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HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Positive Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1548612
Addressing the Criticisms and Critiques of Positive Psychology: Recommendations for
Provisionally accepted- Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, United States
This article presents two checklists designed to help researchers, practitioners, and evaluators address common critiques of Positive Psychology (PP) identified in a recent systematic review (Van Zyl et al., 2023). These critiques focus on PP’s theorizing, methodology, and its perception as a decontextualized, capitalistic endeavor. The checklists offer practical recommendations for improving future research and practice, with one tailored for researchers and the other for practitioners and evaluators. Key focus areas include self-reflection, cultural sensitivity, methodological diversity, collaboration, and ethical considerations. By acknowledging past critiques and offering concrete solutions, this paper aims to foster a more inclusive and rigorous future for PP.
Keywords: Positive Psychology, wellbeing, Well-being, Critiques, Theory, Checklist, Practice, Evaluation
Received: 19 Dec 2024; Accepted: 13 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gaffaney and Donaldson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jaclyn Gaffaney, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.