Positive Psychological Capital - Introduction

Introduction

For decades psychology has been associated as dealing mainly with treatment of mental illness, although other areas of research and application have existed since its origins. At the very end of the twentieth century a new approach in psychology gained popularity: positive psychology.

Positive psychology, the study of optimal human functioning, is an attempt to respond to the systematic bias inherent in psychology's historical emphasis on mental illness rather than on mental wellness (Seligman, 2002), mainly by focusing on two, forgotten but classical psychological goals:

• Help ordinary people to live a more productive and meaningful life.
• A full realization of the potential that exists in the human being.

Since Martin Seligman, a former head of American Psychological Association, chose positive psychology as the theme of his presidency term, more empirical research and theoretic development emerged in this field.

Two new branches of positive psychology are being implemented into the industrial-organizational world.

• Positive organizational scholarship- a research field that emphasizes the positive characteristics of the organization that facilitates its ability to function during periods of crisis.
• Positive organizational behavior (POB) – focuses on measurable positive- psychological abilities of the employee. The research is trying to discover and develop those abilities in order to improve job performance.

As opposed to positive psychology, organizational positive psychology focuses on situational characteristics that can be developed and improved through intervention in work place and proactive management techniques. Moreover it focuses only on measurable and improvable characteristics. Through POB theories, several concepts were identified including subjective happiness, optimism, hope, resiliency and emotional intelligence.

Through empirical research it was discovered that different constructs of POB are not conceptually identical. Rather, they differ in their measurement and their combination produces a higher structure. The implications and influences of this structure are bigger than the simple summary of its parts. The name of the construct is positive psychological capital or Psycap. Its components are hope, self-efficacy, optimism and resiliency.

Hope - Is defined as a positive motivational state where two basic elements - successful feeling of agency (or goal oriented determination) and pathways (or planning to achieve those goals) interact.

Self efficacy – Is defined as people's confidence in their ability to achieve a specific goal in a specific situation.

Optimism – was defined by Seligman by Attribution theory (Fritz Heider, 1958). An Optimistic person is defined as one that makes "Internal" or "dispositional", fixed and global attributions for positive events and "External" or "situational", not fixed and specific attributions to negative events. Optimism in Psycap is thought as a realistic construct that regards what an employee can or cannot do, as such, optimism reinforces self efficacy and hope.

Resiliency – Is defined in Positive Psychology as a positive way of coping with danger or distress. In organizational aspect, it is defined as an ability to recuperate from stress, conflict, failure, change or increase in responsibility.