[kerrjj]

For anyone who took Personality and liked it, I would not recommend positive psych. Personality was very conceptual and interesting. It looked a lot at theories and ideas. People often say that Positive psych is a continuation of personality. This isn't really the case, other than that you talk about maslow and rogers in both courses. Whereas personality is very conceptual, positive psych has more of the mindless memorization of useless facts and figures that you may have seen in abnormal psych.

Positive Psych kind of feels like a super long and disorganized annotated bibliography for a paper with the thesis "Happiness is good and being a good person makes you happy". A large portion of the course is memorizing pages and pages of study results that that all seem pretty intuitive and similar (but the tests try to get to the subtle and meaningless differences between them). Rather than making a point and referring to the literature for support, this course kind of seems like unsummarized Pubmed search results for a bunch of different words like "gratitude" and "hope". I'm all for using using scientific literature as a basis for a course, but in Positive Psych the research is presented in an undigested manner and focus is more on the results of individual studies and not what you can take from the literature when you view it more meta-analytically.

Also, you aren't going to take a lot away from this course because a lot of what you learn are affirmations of things you already know about the topics. "Being happy is good, and being a good person makes you happy (or less unhappy)"

It really is a shame because positive psych is an interesting field when presented the right way (As you may have seen in the Humanist section of Personality psych). Dr. Day is a great teacher, but I think this course needs some serious retooling.

Hey kerrjj,

I think it's great that you made this post, but I think it would reach more people if you posted this under "course reviews". But I agree with most of what you said.

I think it's lacking application cuz I could definitely see an assignment where we had to keep a gratitude journal or a even write an essay about a movie character that becomes self-actualized. I could see lots of fun go into this course but sadly, due to lack of TAs, I think the chances of these assignments coming to light is slim.

Does Dr. Dej use the quiz bank for this course?

No quiz bank for this course!

Did anyone enjoy this course? I've done well in other Dr. Day courses but having no quiz bank worries me, as does this review!

I took this course last year and it was probably one my favourite courses at Mac. I've taken Personality and abnormal so I know how much having a quiz bank helps. So not having a quiz bank might be a disadvantage for someone who relies heavily on it while studying. But if you study the course material properly and can get hands on some previous midterms, you should do really well. There's a lot of overlap with the material and I found that most material could be understood using common sense (ie. happier people have better health; this will be a recurring theme so you can know that happier people have (for example) better immune systems). Get the handbook and study the material without the comfort that almost every question will be from the quiz bank (I feel like I studied better this way since there was more pressure but that's just me). So don't be worried about not having a quiz bank and Dr. Day even mentioned in class that usually people do really well in the course so he didn't think it was THAT necessary to have one but I know he's been working on having a quiz bank for the future. Anyways, I would really recommend this course because it teaches you a lot of stuff about how to be happy that you can apply to your life! Just ask me if you have any more questions!

I'm trying to decide between Psych 3F03(evolution and human behaviou) and Psych 3BA3 (positive psych). Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Alright so I took this course in Winter 2015 and just wrote the exam yesterday. I LOVED this class. As far as Dr. Day classes go, I have taken Abnormal (2AP3), Personality (2B03) and Forensic (3CC3) previously, however this was my favorite because the content was very interesting and I found it very applicable to everyday life. We started by talking about the history of positive psychology, followed by different theological traditions and psychological theorists (Maslow, Rogers, etc.) with respect to how each defined "the good life" and what it means to be happy, live a meaningful life, etc. We then discussed different positive emotions (self-esteem, self-efficacy, optimism, meaningfulness/goals, gratitude and forgiveness) and the effects they have on well-being, health, success, etc.
As with all of Dr. Day's courses, it is 2 x 30% midterms plus a 40% final exam. Unfortunately, there was no quiz bank but the marks on the first midterm (median of ~80%) and final (median of ~75%) were both very high regardless, even the second midterm was pretty typical of his classes. If you can find previous midterms, those are great practice. If you are interested in bettering yourself and improving your happiness and satisfaction with life, this is definitely a worthwhile class to take. The textbook was a fairly good read as well. Would definitely recommend this class!

"As far as Dr. Day classes go, I have taken Abnormal (2AP3), Personality (2B03) and Forensic (3CC3) previously, however this was my favorite because the content was very interesting and I found it very applicable to everyday life."

What did you think about Abnormal and Forensic? I've heard bad things about both (especially forensic - apparently it's a major jump in difficulty compared to all second year psych classes?) but no one has been able to talk more specifically about the 2 classes.

I took this course in Winter 2016. One of the pros of this course, is that there is very little content compared to other Dr. Day courses. Like other Dr. Day courses, it's two 30% midterms, and a 40% final.

There were some parts that I enjoyed in this course, and others I didn't. The first part of the course was very interesting to me (very similar to Personality, where you learn about the theories of happiness by Maslow, Rogers and various Eastern religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism). The second part of the course focused on what exactly happiness is, and the different factors that influence happiness (Marriage, family size, money, etc.). This part of the course was a bit more difficult, because there are A LOT of stats, lists and studies to remember. Everything you are learning seems to blend in together, so you really need to know the material well to differentiate between different study results which may seem similar because Dr. Day will test you on those details. Because there is no quiz bank, past midterms are extremely valuable to do well on the midterms. The average for our midterms were ~75-77%, and the average for the exam was around ~70%. The last part of the course focused on Self-Esteem, Self-Efficacy, Optimism, Meaningfulness, Gratitude & Forgiveness. This part of the course was a bit more enjoyable, but there was still a lot of random facts to remember. The problem with there being no quiz bank is that you don't know what you need to remember in detail, because some studies seem very similar, and yet he will test you on those details. Again, past midterms are very helpful. The exam was tricky because he had a few new questions (some that went into a lot of detail) for the old material. I recommend not only re-doing old questions, but also going through your old notes a few times. The exam was very detail oriented, but I found going through all your notes 2x was sufficient (pay attention to those details, I can't emphasize enough!).

The textbook is a more enjoyable read, and I found the questions Dr. Day asked were fair. Like always, there is always junk in the textbook that you won't be tested on, but you do need to know the readings well because he does test you on details. It is very easy to get tricked on his questions if you are not confident in the material.

I definitely liked the concepts in this course, but there were too many studies that all seemed to be saying the same message, I think if he made this course more conceptual like Personality, and less focused on studies, this course would be much better. Still a very enjoyable course!