In K. M. Sheldon,T. B. Kashdan, & M. F. Steger (2011).
Designing Positive Psychology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward
New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 228-247.

Introduction: Positive Psychology and Personality Science

Positive psychology and personality science emerged virtually simultaneously as the new millennium appeared on our horizon. The aspirations and research agendas of these two intellectual movements overlap yet their core tasks differ.[i] The central concern of positive psychology is to reorient  psychology to positive features of human conduct that have been understudied in conventional psychology such as hope, happiness, exceptional accomplishment, virtuous action and human flourishing (Sheldon, Frederickson, Rathunde, Csikszentmihalyi & Haidt, 2000.)  In exploring these topics positive psychology is concerned with aspects of human thought, feeling and action that are, in Peterson’s (2006) terms, “north of neutral.” Personality science, the hub of which is an invigorated and expanded personality psychology, aims to explore and integrate the full range of diverse influences on personality drawing on disciplines ranging from molecular genetics to narrative theory (Cervone & Mischel, 2002a; Little, 2005, 2006). Its explorations extend both north and south of neutral. I suggest that the geographic center of personality science is essentially equatorial.

My goal for this chapter is to reflect on how these two movements have co-evolved and how they may continue to do so.  The key substantive question I explore is this: to what extent and in what ways are positive emotions, orientations, and actions critical for human well-being? Drawing on research in personality science I will make the case that for some individuals, under certain circumstances, adopting what I will call a northern tilt will be highly adaptive. Under other circumstances, however, an upward bound approach to life might be less adaptive.  At its worst, unmitigated positivity might catch us unawares and bring us to our knees.

I begin by taking stock of some shared themes in positive psychology and the study of personality.  I start with the most important common concern—the conceptual and empirical analysis of human well-being and the diverse forms it may take.  I then discuss three major sources of influence on human well-being: stable features of persons such as traits and basic orientations, volitional action such as personal projects, and influences within the social ecology where traits are expressed and projects are pursued.  After taking stock I will then propose three areas for future exploration that blend the aspirations of both of these vital fields of inquiry.

Taking Stock: Four Conjoint Themes in Personality Science and Positive Psychology

Human Well-Being: The Complexity and Contestability of the Good

Concern with human happiness, well-being and flourishing is a constitutive and defining feature of positive psychology.  In formulating theories of the life well led, positive psychology has drawn from a diversity of fields within and outside of psychology.[ii]  Personality psychology has been one of the most stimulating of these sources. A frequently invoked link has been with theories of personality arising out of humanistic psychology which reached its zenith in the middle of the 20^th century.  However, many positive psychologists have been wary of identifying too strongly with this tradition because of the perceived anti-measurement bias in much of humanistic psychology (Little, 1972a, Peterson, 2006).

If the rhetorical passion of positive psychology emanated from nineteen fifties humanistic psychology, its rigorous empirical groundwork originated elsewhere.  During the nineteen seventies and eighties, a group of largely independent research programs emerged in personality, social and individual differences psychology that were explicitly concerned with positive features of human functioning.  It is notable that some of these research programs arose concomitantly with the person-situation debate in personality psychology and in certain respects were the beneficiaries of the challenges and changes incurred during that fractious period. The resolution of the person-situation debate was found in perspectives positing the joint impact of person and situational factors on human action.  Although sharing common assumptions, they adopted diverse names such as person-environment psychology, transactional and social ecological perspectives in personality (Little, 1987b).  These research programs brought to the fore diverse measures of human functioning, many of which would become incorporated into positive psychology, including subjective well-being and life satisfaction (Diener,1984), individual and institutional factors influencing physical and emotional health (Moos & Insel, 1974), and specialized orientations, competencies and intelligences (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987; Gardner,1983; Little, 1976).  In short, rigorous analyses of the causes and complexities of positive human functioning were well underway three decades before the official launch of positive psychology and perspectives that would stimulate the rise of personality science were prominent among them.

Despite the theoretical elegance of a unified concept of flourishing, and despite a generally positive manifold of correlations between diverse measures of positive functioning, several research programs advanced the proposition that the good life is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon.  Evidence began to accrue that hedonistic well-being may be independent of eudaimonic well-being, or more simply, that being happy may be independent of having a sense of meaning in one’s life (McGregor & Little, 1998; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Ryff, 1989; Waterman, 1993).[iii] Also, if one examines human flourishing as exemplified in high level achievement such as notable creativity, there has been substantial evidence that such achievement might be accompanied by the frequent experience of both positive and negative affect (see MacKinnon, 1962; Sheldon, 1995). Indeed, since antiquity and in particular historic periods, such as the nineteenth century romantic literary tradition, it was widely speculated that joyful happiness is only conceivable against a backdrop of melancholy (Wilson, 2008).

Positive psychology has stimulated consideration of the complexities that arise when we try to specify the nature of the life well lived. By inviting to the table philosophers, both ancient and modern, who have reflected deeply on such issues, positive psychologists enliven discussion about foundational concerns such as the contestability of the good. For example, the audacious pursuit of core projects may simultaneously enhance the well-being of the project pursuer, create problems for a partner, and yet redound to the benefit of the larger community: Gauguin’s journey to artistic fulfillment was achieved at a cost to his family and a gain to western culture.  Similarly, the initial positive effects of optimism may be based on a misreading of one’s circumstances and the ensuing action becomes unsustainable.  In short, sometimes the well-being of individuals might be achieved at the cost of their social ecology.  Focusing attention on human well-being in its diverse forms is at the very core of positive psychology. By drawing on and pulling together insights gleaned from diverse intellectual traditions, including that of personality psychology, positive psychology exposes human well-being to be complex, contestable and, as a capstone of an emerging discipline, of compelling interest.

Positive Dispositions: Northern Tilt as Natural Inclination

The search for relatively stable factors that predispose individuals to experience happiness and engage in a rich and satisfying life is a robust and growing area of research.  Is there a set of dispositions that would naturally tilt in the northerly direction?  I will consider two different categories of dispositions: traits and basic orientations.  The former is a dominant focus of contemporary research in both personality and positive psychology; the latter has been all but ignored.[iv]

Traits and Well-Being:  Beyond Stable Extraversion

After a period of turbulence during the great trait debate, the study of stable dispositions has gone through a period of steady, sustained growth.  There is a broad consensus that human personality comprises five major factors: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.[v]

One of the most reliable and robust findings regarding traits and well-being is that two of the big five dimensions of personality are very strongly linked to measures of well-being– extraversion (positively) and neuroticism (negatively) (Costa & McCrae, 1980).  Indeed, the formulaic title, “Happiness is a thing called stable extraversion” (Francis, 1998), does not seem particularly contentious. Extraversion is associated with states of positive affect and longer term happiness in part because of the sensitivity of extraverts to reward cues in the environment.  Extraverts have low thresholds for the detection of such cues and are particularly likely to find positive stimulation in social encounters (Argyle & Lu, 1990; Lucas, Le, & Dyrenforth, 2008).  Neurotic individuals are highly sensitive to punishment cues, in contrast with stable individuals who are less sensitive to such cues (Gray, 1982).  Consequently, stable extraverts have a decidedly northern tilt to their perceptions of the environment which, in turn, promotes their active engagement with a world of positive opportunities. Neurotic introverts, in contrast, are more likely to have a southern discomfort to their world views, which in turn promotes disengagement from a world of threat and potential danger.

