School Psychology of Education. 2022

A critical review of positive education: challenges and limitations

Positive education has gained increased interest and attention in the last decade. Born as an applied movement within positive psychology, positive education aims to introduce a positive approach to education to aid schools in promoting happiness, improving learning and performance, and reducing mental health problems among children and adolescents. Whereas relatively new, positive education has made notable progress and bears enormous potential. However, the movement still presents vulnerabilities and limitations that need addressing. With a focus on critical and supporting literature, this integrative review explores and brings together some of the most pressing challenges that positive education faces today. Tackling these vulnerabilities would positively contribute to the ongoing advancement of the movement.

Teoría de la Educación. 2021

Felicidad y Educación: Déficits Científicos y Sesgos Ideológicos de la "Educación Positiva"

El interés generado por la “educación positiva” ha crecido de forma exponencial en las últimas dos décadas. Presentado como un nuevo movimiento científico llamado a sustituir enfoques tradicionales o remediales en materia de intervención educativa, el argumento principal del movimiento es que la felicidad y la enseñanza de habilidades positivas son factores fundamentales para prevenir problemas de salud mental, mejorar el aprendizaje o promover el rendimiento escolar. En paralelo a este crecimiento, las críticas dirigidas a la educación positiva han sido también crecientes y numerosas, destacando no sólo aquellas procedentes de terceros, sino las procedentes desde el propio movimiento.  Todas estas críticas ponen en duda la solidez y la utilidad de la educación positiva. El objetivo de este trabajo es ofrecer una mirada panorámica e integradora de estas críticas con el fin de facilitar una mayor comprensión de los principales problemas y limitaciones del movimiento. Estos problemas se organizan en torno a dos bloques temáticos principales: científicos e ideológicos. Dentro de los déficits científicos, el trabajo destaca la ausencia de un marco teórico general y la falta de evidencia acumulada, las notables limitaciones conceptuales y metodológicas en torno a constructos principales y la moderada eficacia, así como la baja generalizabilidad de sus intervenciones clave.  Dentro del bloque ideológico, se abordan los principales sesgos y asunciones que subyacen el movimiento, tales como el marcado carácter individualista, descontextualizado y universalista del mismo. Para terminar, el artículo concluye con una breve reflexión en torno a la educación positiva y sus implicaciones en el ámbito de la educación.

Journal of Destination Marketing and Management. 2019

Experiencing designs and designing experiences: Emotions and theme parks from a symbolic interactionist perspective

This paper aims to open a theoretical debate on the relationships between spatial design and emotional experiences in theme parks from a symbolic interactionist perspective. Whereas the interplay between emotions and space is fundamental to understanding the production and consumption of experiences at theme parks, this relationship has been insufficiently explored in theme park literature. The paper applies symbolic interactionism to comment on relevant topics in theme park literature such as atmosphere design, experience control, and visitors’ engagement. In contrast to reductionistic and deterministic accounts of emotions, the paper emphasizes the indirect influence of atmospheres in visitors’ emotional responses, underscores the active role that guests play in the co-production of their own experiences, and stresses the significance of role-playing to understanding visitors’ engagement and immersion in the fantasies that theme parks manufacture for them. The paper also highlights the theoretical and empirical value of emotional narratives to better capture the mixed, complex, and situated experiences that visitors undergo with respect to spatial designs at theme parks.

Theory & Psychology. 2018

Positive Psychology and the legitimation of individualism

Positive Psychology (PP) has been firmly institutionalized as a worldwide phenomenon, especially in the last decade. Its promise of well-being has captured many people’s longings for solutions in times of significant social uncertainty, instability, and insecurity. The field, nevertheless, has been severely criticized on multiple fronts. This article argues that positive psychology is characterized by a narrow sense of the social as well as by a strong individualistic bias that reflects the core beliefs of neoliberal ideology. In this regard, the present paper aims to illustrate the extent to which individualism is essential to understanding the theoretical and empirical foundations of PP’s conceptualization of happiness. Additionally, the paper questions whether positive psychology and its individualist conception of human well-being are not themselves contributing to sustain and create some of the dissatisfaction to which they promise a solution.

Culture & Psychology. 2016

Rekindling individualism, consuming emotions: Constructing “psytizens” in the age of happiness

Happiness has become a new moral regime in neoliberal societies that defines what is right and wrong and stresses the insource of responsibility. More importantly, happiness stands out as a new model of selfhood that aligns with the neoliberal ideology of individualism and consumerism at the same time that legitimizes and rekindles this same ideology in seemingly nonideological terms through the discourse of science. The paper claims that this model of selfhood turns citizens into psytizens, that is, into psychological clients whose full functionality as individuals is largely tied to the pursuing, consuming, and development of their own happiness. The paper analyzes this notion of psytizen and its three main features, comments upon the happiness industry that simultaneously presupposes and targets this model of selfhood, and examines the role that happiness studies, in general, and positive psychology, in particular, play in shaping this emerging notion of citizenship.