Indian Journal of Positive Psychology

Pages:186-195
Silpa Sailakumar and KP Naachimuthu (Department of Psychology, PSG College of Arts & Science, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu)

Children today have few opportunities for outdoor free play or regular contact with the natural world. Nowadays children's physical boundaries have shrunk due to a number of factors (Francis, 1991; Kytta, 2004). The culture of childhood that played outside is gone and children's everyday life has shifted to the indoors (Hart, 1999; Moore, 2004). As a result, children's opportunity for direct and spontaneous contact with nature is a vanishing experience of childhood. Not only have children's play environments dramatically changed in the last few decades, but also the time children have to play has decreased. Children need nature to grow up in a healthy way and be prepared for adult life. Child psychologists and psychotherapists are now convinced that contact between children and the natural environment is essential to ensure their balanced psychological and physical development as adolescents and adults (Ilaria, 2015). To understand the lived-in experiences of the children of previous generation with the nature, and how nature play a role in what they are today, variety of open-ended questions are chosen to elicit the most information possible in the time available. Qualitative research design (phenomenological approach) was adopted for this research. The phenomenological approach (realistic phenomenology) enables the researcher to understand the nature and meaning of an experience for a particular group of people in a particular setting (Moustakas, 1994) by encouraging individual participants to share their stories. The sample size selected for the present study is 20. Samples of only above 35+yrs is selected for the study who had experienced the phenomenon of nature based learning experience (specifically their exposure & experience with traditional games). Data were collected through individual interviews. In-depth interviews are optimal for collecting data on individuals' perspectives, and experiences are being explored.

Pages:200-202
Garima Yadav and Sandeep Kumar (Department of Psychology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh)

The aim of this article is to review significant research that has been conducted in the field of Psychological Capital. Psychological Capital or PsyCap refers to individual's positive psychological state of development. The article elaborates the concept of psycap and explains how the construct is unique. Review covers those researches that have analyzed the effect of psychological capital with work related behaviors, the neurological basis of psychological capital, as psychological capital are state like constructs they can be developed. The article reviews the interventions that have been developed to improve psychological capital. The article also sheds lights on the gap found in the literature. Based on the gaps in the literature future suggestions for research in this area is presented.

Pages:208-213
Varsha Singh and Prerna Goyal (Department of Psychology, Kamala Nehru College, University of Delhi, Delhi)

The present study was aimed at discerning the sources of happiness among young adults and adults. For the purpose, a sample of 20 individuals belonging to two age-groups: 18-25 years old and 40-55 years old was taken. Each group had 10 members with 5 males and 5 females. Each age group was assessed for their happiness and their sources of happiness, quantitatively with the help of Revised Oxford Happiness scale by Hills and Argyle (2001). Also, to further gain an understanding about the happiness and the sources of participant's happiness, a list of subjective questions was prepared and the responses of the participants to each question was analyzed for themes and then interpreted for each group. The results indicated that older adults are happier with a mean of 53.70 on the Revised Oxford Happiness scale as compared to young adults with a mean of 37.40. From the qualitative analysis, it can be said that the ways, situations or the sources that makes others happy include a wide variety of sources, ranging from social relationships, money, success to good health, nature, etc.

Pages: 467-473
Naina Kapoor (Department of Psychology, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, Rajasthan)
Shifa Rahman (Industrial Psychologist, Hr Professional, Vizag, Andhra Pradesh)
Tejinder Kaur (Department of Psychology, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, Rajasthan)

Research on happiness seems to be blooming in current academics. Psychology's engagement with psychopathology left no space for this concept to come to the fore. With rapid changes in the academic world, together with the shift in the focus towards more positive concepts has resulted in a renewed interest in the concept of happiness. The domain of qualitative research seeks to explore the diverse human experiences and the present study uses this domain to understand the subjective meaning of happiness in adolescent students. Using a qualitative approach, twenty adolescents were asked to share their life experiences using a semi structured interview schedule. A grounded theory analysis revealed that happiness forms a core concern for an individual where it depends not only on the cultural norm involving an individual where social relationships form an important part, but also goals and aims (s) he/she wishes to achieve in life. It exists in temporality but is impacted by the larger dimension of meaning in life which is relatively stable and covers a huge expanse of an individual's existence. Finding happiness in life involves both personal goals such as self growth and attainment of peace, and also professional goals like fulfilment of one's academic aim. Happiness is also seen as being impacted by an individual's past happenings, belief in self- worth and social responsibility. Analysis of the findings thus points to the fact that meaning of happiness varies across individuals, however, the essence remains the same for a given culture. The consideration of the emic approach not only creates sound knowledge, but also leads to a holistic understanding of human affairs.

Pages: 458-461
Manal Khasib Al Fazari (Department of Psychology, College of Education, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman)

The aim of this research was to examine wisdom among Sultan Qaboos University students based on specific variables. Wisdom was measured using a questionnaire that was designed for the study. The questionnaire consisted of 28 items that included three dimensions (life experience, openness, & emotional management). The sample included 490 male and female students from all the university colleges (2016-2017; academic year enrollments). The survey validity was assessed using face validity. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the reliability of the questionnaire was .87. The findings showed that the majority of students expressed a medium level of wisdom (69%). The results also indicated that gender, college, age, place of living (on campus, off campus), and region were not significant factors that influenced the students' level sofwisdom.