If we move beyond happiness and examine the exercise of competencies and talents as aspects of human flourishing, traits beyond extraversion and neuroticism play a key role.  For example, conscientiousness and openness to experience are predictors of conventional and creative achievements respectively (e.g. Chamorro-Premuzic, 2006).  Once again, however, there are subtleties in terms of the specific domains in which stable traits predict success.  In meta-analytic studies, conscientiousness is consistently found to be a robust predictor of occupational success (e.g. Barrick & Mount, 1991).  But there are some occupational exceptions.  Hogan and Hogan (1993) demonstrated this in a group of Tulsa jazz musicians, among whom the least conscientious were the most effective.  Why do conscientious jazz musicians strike a discordant note among their peers?  Possibly they may adopt a highly focused style that actually inhibits the detection of pitch changes or tempo shifts spontaneously initiated by others during a jam session. Contemporary work organizations, in many respects, seem to be more like jam sessions than the classical hierarchies that conventional organization charts imply. So, even though stable traits may well predict positive outcomes in achievement and other domains, our joint research enterprise requires constant checking on and updating of the nature of the job, task or project requirements that define such success.  Yesterday’s northward tilting traits might tomorrow point due south.

Are the big five dispositions “natural” in the sense that there is a biological substratum, of genetic origin, underlying them?  The evidence suggests an affirmative answer: each of the major dimensions of personality has a moderately high level of heritability (e.g. Jang, Livesley, & Vernon, 1996).  There is also evidence that happiness, itself, has a high degree of heritability (Lykken & Tellegen, 1996).  This evidence led the authors to suggest that happiness is essentially luck in the genetic lottery and wanting to be happy for an adult was as futile as wanting to be taller, a claim that Lykken (2000) subsequently reconsidered and disavowed.  Recent developments in trait theory are consistent with the postulate that there may be a biological base to positive traits. DeYoung, Peterson and Higgins (2002) propose that the big five dimensions of personality can be subsumed by two higher order factors of plasticity, subsuming extraversion and openness,  and stability, subsuming agreeableness, conscientiousness and stability.  They postulate that plasticity is related to chronic levels of dopaminergic activity and that stability is related to chronic levels of serotonergic activity.  The joint capacity to maintain order while being open to change in the environment is particularly likely to be adaptive.

One of the most interesting intersections of personality science and positive psychology has been explorations on whether we can change levels of happiness by having individuals simulate one of the big five traits associated with happiness, such as extraversion.  Fleeson and his colleagues (Fleeson, Malanos, & Achille, 2002) found that introverts who acted in an extraverted fashion in a laboratory situation reported high levels of positive affect during those enactments.  The boundary conditions on this intriguing finding remain to be discovered.  Are such shifts in positive affect temporary, or might there even be “costs” of acting out of character, particularly if such behavior is engaged in over a protracted period of time (Little, 1996, 2000a; Little & Joseph, 2007)?

To summarize: personality science provides increasing evidence that relatively stable traits of personality may contribute to a northern tilt of positive evaluations about and encounters with the environment.  But to which features of the environment are such positive encounters directed?  What is the terrain of the northern territories to which we tilt in our transactions with the environment?  Traits only get us so far in answering these questions; something more is needed.

Primary Orientations: Persons, Things and Self  

             Positive psychology stimulates new inquiry, but it also invites us to revisit older research topics of potential relevance to human flourishing which appeared promising but which, for whatever reason, didn’t flourish.  In so doing, we may discover research domains that are worthy of resuscitation.  One such broad domain is the study of interests and orientations (e.g. Peterson, 2006, Chapter 8). Like traits, basic orientations are relatively stable features of individuals.  Although such positively tilting dispositions would be expected to be natural units of analysis for personality psychology, their study has been primarily undertaken by vocational and counseling psychologists and the research has been largely atheoretical.   However, one program of research in personality, called specialization theory, had basic orientations as a core theoretical construct (Little, 1972a, 1976).  For reasons that, quite naturally, I find difficult to understand, this research initiative was comprehensively ignored.  By revisiting it through the lens of positive psychology, I want to make the case for resuscitation.[vi]

Specialization theory (Little, 1972a) was proposed as a constructive alternative to Kelly’s (1955) personal construct theory and to theories of personality based on humanistic psychology.  Both of these theoretical orientations were precursors to positive psychology, although Kelly’s theory has received far less attention among positive psychologists than Rogers, Maslow and other humanistic psychologists.  Kelly argued that all people, not just those with Ph.D.s, are essentially scientists– erecting and testing hypotheses about the world and revising them in the light of experience.  Kellian theory was remarkably prescient in its systematic treatment of cognitive aspects of human endeavors.  Humanistic psychology promoted a similarly uplifting view of personality.  Individuals were attuned to values and experiences that challenged the image inherent in psychoanalytic and behavioral theories of the day.  Both Kellian and humanistic perspectives were consistent with positive psychology’s plea for an “open and appreciative” stance toward those whom they study (Sheldon & King, 2001, p.216).  They both captured the propensity of people to tilt northwards.

Specialization theory took a related, but somewhat different view.  It argued that in their thoughts, feelings and actions individuals were selectively attuned to their environments: humans were essentially “specialists.” Our theoretical job was to explore the nature of such specialized orientations and their implications for human adaptation, particularly for effective engagement in the world and with creativity (Little, 1976).

