United States. We looked at place, product, and people. Most groups noticed across the board that 

the visual aesthetics of the business were much more appealing than in the US. The products themselves also looked more appealing, reflected in higher quality ingredients and a higher price. This is probably because the people here value quality over quickness. 

Class 5: Presentation/ Group Dynamics Reflection

At the halfway point in our course, we finished our first major group paper/presentation project. Thus we evaluated how both things had gone. I have included a picture of what our group discussion; for both topics we discussed what we would remove, what we wanted to keep the same, and what we wanted to add.

For our project, we wanted to:

• Remove the lengthiness of our presentation which occurred from dividing up the class in too many small groups for our activity. 
• Keep the hands on activity in the form of a game we used to illustrate our points. We also liked how we broke up our presentation with the game as a break. We used many forms of media including a video and pictures. 
• We would add in citing specific facts and examples and overview of all concepts to better hone in the points. We would also include ourselves in the group activity to make the game go faster.

For our group, we wanted to: 

• Take shorter frequent study breaks rather than allowing ourselves to take a few lengthy study breaks, thus increasing productivity. 
• Keep the delegation of group work and the accountability each person showed for their section, including preparing before we met as a group to edit the paper. Our casual, realized group dynamic filled with music and food allowed for cohesive editing. 
• We would change our study environment to see more of Copenhagen. We would also would become familiar with the requirements earlier. 

Class 4: Resilience and its Different Approaches

Resilience is defined as a phenomena characterized by patterns of positive adaption in the context of significant adversity. Lepore and Revenson theorized resilience to be composed of 3 parts: recovery, resistance, and reconfiguration. During recovery, one returns to their basic functioning level. Resistance is when one shows a lack of disturbance to a traumatic event. Finally in reconfiguration, an individual is changed positively or negatively from a traumatic event. Most resilient people are composed of 6 personality traits/abilities: reframing, experience of positive emotions, participation in physical activity, trusted social support, the use of personal and authentic strengths, and optimism. In essence, when a person believes that thinks work out for the best, understands their self worth and achievements, they can be resilient in times of hardship.

At our Field Trip to Café Exit today, we witnessed real resilience in the stories ex-inmates looking for ways of starting over. I was touched by the song lyrics of the choir of current inmates. In addition, this performing troupe is a beacon of hope and something to look forward to. The choir is also a way for them to create positive relations.

Class 3: Eudemonic Wellbeing compared to Hedonic Well-being

Eudemonic Wellbeing proposes that wellbeing is found in the actualization of human potential. The theory then offers 3 approaches to achieving self actualization: psychological well being, authentic happiness, and self determination. In Psychological well being, we attempt to meet 6 goals: self acceptance, personal growth, finding a purpose in life, making positive relations, environmental mastery and autonomy. In Authentic happiness, we want good flow and a meaningful life. The self determination theory proposes that we need autonomy to freely choose actions according to ourselves, competence or the ability to affect the environment we are in and attain the desired outcome, and relatedness, or connecting and caring with other group members.

We can compare Hedonic and Eudemonic Well-being by looking at Maslow's Hierarchy of need's pyramid. Eudemonic happiness occupies the top 3 layers, and the while Hedonic happiness refers broadly to a pleasant life, or the bottom 2 layers.

Hedonic Happiness focuses more on tangible needs for a happy life, whereas eudemonic well being focuses more on finding meaning. 

Class 2: Hedonic Happiness; Top Down/Bottom-Up Arguments

Hedonic Happiness is also known as subjective well being (SWB). A individual's SWB is determined by 3 factors, one's satisfaction with life (or how closely their reality aligns with the ideal they had for life), high positive affect, and low negative affect. Affects are the emotions associated with experiencing momentary events. Hedonic Happiness can be explained in two different models, top-down and bottom-up. The top-down theory suggests that Hedonic Happiness produces certain outcomes. For example, people who are happy have a higher chance of doing well in job interviews and thus securing a well paying job. The bottom-up theory instead suggests that particular variables increase happiness. For example, people who are rich feel a sense of security and are well taken care of, which leads to happiness.  

Class 1: What Is Positive Psychology? How is PP different from other Fields of Psychology?

For years, psychology has focused on mental illness, and way to combat this and help people. Positive Psychology balances this traditional approach by instead focusing instead on people's strengths and weaknesses. This is represented on our poster by a comparison a small weak looking man versus a body builder. 

We can understand there to have been 4 waves of psychological discourses and theories within 2 time periods. The first time period, focused on controlling attitudes with leading theories such as Behaviorism by Skinner. Next, psychologists studied how the upbringing of people can contribute to developing people's norms and socializing them to society; major theories included Piaget's study of development. During the third period, the focus was on how individuals can participate. Positive Psychology developed out of the fourth and current wave, in which we focus on how individuals can influence society. Now, instead of humans being subjects of society and others, psychologists explore how individuals can take charge of their own lives. 

On our poster, we first discussed the 3 nodes of positive psychology: subjective, individual, and group. The subjective node encompasses positive experiences across all points of time. The individual node focuses on the characteristics of a "good person" (love, talent, courage, etc). The group node focuses on citizenship, tolerance, work ethic, ect. We depicted each of these nodes with representative pictures. 

The other main part of our our poster was an explanation of the Well Being Theory of Positive Psychology, which is a construct containing 5 elements: Positive emotion, engagement (flow), meaning (having a higher purpose), accomplishment (for its own sake), and positive relationships (to share experiences).