I am interested to positive psychology, so I want to write about researches on positive psychology. Positive psychology focuses on human strengths and help people live better lives. One of popular Harvard open courses is Positive Psychology and I like how the professor discussed happiness. Positive psychology help people pay attention to good parts of human beings as psychologists usually focus on psychological disorders. For example, according to the textbook, people can be recovered even after suffering from severe psychological disorders and terrible events. At present, positive psychology has been a young but popular field. Various self-help books are selling all over the world and they tell people to consistently repeat positive self-help statement, such as "I am smart!" and "I did well!" However, some researches show that positive psychology is not so effective sometimes. A research done by University of Waterloo shows that people with high self esteem did not feel better about them after repeating positive self-help statements while the statements make people with low self esteem feel worse about themselves. So, I think topics related to positive psychology is worth researching. Maybe positive psychology is not so magical.
xuxxx784: May 2012 Archives
From our textbook, there are three major parenting styles: permissive, authoritarian and authoritative. Permissive parents give their children almost absolute freedom and praise children very often. Authoritarian parents are extremely strict with their children, punish them frequently and barely praise their children. Authoritative parents are combination of the other two types. They respond properly to their children. Also, some people believe there is one more style called uninvolved, which refers to parents who do not pay much attention to their children.
One limitation of the theory is culture differences. China's "Tiger Mother", Amy Chua, wrote a book titled "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." This controversial book gives rise to a debate to western and eastern parenting styles. It is true that American parents have diverse and less harsh parenting styles. As a girl grown up in typically collectivist culture, I agree with the authors that the differences of three major parenting styles are not so obvious in my home country. Most Chinese parents are very strict with their children. Physical punishment is very common, especially when children are in primary school. Luckily, my parents are authoritative. But their parenting style is controversial among their friends. I think the reason is that Chinese population is huge, and we have one child policy. Therefore, parents always want their children to be the best and win out the competition. Also, obedience to parents and older family members is strongly encouraged as a tradition. So, I think most Chinese parents are authoritarian and authoritative, or the combination of both.