In retrospect, I think specialization theory was a kind of mitigated positive psychology.  It shared with the Kellian and humanist perspectives, and therefore with contemporary positive psychology, a conviction that humans were audacious creatures actively engaged with the world and its objects.  But specialization means that some domains will be necessarily ignored.    We may be astute Kellian scientists in some areas of our lives and utterly inept and disinterested in others.  More subtly, specialization entails errors of omission and commission.  Specialization may stimulate hyperdevelopment of particular interests.  Positive orientation, through positive feedback loops, can drift into dysfunction.[vii]

The first theoretical challenge was to inquire into the nature of human environments to which individuals might tilt.  Here the work of the analytic philosopher, Strawson (1959) in descriptive metaphysics, was foundational.  Strawson’s concern was to determine what he called the “primary particulars” of daily realities and he posited that persons and material objects met his stringent criteria.  Persons and things, in short, were foundational, ontologically primitive elements of human contexts.  The notion of primary objects as the foci of differential orientation was compelling and suggested psychological specialization might arise through individuals selectively orienting themselves toward these primary domains.   Modes of thinking about more abstract concepts or about blends of persons and things might then be influenced by a person’s primary orientation.  It was also assumed that some individuals might tilt toward both persons and things, but that remained an open empirical question.  These were the theoretical hunches that stimulated the empirical research program on primary orientations.

The research agenda of specialization theory was inspired by personality psychology’s integrative challenge.  It included the development of assessment tools tapping into the affective, cognitive and behavioral aspects of differential orientation.  The Thing-Person Orientation scale (T-P scale) was constructed to examine primary orientation—the affective component of specialization (Little, 1972b).   By having separate measures of person-orientation and thing-orientation it was possible to test whether there is a general tendency to have positive orientations toward the environment or whether person and thing orientation were, as some vocational theorists had argued, contrary orientations.  Neither assumption was supported.  Person-orientation and thing-orientation were shown to be internally consistent and orthogonal dimensions (Little, 1972b). .

Research with the T-P scale suggested that primary orientation toward a domain created a “specialization loop” in which affective, cognitive and behavioral processes became mutually reinforcing (Little, 1976).  For example, thing specialists (those scoring high on T and low on P) experienced more positive affect toward a diversity of physical objects; they were more cognitively complex regarding things, and engaged in greater frequency of encounters with them.  Similarly, person specialists (high on P, low on T) enjoyed being with diverse people, construed them more complexly and spent more time in interaction with them (Little, 1972b).[viii]

The orthogonality of person and thing orientation means that along with person and thing specialists we can identify equal numbers of individuals scoring high on both dimensions and those scoring low.  The former we called generalists.  They were shown to have a broad range of competencies, and score particularly highly on measures of creativity.  The latter we called non-specialists and were the least engaged of the four groups.  When we studied the way in which the four groups construed their daily environments, specifically a diversity of neighborhoods with which they were familiar, the orientations of all four quadrants became clearer.   As expected, person specialists focused on the human elements of their environments (e.g. “lots of kids”); things specialists on the material and technical aspects (e.g. “cobblestone streets”).  Generalists noticed emergent features of the milieu (e.g. “exciting atmosphere”).    Non-specialists were more likely to construe in terms of the relevance of the particular settings to their own needs (e.g. “close to where I live”) –suggesting that they might be more appropriately called self-specialists (Little, 1972b).[ix]

Are primary orientations, like traits, “natural” features of individuals?  Again an affirmative answer seems warranted.  There is evidence for moderately high heritability coefficients for vocational interests that are essentially measures of person and thing orientation (Schermer & Vernon, 2008).  There are also substantial and consequential sex differences in primary orientations, with women showing considerably higher levels of orientation toward persons (Little, 1972b, Lippa, 1998).   Graziano and his colleagues (e.g. Graziano, Habashi, Evangelou and Ngambeki, 2009) have been exploring the implications of person-thing orientation for attraction to and retention in engineering, physical science and related fields, where women are seriously underrepresented.  Thing-orientation, particularly for women, is a very strong predictor of entry into and retention in these fields.

There are several implications of this line of inquiry for positive psychology.  First, primary orientations are associated with greater efficacy, enjoyment and engagement in two fundamental domains relevant to the quality of lives—our commerce with the social world and the world of material objects.  Second, the notion of specialization loops provides a perspective on how positive orientations can both advance human effectiveness and compromise it.  In terms of adaptive competencies, generalists, those equally engaged with persons and things, seem able to adopt both agentic and communal orientations toward their environmental encounters.  Third, specialization theory by exploring human orientation to the non-human environment highlights an area that is radically understudied in psychological research on well-being (Little, 1972a; Searles, 1960).[x]  Specialization theory shifts the adaptive landscape considered relevant to personality and well-being to include the physical objects, both natural and constructed, which are too often obscured by the overwhelming presence of other people as the analytic focus of our psychological theories of well-being. When we tilt toward the environment to explore and be audacious, it is a world full of both material objects and social actors.  I suggest that, as personality scientists and positive psychologists, our theories are rich in detail about the role of other persons in enhancing the well-being of our respondents.  But the material world of mountain landscapes and four stroke engines also needs our attention.  We need to theorize about things more clearly.

The Happiness of Pursuit: Northern Tilt as Personal Action

A major area of common concern to positive psychology and personality science is that of personal action constructs (PAC).  PAC units include the study of current concerns, personal strivings, personal projects, and life tasks (Little, 1999a, 1999b).  In contrast with broader based motivational theories, PAC units are middle level and contextually embedded analytic concepts that provide a fine grained analysis of the motivational dynamics of daily lives (Little, 1989).

 

Emergence of PAC Units: Internal and External Dynamics of Daily Lives

Two influential PAC units emerged independently during the nineteen seventies: current concerns and personal projects.  Klinger’s (1977) work on current concerns arose out of the fields of motivational and clinical psychology.  Current concerns are conceived to be processes stimulated by a person’s commitments and these processes remained active until the concern is consummated or abandoned.  A rich array of internal processes was shown to be influenced by current concerns, including effects upon fantasy and dreaming (Klinger, 1987).

Personal projects arose out of the field of personality and environmental psychology (Little, 1972a, 1976, 1979, 1983) and comprise extended sets of personally salient action in context. Personal projects lie at the intersection of internal, self-regulatory processes and external, social-ecological affordances and constraints.  The earliest published empirical research with personal projects was explicitly focused on how such pursuits might influence well-being (Palys & Little, 1983).  Subsequent research revealed that well-being was enhanced to the extent that people are engaged in personal projects that are meaningful, efficacious, structured, supported by others and not unduly stressful (Little, 1989).  Although arising out of different theoretical lineages, current concerns and personal projects methods have increasingly been integrated, particularly in the domain of motivational counseling (Cox & Klinger, 2004; Little & Chambers, 2004).

