《Positive Psychology 6》.doc

Positive Psychology – Lecture 6 Hope you had a wonderful long weekend. So, lets jump right into it. So where did we leave last time? Last time we talked about the power of the situation, we talk about how beliefs become self -fulfilling prophesies. And how it is through the situation that we very often create expectations, believes of people. And these believes become reality. And we talked about how social psychology essentially started with some very important experiment such as the Milgrim effect, or obedience to authority. Such as Zimbardos prison experiment, where prisoners were put in or played... students play the role of prisoners or the role of wardens and they actually entered that role so totally that after a week the experiment had to be stop, when it was suppose to go on for two weeks. And then the question we asked was, OK, so we know that the situation is powerful. We know that it makes a difference. Can we also create a powerful, positive situation to bring out the best in people? And the answer is yes. And we started talking about it and we talk about professor Langer and her research and how she show that putting um...elderly men in an environment where they were actually or where they acted as if they were 20 years younger actually became younger. To the point of having higher levels of intelligence. To the point of improving their memory. Improving their eyesight, improving their hearing. The distance between the bones in their figures actually became longer which is a sign of younger age. They were rated by others as well as by themselves as stronger and younger just because they acted as if it was 1959 instead of what it was really was, which was 1979. The power of the positive situation. And then she did another more research on people going for an eyesight test, and put them in a situation in a flight simulator. And the exact same eyesight test, they actually performed better just because of the situation. And w