THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGYinitiated the break-up). Crucially, 58 percent of those surveyed said they
experienced multiple positive emotions after the break-up, such as
feeling energized and hopeful, while 71 percent said they’d experienced
growth – measured by their agreement with statements like “I’ve learned
a lot about myself ”. The key predictor of positive outcomes was the
quality of the prior relationship. As you’d expect, if the old relationship
was an emotional dead-end then the break-up tended to bring benefits.
In their write-up of the research, Lewandowski and Bizzoco suggested
that rather than seeing the potential negative consequences of breaking
up as a reason to stay in a bad relationship, “people could use the present
results as a motivation for leaving the bad relationship. In fact...leaving
a bad relationship is likely to result in personal growth and positive
emotions.”
In relation to therapy, research has shown that when therapists
focus on their clients’ strengths and not just their problems, outcomes
improve. In a 2008 study, Christoph Fluckiger instructed trainee thera-
pists to chat about a client’s strengths with a colleague for a few minutes
before each of that client’s first five sessions. Outcomes after twenty
sessions were improved compared with comparable therapist-client
pairs previously treated at the same clinic.
More controversial is the idea that traumatic experiences, including
being unwell, can have a positive side-effect. Following the Herald of
Free Enterprise disaster, in which a car ferry capsized with the loss of 193
lives, research revealed that 43 percent of the survivors felt their view of
life had changed for the better. In a separate 2006 study on character
strengths, involving over two thousand people filling in an on-line form,
participants were asked if they’d ever suffered any physical or psycho-
logical illness. Christopher Peterson, who conducted the study, found
that those 422 people who answered yes tended to score themselves more
highly on appreciation of beauty, curiosity, fairness, humour and several
other positive attributes. Though far from conclusive, Peterson said the
findings suggested that many people can be strengthened by the experi-
ence of being ill.
These findings were backed up by a 2010 study by Mark Seery at the
University of Buffalo, in which over two thousand people were repeat-
edly surveyed over several years. As you might expect, those people who
experienced a high number of major adverse life-events, for example
losing their job or falling ill, subsequently reported more negative
psychological outcomes, such as signs of stress and low life-satisfaction.
In line with positive psychology, however, Seery’s study also found that