During the nineteen eighties, research with PAC units flourished and this research, conjoined with the study of personal goals, continues to this day.[xi]  Two particularly generative research programs were those on personal strivings (Emmons, 1986) and life tasks (Cantor, Norem, Niedenthal, Langston, & Brower, 1987).  Personal strivings comprise pursuits that reflect what a person is typically trying to achieve.  Like other PAC units, appraisals of personal strivings display strong and theoretically compelling links with measures of well-being (Emmons, 1986, 1999). For example, conflict between personal strivings has been linked to compromised physical and emotional health (Emmons & King, 1988).

Life tasks comprised socially mandated and age graded norms about what one was expected to be doing. For example, students in transition through the first year of university could readily categorized their daily pursuits into life task categories such as “do well in my studies”, “make new friends” or “get independent of my parents”.  Successful transitions were associated with the skills and strategies that students used in pursuing their life tasks, and contrasting styles such as “defensive pessimism” and “illusory glow optimism” were identified as alternative routes to successful transitions (Cantor & Norem, 1989),

PAC units can be considered to form a continuum ranging from internally generated sources of action to externally generated sources of action.  Current concerns and personal strivings are primarily focused on internal factors.   Life tasks, arising as they do out of cultural expectations, are more attuned to the external sources of daily pursuits.  Personal projects, as mentioned, have a focus primarily at the interactional cusp of internal and external sources of personal action.  Indeed, when we ask individuals to list their everyday personal projects, the lists include pursuits that span the full spectrum from current concerns and strivings through to life tasks and imposed social roles (Little & Gee, 2007).

PAC units and personal goal research have now generated a substantial research literature, much of which straddles the boundary between personality science and positive psychology.  In the following sections I will focus on personal projects as representative of this research, primarily because the project analytic perspective was developed explicitly as a way of providing the both the integration required in personality science and a focus on well-being consistent with the aspirations of positive psychology.

Personal Project Pursuit and Well-Being: Major Themes

Studies of individuals’ appraisals of their personal projects have consistently demonstrated substantial relations with diverse measures of well-being (Little, 1989; Little, Salmela-Aro & Phillips, 2007; Palys & Little, 1983).  Although dozens of appraisal dimensions have been studied, depending on the particular group or eco-system under investigation, contemporary research reveals these to be subsumable under five major factors: project meaning, manageability, support, positive affect and negative affect. It seems reasonable to postulate that human well-being will be positively related to pursuing personal projects that are appraised as meaningful, manageable, supported, and as generating greater positive than negative affect.[xii]  As we shall see, as reasonable as such a postulate might appear, the cumulative data suggest that the links between project pursuit and well-being are more subtle, but no less interesting.  I will briefly and selectively discuss each of these factors, noting some of the major findings as well as some of the complexities that arise when we explore how project pursuit influences the quality of lives.

1. Meaning: A Predictive Paradox of Meaningful Project Pursuit?

Of considerable relevance to the theme of the current volume is that there is a definite northern tilt to people’s appraisals of their personal projects.  If we regard meaningful pursuit to subsume both the hedonic and more value-laden aspects of daily activity there is clear evidence for the prevalence of meaningful projects in our daily lives.  Relative to the midpoints of scales (from 0-10) individuals rate their projects to be consistent with their core values (M= 7.67), important (M=7.54), self-expressive (M=6.81), absorbing (M= 6.16.) and enjoyable (M= 6.07).   When we examine only dimensions that tap into the affect experienced during pursuit of a project, the northerly tilt is even more apparent, with ratings on positive affect dimensions being considerably higher than ratings on negative affect dimensions (for example experiencing feelings of happiness (M= 5.90) versus sadness (M= 2.12).

When we examine the types of project individuals are pursuing several categories are particularly likely to bring pleasure to individuals.  Both interpersonal and recreational pursuits are especially likely to be appraised positively, suggesting that leisure and love contribute importantly to individuals’ well-being.  Academic work for students and occupational projects for working individuals are consistently rated as less enjoyable and more onerous.

One particularly interesting category of personal project is that of intrapersonal projects, which are essentially self-focused.  These include pursuits such as “try to be more outgoing” or “be less hard on myself”.  Such projects have been reliably associated with the experience of depressive affect (Salmela-Aro, 1992).  However, they also have interesting links with creativity (Little, 1989).  Creative individuals appraise their intrapersonal projects as highly self-expressive, whereas depressed individuals do not.  It is of both theoretical and practical significance to ask what might tip an intrapersonal project in the direction of being a creative pursuit rather than one that cascades down into depression.  One potential answer, consistent with self-determination theory (e.g. Ryan & Deci, 2000), relates to the origin of the intrapersonal project.  If the project has been extrinsically imposed upon an individual (“you had better try to be more outgoing if you’re going to keep your job”) rather than intrinsically generated (“I might actually enjoy being a bit more outgoing”), it is likely that the affect experienced will be more negative. Such projects have an additional significance: they induce individuals to act in ways that run counter to their current dispositions.  As mentioned above, in the context of relatively stable dispositions, free traits may be engaged in to advance other projects.  From a personality science perspective this means that there may be a disjunction between genotypic and phenotypic aspects of trait-like behavior.  From a positive psychology perspective this means that individuals may be promoting well-being by advancing core projects, but simultaneously compromising it by acting in ways that might extract a physiological cost (Little, 2008).

If people generally have high levels of meaningful projects, and if certain categories of project reliably differ in their meaning, it seems reasonable to predict that individuals engaged in projects relatively high in meaning will experience a higher quality of life.  However, if we look at the strength of relation between project meaning dimensions and indices of well-being, a predictive paradox occurs: Of the five major project factors, meaning has the lowest degree of linkage with measures of well-being.  Indeed, in meta-analytic studies only project enjoyment, among the meaning dimensions, is reliably and significantly associated with measures of life-satisfaction (Wilson, 1990).  I first noted and explored this paradox in a volume dedicated to the “human quest for meaning” (Wong & Fry, 1998) where I had originally intended to summarize the importance of project meaning in predicting outcome measures of well-being.   The lack of strong relations between project meaning and well-being seemed rather ironic.

But the paradox turned out to be only an apparent one.  Two sets of studies helped clarify a rather more subtle role of meaning in project pursuit that only emerged when more sophisticated research designs were employed (Little, 1998).   One problem with studies that suggested well-being was unrelated to project meaning was that the outcome measures were heavily weighted toward the more hedonic aspects of well-being.  However, when measures that tapped into life purposes and a sense of coherence were used, the more value-laden dimensions of project meaning were indeed related to these measures and were unrelated to the more hedonic outcome measures (McGregor & Little, 1998).  Another set of findings, to be discussed below, raised the pivotal issue of the joint importance of meaning and manageability in goal pursuit for the promotion of well-being (Sheldon & Kasser, 1998).

