Web site logical path: [www.psy.gla.ac.uk] [~steve] [courses] [PosPsy course] [this page]

Positive psychology textbooks

If you're keen, you might want to look at some textbooks associated with courses on PosPsy elsewhere. I'm certainly not teaching from any of them, but they will give you a slightly different list of topics (and refs) than the student-created pages I'm basing the course on currently.

Students on this course are by now well practised at finding material in the research literature, and a textbook won't add a great deal to that. But the main bonus of such textbooks for the keen is the practical exercises.

Textbooks

• Ben-Shahar, Tal. (2007) Happier : learn the secrets to daily joy and lasting fulfillment (London : McGraw-Hill)
  < In GU library: Psychology G90.H2 BEN >
  His website
  [ This is the book I started with myself]

• Seligman, Martin E. P. (2002). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (New York: Free Press)
  His website

• Boniwell, Ilona (2006) Positive Psychology in a nutshell: A balanced introduction to the science of optimal functioning

• Hefferon,K. & Boniwell, Ilona (2011) Positive Psychology: Theory, Research and Applications (OU press)
  Their course website
  < In GU library: Psychology P700 DON >
  [ This is from the people teaching the first/main UK course on PosPsy at the University of East London]

  Not so much a textbook, but still a compendium:

• Stewart I. Donaldson, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Jeanne Nakamura (eds.) (2011) Applied Positive Psychology: Improving Everyday Life, Health, Schools, Work, and Society (New York: Psychology press)
  [This could be a useful book to look over if you are thinking of doing research in PosPsy.]

Web site logical path: [www.psy.gla.ac.uk] [~steve] [courses] [PosPsy course] [this page]
[Top of this page]