Pages: 450-453
Suhail Ahmad Bhat and Shawkat Ahmad Shah (Department of Psychology, University of Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir )

Due to the growing body of research, the concept of religion-health connection has gained grip during the last decade. The impact of religious indicators is found to be associated with social, behavioral, clinical, economic and other aspects of human behavior. In line with this, the present study deals with association of religious orientation with mental health. For this purpose a random sample of 217 family members of disappeared persons belonging to Kashmir were selected. Age-Universal Religious Orientation Scale and Mental Health Inventory were used to collect data from the sample. The results were obtained by using Pearson's Product Moment of Correlation. The results revealed that intrinsic Religious Orientation is negatively related with mental health in contrast to extrinsic religious orientation.

Pages: 443-446
Priyanka Sharma and Mukta Singhvi (Department of Psychology, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, Rajasthan )

The objective of this study was to assess the hope in the lives of HIV-positive women, using the Herth Hope Scale (HHS). For this purpose 60 HIV positive women were selected from ART centre , SMS medical college, Jaipur (Rajasthan).HHS scale administered to all subject. Score were analysed by mean score and revealed that these women have little hope in life in view of their diagnosis of HIV. The scale item with the highest score was faith. This probably derives from the fact that Aids is incurable, transmissible and generates negative stigma, in addition to its relation with the idea of imminent death. In conclusion, measuring hope among HIV patients through the use of an instrument permits intervention assessment and planning, promoting assistance and motivation to live better and maintain a hopeful attitude.

Pages: 435-438
Seema G. B. and Venkatesh Kumar G. (Department of Studies in Psychology, University of Mysore, Manasagangothri, Mysore)

The present study is aimed to investigate the relationship and gender differences between self-esteem and social anxiety in adolescent students. The sample consists of 200 adolescent students (100 males, 100 females) in the age range of 16 to 18 years, taken from various colleges in Bangalore City. Rosenberg Self-esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965) and Social Phobia inventory (Conner et al., 2000) were applied to access self-esteem and social anxiety of participants. Statistical analysis was done through SPSS, Pearson product-moment correlation co-efficient and independent sample t-test was applied for evaluation of results. Results indicates that self-esteem is negatively correlated with social anxiety in adolescent students. The findings of result also showed the self-esteem scores of the male adolescents is not higher or lower than that of the female adolescents.

Pages: 425-428
Jakkaraddi Arati (Department of Human Development and Family Studies, College of Rural Home Science, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad)
Yadav V. S. (Department of Agricultural, Extension Education, College of Agriculture, Dharwad)
Khadi P. B. (Department of Human Development Rural Home Science College, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad)

The study aims to investigate the relationship between emotional health dimensions and demographic characteristics of parents like parent's occupation, type of family, schooling, and type of stay (with parents/hostel). The sample comprised of 951 emerging adults in the age range of 16 to 22 years. An ex-post-facto exploratory research design was used in the study. The place of the study was Department of Human Development and Family Studies, college of Rural Home Science, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, Karnataka, India, between 2009 to 2011. Instruments used were: The Emotional Health Scale (EHS) by Angadi (2011) (1) and general information form was used for collecting data. The data was subjected to correlation analysis. The results revealed that there was a significant negative relationship between mother's occupation and overall emotional health of male emerging adults. Also there was a significant negative relationship between schooling, mother's occupation and stay of female emerging adults and overall emotional health. Mother's occupation has a definite and significant influence on emerging adult's emotional health. There is a felt need of balancing work-life quality time for positive outcome of emerging adult's emotional health.

Pages: 415-419
Surjeet Singh and Nov Rattan Sharma (Department of Psychology, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana)

Mindfulness is a state of present- time awareness; which can be experienced and quite helpful to fabricate the sense of well-being and can decrease cognitive and behavioral error in our daily lives. Cognitive failures or errors are clearly a part of everyday life and can be observed in our behavior. These errors include distractions, blunders, memory lapses, and oversights, perceptual and attentional error. Hence it is expected that mindfulness would be negatively associate with cognitive failure and enhance our sense of health and well-being in a better way. The present study is planned to examine the nature of the relationship between Mindfulness and cognitive failure. Present study includes a sample of 80 young adults of both gender (Male=40; Female= 40). Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS; Brown & Ryan, 2003) and Cognitive Failure Questionnaire (CFQ; Broadbent, Cooper, FitzGerald, & Parkes, 1982) were administered to fulfillment the purpose of the present study. The results of the present study revealed that mindfulness is negatively associated with cognitive failures view aroused state of active cognitive processes. The current study found a significant negative correlation between mindfulness and cognitive failures. In other words, the person who is more mindful were made overall the fewer cognitive errors. The practice of mindfulness increased information processing speed, cognitive flexibility, attentional functioning.