2. Manageability: Initiation, Efficacy and Control

We may be pursuing deeply meaningful personal projects but they may so chaotically organized that they detract from, rather than enhance our sense of well-being.  The Manageability factor in PPA includes dimensions such as initiation, efficacy and control.  As with the Meaning dimensions, there is a northerly tilt to the Manageability dimensions with mean scores (from 0-10)  well beyond the scale mid-point (initiation M= 7.11, efficacy (M= 7.18, control M=7.29)  Moreover, meta-analytic studies have shown that factors related to manageability, such as efficacy and control in project pursuit have consistently been the strongest positive predictors of a diversity of well-being measures, stronger even than dimensions of enjoyment  or those more focused on meaning (Wilson, 1990).

The appraisal dimension of Initiation asks respondents to rate the extent to which the original impetus for each project lies primarily with them (high scores) or with external sources.  As noted above, mean scores on this were definitely tilted in the direction of self-generated projects.  However, in a study of mainland Chinese students it was found that initiation scores were considerably lower and significantly different from a comparable group of Canadian students.  It turned out that the reason for this was that the cadre or group to which an individual belonged was more likely to generate everyday projects, a state of affairs consistent with the communitarian, indeed, communistic society within which these individuals lived out their days.  Interestingly, the Chinese group’s projects were also rated as more enjoyable than those of Canadian students (Little, Xiao & Watkinson, 1985).  We regard project initiation as a key aspect of managing one’s projects, on the assumption that we are more likely to have ascertained the viability of a self-initiated project than one thrust upon us.  But the concept of initiation is theoretically similar to the notion of intrinsically (versus externally) regulated behavior in self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan & Deci, 2000) which is arguably more related to the Meaning factor.  It can be suggested that, at least in western culture, to initiate one’s projects is likely to enhance both their meaning and their manageability.

Efficacy is assessed by asking respondents to rate the degree of progress on their personal projects as well as their likelihood of success.  Project efficacy is very strongly linked to measures of life satisfaction across a broad array of samples and ages.  In meta-analyses, among the projects dimensions it has consistently been the single best positive predictor of life satisfaction (Wilson, 1990).  However, Sheldon & Kasser (1998) demonstrated that mere efficacy, at least in terms of progress made in pursuing personal goals, is insufficient for predicting well-being.  Only efficacy as experienced in self-determined goal pursuits had an impact on well-being.  Because most of the projects generated in personal projects methodology are highly meaningful and primarily self initiated, our finding that efficacy is a very strong predictor of well-being is consistent with Sheldon and Kasser’s findings.  However, their results serve as a warning that the efficacious completion of truly trivial pursuits is not going to yield a dividend in human happiness and quality of life.

Control is a ubiquitous concept in research in personality and positive psychology.  Since its inception PPA has included a measure of the extent to which individuals feel they are in control of their projects.  Generally, the degree of perceived control is significantly correlated with measures of well-being.  Once again, however, there are important issues that need to be taken into account before postulating that perceived control is an unmitigated positive factor in enhancing well-being.   A central tenet of our social ecological perspective is that a sense of control is adaptive to the extent that it is based on an “accurate reading of eco-system constraints and resources” (Little, 1979, p.12).   In some projects, particularly those involving work settings, both actual and perceived control may be comparatively low.  Acting upon expectations of high levels of control in such projects may not be adaptive (Little, 1987b).

 

3. Support: With a Little Help (and Hindrance) From our Friends

One’s personal projects may be both meaningful and manageable, but other people may accord them little significance, provide no help in bringing them to fruition or may even actively conspire to thwart them.  Our earliest research attempted to tap into this aspect of project pursuit by the use of two dimensions –project visibility and the respondent’s perception of the importance other people attached to the project.  These dimensions are consistently highly correlated and defined what we called the “community” factor—the extent to which a project was embedded in and valued by others in the surrounding social ecology.   In more recent studies we have added another dimension, project support, that loads on the same factor and which we have now taken as the name for that factor.  We expected that Support would be a key predictor of well-being and related measures.  However, unlike some of the Manageability dimensions, visibility and perceived importance by others had only marginal direct relationships with measures of well-being.  Even in studies that developed more differentiated measures of support, including measures of both support and hindrance, the impact of such measures were statistically swamped by the dominating effects of the other major factors, particularly the dimensions of efficacy and stress (James, 2001; Ruehlman & Wolchik, 1988).

Should we simply conclude then, that well-being is unrelated to the level of support we receive in the projects we pursue?  Not quite.  Although support may be relatively unimportant for many everyday projects, we have evidence that in core projects, those that are particularly central and important to a person’s life, support is not just a significant factor, it may be a particularly important one.  McKeen (1984) examined the factors that predicted both subjective and “hard” indicators of successful pregnancy.   Spousal support was a key factor in such success.  Dowden (2004) explored the personal projects of entrepreneurs, also using subjective and hard indicators, such as annual revenue as outcome measures.  Once again, support of partners was a highly significant predictor of success.  These studies suggest that some of the factors that play only a marginal role in daily projects display themselves, in different circumstances, to be important sources enhancing the quality of lives.  When we find ourselves pregnant with child or delivering an entrepreneurial project that is very much “our baby”, the positive role of perceived support is vital.

4. Positive Affect and Negative Affect in Project Pursuit

Just as affective processes have become a central focus of positive psychology, they also rose in prominence in personality research and now are among the most prolific areas of research in both fields.  Once again the modular nature of project analytic methods enables us to address theoretical developments in the field by creating dimensions that expanded and refined the study of affect and emotion as they played out in the project pursuits of daily lives.  It will be recalled that in earlier studies with personal projects only two dimensions could be regarded as heavily affective in nature—enjoyment and stress—the rest being “cooler” cognitive appraisal dimensions.  Enjoyment typically loaded on the Meaning Factor while the Stress dimension, together with Difficulty and Challenge reliably and robustly formed a separate factor also labeled Stress.  However, when we began to explore an expanded set of affective dimensions, the original five factors of PPA, not surprisingly, changed, and in ways that made theoretical sense.

