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Barbara Fredrickso Psychology

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This ratio is the product of a research that was published on the journal “American Psychologist” by Barbara Fredrickson and Marcial Losada. The articles name being “Positive Affect and the Complex Dynamics of Human Flourishing” which was cited more than 350 times in other academic journals. Fredrickson is a distinguished psychologist, a professor at the University of North Carolina, a winner of several notable psychology awards and bestselling author of several psychology books. She is the object of widespread admiration in the field of psychology, Martin Seligman, a former president of the American Psychological Association and a bestselling author in his own right, went so far as to call her “the genius of the positive psychology movement”. …show more content…

He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in 1996. They both critique the mathematics that was in all the research, “The Lorenz equation Losada used was fluid dynamics,” says Sokal “In 10 seconds I could see it was total bullshit”. ("The New Review: PSYCHOLOGY: The 'Magic Ratio', According to some Psychologists, is a Mathematical Way of Predicting Human …show more content…

Larsen and Prizmic argued that the balance of positive and negative affect (the Losada ratio) is a key factor in subjective well-being and in defining whether a person flourishes. Larsen and Prizmic discussed work by several authors (e.g. Fredrickson and Losada, 2005; Gottman, 1994) which suggested that to maintain an optimal level of emotional well-being and positive health, individuals need to experience approximately three times more positive than negative affect. Given thus background the conducted a study to address three questions: First, is there evidence that a specific positivity ratio distinguishes individuals with different mental health status and especially flourishing from non-flourishing individuals? Second, are there are differences in the positivity ratio when daily affect data are used? Third, does the proposed critical positivity ratio of 2.9 discriminate individuals with different mental health status equally well across the adult lifespan? (“The Ratio between Positive and Negative Affect and Flourishing Mental Health across

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