Positive psychology has captured the interest and imagination of scholars and led to a new vision for what psychology has to offer as both an academic and a professional discipline. This has promoted a growing interest among practitioners about real-world applications.

The first edition of this book provided a comprehensive resource to which practitioners and academics with applied interests could turn. Ten years on from the first edition, positive psychology has matured, developed a solid evidence base, and is now better equipped to put its vision into practice. This new expanded edition builds on the previous edition. Like the first edition, it focuses on the actual and potential interventions and applications that have been developed from research within positive psychology. It provides a compendium of scientific evidence that supports the application of positive psychology, proposes new theoretical frameworks that will guide the advance of positive psychology research, and engages with applied psychologists and other practitioners and policy specialists in showing how positive psychology can contribute to health, happiness, and human flourishing.

The importance of this book is that it shows us how to move from the theoretical to put the vision into practice. In addition to considerations of how positive psychology can help individuals, this edition considers in more depth the application of positive psychology to institutions and policy. It raises questions about the sort of society we want to live in and it does not shy from the realities of life and its inevitable hardships and misfortunes. It is a vision for individuals, communities, and societies to function at their most optimal.

This volume is a necessary addition to any positive psychology collection, containing as it does the most up-to-date and cutting-edge scholarly work from leading experts. Throughout the book, there is information, guidance, and suggestions that practitioners can take away and put into practice. The authors review the state of research on each topic, discuss how it has been applied in practice, and consider new ideas for how and where it might be applied and what future research should be undertaken, always keeping in mind that the intended audience is professional psychologists who will be most interested in how to use the research findings in their professional practice.

In this edition, I say goodbye to Alex Linley, who coedited the first edition but whose commitments prevented him from being part of this edition. My best wishes to Alex in his new endeavors. I also say goodbye to some authors who were unable to contribute this time, and particularly with sadness note the death of Chris Peterson, one of the founders of positive psychology. His contributions to positive psychology were immense: He developed the character strengths and virtues perspective at the heart of positive psychology and emphasized the importance of human relationships with his phrase “other people matter.” His influence can be seen throughout the chapters of this book.

I also welcome new authors. When I began selecting new chapters for this edition, I wanted it to remain fresh and challenging and provide the best of positive psychology. This edition contains new chapters from scholars and practitioners at the cutting edge of the most vibrant areas of positive psychology today, such as eudaimonia, assessment and policy, and in areas of application such as coaching, occupational psychology, and self-help. At the same time, I also wanted to surprise readers with the unexpected and include applications of positive psychology to novel areas such as social work, social planning, rehabilitation, and recovery, and I wanted to make greater space for consideration of how positive psychology addresses the dark side of life, its historical and philosophical roots, and dialogue with humanistic psychology.

As with the previous edition, in establishing the aims of the volume, I was faced with the daunting task of providing state-of-the-art research evidence that underpinned practical recommendations for professional psychologists while at the same time defining the parameters for future academic research. The result is a volume that bridges the theory, research, and applications of positive psychology. The book draws on cutting-edge scientific research that is leading the development of positive psychology. Contributors are all experts in their fields who have been selected on the basis of their empirical, theoretical, and applied contributions to psychological knowledge. They have been invited to review the state-of-the-art empirical evidence with regard to the application of positive psychology and to discuss their own experiences of using positive psychology in their practice. Further, the contributors were invited to consider what new research is required to enable professional psychologists to use positive psychology within applied work.

Positive psychology has its origins in the United States, but its popularity has spread internationally to capture the interest of psychologists elsewhere; for this reason, authors are drawn not only from the United States but also from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

The main aim of this second edition is to provide an overview of the current state of the art in applied positive psychology and to look to its future development. At the beginning of the positive psychology movement, a critical question was how positive psychology could be applied in real-world settings. The 2004 edition of this volume was the first to specialize in the applications of positive psychology. It was a landmark that helped to create the subsequent interest in the field and its applications. It is my hope that this second edition will similarly serve as a landmark work to stimulate future developments in research and theory, and that it will fuel continued interest in applied positive psychology. Specifically, my hope is that this edition will reach out not only to those who already identify as positive psychologists, but also to a new and wider audience of scholars and practitioners yet to discover how the ideas and research of positive psychology may transform their ways of working.

As such, the subtitle, Promoting Human Flourishing in Work, Health, Education, and Everyday Life, was chosen to make explicit the relevance of this volume to the wider professional audience of leaders, health-care professionals, and educators. I wanted the title to prompt new readers who are less familiar with positive psychology to understand that positive psychology is not a happiology urging us to smile in the face of adversity and to ignore the real problems that confront us all. It is a serious scholarly pursuit to understand the causes and consequences of optimal functioning and their application to real-world issues. Positive psychology can help us manage and succeed in the workplace, deliver better and more compassionate health care, and provide effective and engaging education in ways that optimize achievement, well-being, and the development of community.

Other professionals who are not psychologists will find much that can inform their practice within the domains of business, management, counseling, psychotherapy, economics, the criminal justice system, medical settings, social work, and social and public policy. Positive psychology is not only concerned with one-to-one interventions but is also relevant for individuals, groups, organizations, and societies. This book is an invitation to become part of the future of positive psychology and to help put it into practice.

Chapters are arranged thematically, beginning with an excursion into the history and philosophy of positive psychology, moving through applications in work, health, education, and everyday life, and finally, the directions for the future of positive psychology. But readers will find that there are consistent themes throughout the volume that cut across disciplinary divides; where this is apparent, I have made cross-cutting references to help readers see how the chapters interrelate. I trust that readers will explore the book in ways that best suit them, whether it is moving through it chapter to chapter or jumping from topic to topic as their interest motivates them. Readers new to positive psychology may find my introduction chapter provides a useful summary and map of the book, and they may proceed from there in whichever way they prefer. In this edition, I have also asked all authors to conclude their chapters with a short list of summary points so that readers can see at a glance the practical implications.

This book stands for me as an assertion of the human capacity for growth. It is my hope that academics, practitioners, and students find the learning and wisdom in this book to be of value.

Stephen Joseph
April, 2014