Little, Pedrosa-Lima & Whelan (2006) explored the relation between “hot” affective dimensions and the “cooler” cognitive appraisal dimensions.  Although some dimensions, such as challenge can be seen as a blend (indeed this is the only project dimension to have double loadings on meaning and stress), most dimensions can be differentiated in terms of whether or not they are affectively charged.  We used a set of dimensions that had emerged in response to open ended accounts of feelings experienced during project pursuit (Goodine, 2000).  The positive dimensions included feelings of love, happiness, and hopefulness; the negative dimensions included feelings of sadness, fear, anger, stress, and depression.  We also included ambivalence, which we felt, somewhat ambivalently, could be appraised as either a positive or negative emotion, or both.  In order to get rough numerical equivalence between cognitive appraisals and affective ones, we explored the relations between representative dimensions of the cognitive factors of the original five factor model and an expanded set of affective dimensions.

Two key issues were explored.  First, is there evidence that the “hot” affective dimensions are independent of the “cooler” cognitive appraisal dimensions?  Second, if affective dimensions emerge as independent, do they form one bipolar or two orthogonal factors?  To broaden the generalizability of the study we examined groups in Canada and in Portugal.  The results were clear and held across both countries.  The affective dimensions were, indeed, independent of the cognitive dimensions, and they formed two coherent, unambiguous factors of positive and negative affect.  All three positive affect appraisal dimensions appeared on a single factor, with “feelings of love” having the highest loading.  All five negative affect dimensions appeared on a single factor, with “depression” having the highest loading.  Interestingly, ambivalence clearly loaded on the negative affect factor, with no cross loadings (cf. Emmons & King, 1988).   Even though the structure of affective appraisals was virtually identical in Canadian and Portuguese samples, there were strong mean differences in the affect experienced in daily project pursuit.  The Portuguese sample displayed considerably more affective involvement in their projects, including significantly higher ratings on the dimensions of depression and ambivalence but also on happiness and hopefulness.  An exceptional difference was found on the dimension of “feelings of love” experienced in project pursuit (Portuguese M= 6.89; Canadian M= 3.69).

The study of affect in project pursuit feeds into the research agendas of both personality science and positive psychology.  It also raises an important question about the types of research design that will best advance our knowledge of the interplay of affect and action and their impact on human well-being.  PPA dimensions have most frequently been used as predictor variables for diverse measures of well-being.  However, they have also been employed as outcome measures themselves—as ways of accessing the thick textures of meaningful lives (Little, 2007; McGregor, 2007; Omodei & Wearing, 1990).  The modular nature of PPA and related methodologies allows us to test differential hypotheses about the happiness of pursuit.  These can be explored at the level of the individual, while also allowing us to lift data up to a normative level for use in more conventional designs.  The implications for applied positive psychology are noteworthy.  Instead of examining only inter-individual differences with normative scales such as locus of control, stress and positive emotion, personal projects and related methodologies allow us to explore intra-individual relations between the same variables as assessed within the action systems of singular individuals.  A strong case can be made for the primacy of such intra-individual measurement in personality science (Cervone & Mischel, 2002b); Little, 2005, 2006).

The Social Ecology of Project Pursuit: Connections and Affordances

Individuals are embedded in a social ecology that can stimulate, shape and sustain the personal projects they pursue.  Positive psychology’s concern with “enabling institutions” (e.g. Peterson, 2006) acknowledges this contextual influence on human pursuits and on a life well lived.  Within personality science, social ecological frameworks have long been concerned with how the outer realities of social, physical and institutional influences co-constitute, with inner dispositions, the shape of a human life (Little, 1979, 2007; Little & Ryan, 1979).

      Social Influences and the Project Community: From Support to Connecting

Earlier we discussed the key role of other people’s support of our projects in enhancing the quality of lives.  However, well-being is enhanced not only by the support we get in our own project pursuits, but also by the positive impact we have on others.  We can conceive of the project community as a set of social influences ranging from our intimate romantic relationships to the more impersonal exchanges we have with others in our daily pursuits.  Several research findings converge on the proposition that having a positive impact on others has a salutary effect on the project pursuer.   When we explored the categories of project pursuit that were most meaningful to teenagers, the highest appraisals were in categories such as team sports, intimate relations with others and, highest of all, community volunteering (Little, 1987a).  What seems to be common to these is not just feeling supported in one’s own pursuits but a sense of connection with others in theirs. Studies of intimate relationships and relational satisfaction provide further evidence of the vital role of connection in project pursuit (Frost, 2009; Hwang, 2004).  Hwang (2004) studied relationship satisfaction among a group of romantically involved couples and found that the number of joint projects they were pursuing as a couple was a key predictor of satisfaction with that relationship.  It is likely that there are sex differences in the linkage between the sense of connection in project pursuit and well-being.  For example, in studies of the factors in the work environment that were most important to men and women in senior positions in governmental agencies and private sector companies, the sense of community and connectedness associated with one’s personal projects was particularly important for women.  For men, a sense of connectedness did not predict job satisfaction or well-being.  In fact, other people seemed to frustrate rather than facilitate their project pursuit.  For senior male executives, connection was far less important than having other people simply get out of the way while the executives could pursue their projects unimpeded (Phillips, Little & Goodine, 1997).

         Physical Influences and Affordance: Persons, Projects and Places

As a construct designed to integrate the domains of personality and environmental psychology, personal projects are particularly suited to explore the physical circumstances of our daily pursuits and the places within which they are enacted (Little, 1979, 1983; Wallenius, 1999, 2004).  The extent to which a particular environment provides affordances for, rather than barriers to, project pursuit is critical in promoting well-being (Heft, 1997; Little, 1987b). Wallenius (1999) has shown that the perceived supportiveness of the physical environment is related to both physical and emotional well-being.  She has also shown that noise stress in daily environments interacts with project stress to predict physical health status independent of trait neuroticism (Wallenius, 2004).

Places may be examined not only in terms of their physical affordances but also in terms of the modal personality characteristics of their residents (Florida, 2008; Rentfrow, Gosling & Potter, 2008).  These researchers have literally mapped the big five traits for different states in the U.S.A. and the results provide some intriguing hints about the best degree of fit between persons and places.  For example, North Dakota has the highest state scores on both extraversion and agreeableness, but a very low aggregate score on openness to experience (Rentfrow, Gosling & Potter, 2008).   It is an interesting and open question whether or not there may be a Fargo factor that inclines happy agreeable people to flourish in North Dakota (particularly if they are closed minded).  And it is also an interesting and open question as to whether state level measures of flourishing, such as productivity and creativity, may be related to diversity rather than homogeneity of personalities.   In terms of mediating influences that might attract and sustain migration to different places, it could be suggested that the kind of projects that places inspire and support, be they conventional, communal, or creative, might be pivotal.  The study of the interplay between persons, projects and places promises to be a rich vein for exploration.

