Wow Todd, I love your categorization. It certainly helps to refocus attention more effectively. Have you cross referenced your list with the VIA 24 character strengths? At first blush I’m thinking there is a lot of congruency. ☺️
Another thought I have had after reading some of your posts, has to do with what was intended with “positive interventions”. While I do believe that many of the interventions could be helpful to those individuals with significant mental health issues, psychology has already identified many facilitated interventions (psychotherapy, medications, CBT, motivational interviewing,
ACT, etc) that were better directed for effective treatment.
My understanding of positive psychology is that it was directed towards individuals who believed that while their lives were OK, perhaps there were ways to make it so much better. This has the potential to increase hope & self-efficacy. At the risk of sounding like I’ve drank too much of the Koolaid, this differentiation makes sense to me. And, I have also benefited from CBT & psychotherapy at times when that was more helpful to me. Interested in your further thoughts!
Not yet with the VIA. Next paper we give away free assessments of all 19 dimensions for people to use as they see fit. So we’re all using the same scales. In progress. Would love somebody to explore that!
Great point. You know almost nobody that I know of has intentionally tried to study the walking well to see what boosts propel from ok good or great. They mix their sample w th walking wounded which as you say can best be handled with interventions targeting the suffering. So it’s an open question.
Excellent article, Todd! Thanks so much for allowing us, including myself to enjoy this article for free on Substack and on Facebook. Much appreciated and much respect! FYI, how was your birthday yesterday? Please let me know! Email me at romanticsinger24@gmail.com or feel free to call me on my free TextNow phone number, 1-571-500-8485. Hope to hear back from you sometime soon, Todd!
The 196-to-19 reduction is satisfying in the way a good diagnosis is satisfying — not because the problem is solved, but because you finally know what you're actually dealing with.
What strikes me about your six 90%-consensus dimensions is that four of them — optimism, connection, belonging, self-acceptance — are also the primary attack surface for every sophisticated fraud I've studied. Not incidentally. Deliberately. The romance scammer engineers belonging before he engineers the wire transfer. The Ponzi operator sells optimism as a product. The affinity fraudster borrows connection from a community he didn't build. What makes us most human is what makes us most reachable.
Your point about "antecedents vs dimensions" hit something I've been trying to articulate for three years: the con artist doesn't attack your well-being. He rents it. He borrows the specific dimensions that took you a lifetime to build — your capacity for trust, your hope about the future, your sense of belonging to something — uses them briefly, and returns them damaged.
I'm writing a book on exactly this structural problem, through the lens of my grandmother's 30-year spice stall in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar. She had no taxonomy. She had a brass scale both parties could see. Probably a more parsimonious solution than 196 dimensions — though I imagine the field would find something to argue about even there.
An odd thing I noticed: you have included "social contribution" yet that item does not appear to have achieved 75% and you left out "sense of safety," which did.
Wow Todd, I love your categorization. It certainly helps to refocus attention more effectively. Have you cross referenced your list with the VIA 24 character strengths? At first blush I’m thinking there is a lot of congruency. ☺️
Another thought I have had after reading some of your posts, has to do with what was intended with “positive interventions”. While I do believe that many of the interventions could be helpful to those individuals with significant mental health issues, psychology has already identified many facilitated interventions (psychotherapy, medications, CBT, motivational interviewing,
ACT, etc) that were better directed for effective treatment.
My understanding of positive psychology is that it was directed towards individuals who believed that while their lives were OK, perhaps there were ways to make it so much better. This has the potential to increase hope & self-efficacy. At the risk of sounding like I’ve drank too much of the Koolaid, this differentiation makes sense to me. And, I have also benefited from CBT & psychotherapy at times when that was more helpful to me. Interested in your further thoughts!
Not yet with the VIA. Next paper we give away free assessments of all 19 dimensions for people to use as they see fit. So we’re all using the same scales. In progress. Would love somebody to explore that!
Great point. You know almost nobody that I know of has intentionally tried to study the walking well to see what boosts propel from ok good or great. They mix their sample w th walking wounded which as you say can best be handled with interventions targeting the suffering. So it’s an open question.
Excellent article, Todd! Thanks so much for allowing us, including myself to enjoy this article for free on Substack and on Facebook. Much appreciated and much respect! FYI, how was your birthday yesterday? Please let me know! Email me at romanticsinger24@gmail.com or feel free to call me on my free TextNow phone number, 1-571-500-8485. Hope to hear back from you sometime soon, Todd!
The 196-to-19 reduction is satisfying in the way a good diagnosis is satisfying — not because the problem is solved, but because you finally know what you're actually dealing with.
What strikes me about your six 90%-consensus dimensions is that four of them — optimism, connection, belonging, self-acceptance — are also the primary attack surface for every sophisticated fraud I've studied. Not incidentally. Deliberately. The romance scammer engineers belonging before he engineers the wire transfer. The Ponzi operator sells optimism as a product. The affinity fraudster borrows connection from a community he didn't build. What makes us most human is what makes us most reachable.
Your point about "antecedents vs dimensions" hit something I've been trying to articulate for three years: the con artist doesn't attack your well-being. He rents it. He borrows the specific dimensions that took you a lifetime to build — your capacity for trust, your hope about the future, your sense of belonging to something — uses them briefly, and returns them damaged.
I'm writing a book on exactly this structural problem, through the lens of my grandmother's 30-year spice stall in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar. She had no taxonomy. She had a brass scale both parties could see. Probably a more parsimonious solution than 196 dimensions — though I imagine the field would find something to argue about even there.
An odd thing I noticed: you have included "social contribution" yet that item does not appear to have achieved 75% and you left out "sense of safety," which did.