                       Macro-level Influences: Don’t Even Think About It  

Organizational, institutional and other macro-level factors can play both subtle and powerful roles in determining the kinds of projects individual feel free to pursue and the likelihood that such pursuits will be sustainable.   Explicit roles and rules and implicit norms of conduct may lead individuals to forego engaging in some projects that could advance their well-being.   Once again we find sex or gender differences playing an important role.  For example, in studies of the impact of office culture on personal project pursuit in senior managers, we found that there were extremely strong differences between men and women in terms of the degree of perceived linkage between features of the environment and appraisals of personal projects (Phillips, Little & Goodine, 1997).  Woman were far more likely to see strong linkages than were men, and were more sensitively attuned to features of the everyday work environment that prescribed or proscribed what could and what could not be undertaken.  The organizational climate may, intentionally or not, promote project affordances for some and send out “don’t even think about it” message to others.

The same forces can be discerned at the level of political culture.  Frost (2009) carried out an exemplary study of the impact of macro-level factors on intimacy projects, those characterized by sexual and romantic concerns.  Frost was particularly interested in intimacy projects as pursued by lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals.  Using a web-based research strategy he was able to sample widely from diverse geographical locations and political jurisdictions.  These places varied in the degree to which there are explicit barriers against same sex marriage and, more subtly, in the norms guiding the expression of intimacy in daily activities.  From a positive psychology perspective, his findings are instructive.  First, intimacy projects were fully as meaningful to LGB couples as to heterosexual couples, a finding Frost attributes to the expression of a fundamental human need for intimacy regardless of sexual orientation (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Deci & Ryan, 2008; Ryan, Huta, & Deci, 2008).  However, LBG individuals, in pursuing their intimacy projects, experienced greater barriers than heterosexuals.  These stigma-related processes arose from both interpersonal and macro-level sources.  Of particular note was the fact that the macro-level influences were specific to the intimacy domain.  Personal projects related to job and career showed no differences between the LBG and heterosexual groups. In short, the likelihood of successfully pursuing projects that may enhance well-being can be compromised by the social ecology within which the incipient projects are embedded.  Current research shows these forces to be both strong and subtle. Whether a core project is successfully pursued depends on who is engaging in what specific project in which locations and, as Frost’s research underscores, with whom.

 

Moving Forward:  Advancing Personality Science and Positive Psychology

Each of the four themes that bridge personality science and positive psychology is rich in possibility for theoretical, methodological and empirical development.  I will propose a research agenda for each of these and then examine some overarching issues whose exploration would advance both fields.

The Varieties of Well-Being: Goodness and the Happiness of Pursuit

As a foundational concept in positive psychology and a major research focus in personality science, the question of the nature of human well-being is vital to the research agendas of both fields.  Recently, there has been a spirited debate about whether eudaimonic and hedonic happiness are qualitatively distinct or are better seen as interlinked phenomena (Kashdan, Biswas-Diener, & King, 2008; Ryan & Huta, 2009).  The debate turns, in part, on discerning whether virtue and enjoyment are independent, antagonistic or mutually facilitative phenomena.  The empirical examination of this issue typically involves examining correlations between measures of value or purpose in life (eudaimonic happiness) and measures tapping into enjoyment and pleasure (hedonic happiness).  The assessment devices are most often normative scales that measure differences in orientation between individuals.  I want to endorse a different approach and propose its further development as a way of adjudicating the relative merits of plausible conceptual alternatives about the varieties of well-being.

As will be anticipated from the earlier sections of this chapter, the approach I advocate is to examine how eudaimonic and hedonic themes play out in the personal projects that individuals are pursuing.  This can be done by getting individuals to appraise their projects on dimensions relevant to the theoretical debate.  In fact, we have been gathering relevant data on this issue for many years, but it is only in the light of the current theoretical controversy in positive psychology that the relevance of these data became clear.

Consider, for example, the dimensions of enjoyment, value congruency and self-identity in personal projects analysis (Little & Gee, 2007).  Enjoyment is a clear hedonic appraisal dimension.  Value congruency, the extent to which individuals believe the project is consistent with their core values, is clearly more eudaimonic, as is self-identity, the extent to which the project is self-expressive.  What is the relation between these dimensions?  During the early years of our research we consistently found that these three dimensions loaded on a single factor we called project meaning, a finding consistent with those who see the pursuit of the good and the enjoyable as compatible.  However, the methodology is modular and flexible, so that as new theoretical constructs emerge in various research literatures they can be incorporated into the assessment matrix.

When we began to add affective dimensions such as fun and feeling of love, the factor structure changed and enjoyment joined the positive affect dimensions on a separate factor from the more eudaimonic dimensions.  It should be noted that these factor analytic studies were carrying out by averaging an individual’s appraisals across all their projects and then carrying out essentially a normative analysis between individuals.  However, PPA and related methodologies allow us to examine within the single case.  Adopting this option, researchers may find individuals for whom hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits are highly related and others for whom they are independent or even negatively correlated.  By inductively aggregating individuals into groups based on the similarity of their idiographic profile we can then discern different varieties of well-being and their causes, correlates and consequences.

      Traits and Orientations: Freeing Traits, Expanding Orientations

The study of traits will continue to be a major research area in personality science, particularly in the areas of neurophysiology and molecular genetics, and that research will inform positive psychologists about the relatively stable “fixed” traits that are conducive to living well.  However, more fluid aspects of dispositions should be of particular interest to positive psychology.  For example, free traits (Little, 2000a) are patterns of phenotypic behavior that simulate genotypic traits, but are enacted in the service of core projects or compelling roles.  A biogenically introverted mother acts as an extravert at her daughter’s party, or a highly disagreeable grouch is uncharacteristically sweet when attending to his ailing mother.  Such behavior can be regarded as “acting out of character” both in the sense that it is acting away from what one typically does, but it is also acting out of character in another sense—it is acting so as to achieve one’s sense of what is right and to advance one’s core projects.

Positive psychology’s reintroduction of the concept of character into the empirical mainstream is a notable achievement and the study of the costs and benefits of free traits is relevant to exploring how character plays out in our daily lives.  Those who act out of character, as mentioned earlier, enhance their well-being by advancing their core projects.  But they also run the risk of burning out if they protractedly act in ways that run counter to their “natural” traits.  Having restorative niches, where their first natures may be indulged, might mitigate the cost of acting out of character (Little & Joseph, 2007).

The research agenda here is wide open.  Although the early empirical findings are encouraging, they are still preliminary and have been restricted to examining the dimension of extraversion.  Which big five traits are easiest to enact in a free-traited manner?  Is it easier for a highly agreeable person to act disagreeably when pursuing a project of redressing a grievance and does the end justify the meanness?  What are the costs of a testy and disagreeable person acting pleasantly when engaged in the life task of “finding a mate.”  Positive psychologists can bring theoretical skills to bear on the question of authenticity in such free trait behavior.  Is acting “out of character” simply disingenuous?  Is fidelity to one’s natural dispositions more conducive to the good life than fidelity to one’s core projects and most cherished roles?  An exceptionally rich array of questions tumble out when we begin to think of traits as freely constructed courses of action as well as deeply rooted propensities.

Our discussion of primary orientation called for the resuscitation of specialization theory and of the recognition of person and thing-orientation as a major dimension of individual differences relevant to positive psychology.  Within personality science, studies on the molecular genetics of primary orientations would be valuable as well as studies on early developmental patterns of selective orientation toward persons and things.   Within positive psychology, explorations of the consequences of differential orientation for creative achievement could be exceptionally informative, particularly as they bear upon issues of sex and gender differences in pathways to educational and professional achievement.

In both personality and positive psychology I proposed that there has been an imbalance in the kinds of objects that we theorizing about.  They tend to be objects that have warm bodies and first names.  But things, physical objects, the material world all are matters that have meaning in our lives.   What might be the practical implications of taking this proposition seriously?  I believe it could lead to important advances in our understanding of basic human dispositions.  Imagine a series of studies in which we augmented the standard Big Five measures with measures of environmental dispositions of the sort that were studied in the early days of environmental psychology (Little, 1987) so that both the person and thing domains (natural and constructed) were included.   What would be the major dimensions of individual differences that would emerge from a Cultural Orientation Inventory in which we sampled from both the social and material worlds? Would primary orientations toward persons and thing emerge or would we be more likely to see blends of interests clustering together?  The construction of such an inventory (which would also include items about new technologies, to which so many of us are constantly tilting) would be best carried out in interdisciplinary collaboration.  Sheldon (2004 has made a strong case for the relevance of diverse fields of study in explaining the course and contexts of human lives:  I think encouraging practitioners from these disparate disciplines to collaborate in developing a taxonomy of orientations would be salutary for all.

Personal Projects: Core, Change and Sustainability

When considering the role of personal projects in people’s lives it is important to differentiate between fairly peripheral projects and those that we have called “core projects” (Little, 2007).  These are the projects that hold other projects together– were one to lose a core project, we theorized, the system as a whole would be compromised.  The measurement of core projects can be approached in a variety of ways.  The most theoretically relevant and sophisticated approach is to ask individuals directly to evaluate their resistance to changing each of their projects and, separately, to look at the degree of connectedness among personal projects.  The empirical results strongly confirmed that core projects are the most deeply connected ones (MacDiarmid,1990). Similarly, Sheldon’s self-concordance model of personal goals (e.g. Sheldon & Elliot, 1999; Sheldon & Houser-Marko, 2001) demonstrates the importance of pursuing personal goals that are concordant with core values.  But here is where a theoretically interesting and practically important issue arises.  A very strong case has been made that of all of the factors that influence human well-being, it is the daily actions—projects and goal pursuits, that offer the greatest traction for change (Little, 2007; Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2007).   As one’s core projects are those that are most resistant to change, attempts to enhance well-being by leveraging core projects needs to be handled very sensitively.  Research on both the theory and practice of core project change would be extremely important to both personality science and to positive psychology.

A key proposition that also requires considerably more empirical exploration is that well-being is enhanced to the extent that an individual is engaged in the sustainable pursuit of core projects.[xiii]  What are the reasons why a core project may not be sustainable?  The person may lack the self-regulatory skills to manage the project successfully or may lack the social ecological awareness and capacity to move the project along through the thickets of daily life.  The project may, as a consequence, lose both meaning and manageability (Little, 2007; Weick, 2004).

Here, flexibility is critical, both in terms of personal dispositions and of being able to reformulate one’s core projects without compromising their essence.

 Social Ecology and Well-Being:  Positive Tilting, Fortuity and Circumstantial Evidence

 The circumstances of our lives influence whether our core projects can be pursued and sustained.  Human well-being, therefore, is partly shaped by the material, social, economic and political contexts of the day.  I wish to make some observations about these social ecological conditions within which lives are lead for better or for worse.  To do so I need to allude, finally, to the rather obscure title of this chapter.  It requires a brief story.  A beloved radio personality in Canada, Peter Gzowski, once held a contest in which he asked listeners to provide an answer to the following question—“What is the Canadian equivalent of the phrase “As American as apple pie?”  I assume a lot of ice and hockey suggestions came in.  But the winner, sent in by a young woman from White Rock, B.C., was splendidly insightful– “As Canadian as possible under the circumstances.”  The circumstances included, of course, living next door to the most powerful country on earth—a reality that generates both audacious aspirations and strategic diffidence.  I want to invoke the same sentiment in framing my final comments on the research agenda ahead for those committed to both personality science and positive psychology.

What are the circumstances that influence our possibilities?  Is northern tilting an unmitigated good?  Are there bounds to positive thinking?  Any good positive psychologist would recognize a straw person lurking about here.  Of course there are boundaries and mitigating circumstances, they would say, but positive tilting and the study of the northern territories are both estimable activities.  I would agree with them.  However, the personality scientist in me wants to take a somewhat more equatorial stance.  As the chapter has shown, I hope, there are constraining and potentiating influences on well-being ranging from stable dispositions to chaotic economies. A positive orientation is adaptive, we might say, to the extent that it is based on an accurate reading of these constraints.  The theoretical point might be conceded, but the practical implications are challenging.  As suggested earlier regarding perceived control, basing the launching of a course of action on an accurate reading of the circumstances does not mean that we need to be restricted by it.  We just need to show some alacrity and avoid getting gobsmacked by reality in the form of subprime mortgages or spurious self-worth.

Finally, I wish to say something about fortuity and the impact of chance on the shape of a life.  Although I am a keen proponent of individuals shaping their lives through project pursuit, it is important to acknowledge that random events and chance encounters can play havoc with a life plan.  But far more subtly, the very idea of living our lives and enhancing our well-being through following a life plan may be missing something critical (Larmore, 1999).  By  assiduously following life plans, or resolutely pursuing our personal goals we may inadvertently blind ourselves to the good luck and happy circumstances that fall outside our focal vision.   For human flourishing to be enhanced we need the tenacity to craft lives through projects that matter.  But we also need keen peripheral vision and the flexibility to look up.  Under these circumstances, a positive tilt can reveal delightful surprises and our lives can be enriched.

 

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