Indian Journal of Positive Psychology

Pages:406-410
Nandita babu and Subhasmita Panda (Department of Psychology, University of Delhi, Delhi)

How do we understand each other? As social beings, one of the most important tasks for people is to develop social and communicative skills in order to interact with other people. Almost always, in social worlds, we take into account and try to understand other people's feelings, desires, beliefs, intentions and motivations based on our own “theory of mind”. Theory of mind enables us to explain and predict other people's behavior and appropriately responds to them in relationships. It involves an understanding that people have mental states including thoughts, beliefs, and desires. Children's knowledge about the mind is a foundational domain of social-cognitive development and by 4 to 5 years of age most children have acquired an understanding of mind. That is, children around this age are able to understand a person's action in terms of that person's desires, thoughts, beliefs and emotions. Developing a theory of mind is important because it enables children to interact appropriately with others. It enables children, as they grow, to acquire more complicated socio-cognitive skills such as perspective taking, collaboration, recursive thought. This ability allows to interpret the behaviors of others in everyday social interaction. Theory of mind understanding is intricately related to language. In this paper the importance of Theory of mind in children's social interaction is being highlighted.

Pages:415-417
Geetika Shree and Kumar Neeraj Sachdev (Department of Humanities and Languages, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Rajasthan)

It has been a common tendency to focus on intellectual or cognitive development of a student in an educational system, wherein positive connotations of moral development get neglected. This paper focuses on incorporating the essence of moral development and positive psychology in the formal educational process in order to build a stronger and better educational system. The paper discusses the nuances of these two areas, and how this can bring about certain positive changes in the society.

Pages:422-424
Sahar Javed and Naheed Nizami (Department of Psychology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, UP)

This paper studies the relationship of self-efficacy with adjustment among college students. 300 participants (male=150 and female=150) were drawn from different streams of Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. Two valid and reliable instruments were used to assess adjustment and self-efficacy. Data analysis involved the use of product moment method of correlation and t-test. The results indicate that self-efficacy is positively correlated with adjustment. It also revealed that female students were better than male students in terms of adjustment. On the basis of the findings, it is suggested that self-efficacy beliefs in students is instrumental in influencing academic performances and the amount of stress and anxiety.

Pages:428-432
Akanksha Tripathi (M. C. M. D.A.V. College for Women, Chandigarh)

In the few years, there has been a growing literature on interpersonal forgiveness from a variety of psychological perspective. Bonar (1989) contends that the need for forgiveness can be explained within every major system of psychology. Although it has, received relatively little empirical attention from psychologists and social scientists, forgiveness is a central topic in everyday life. From the personal level, to the family level, to the community level, to the international level, the quality of our relationships with others are largely determined by the willingness to forgive that we manifest towards the persons or the groups who have, intentionally or unintentionally, severely or slightly, durably or temporarily, harmed us (Park & Enright,1997). The aim of the present investigation was to compare males and females on the measures of Dispositional Forgiveness and offense specific Forgiveness. For this purpose, Forgiveness was assessed by using Heartland dispositional scale devised by Thompson and Snyder (2003) and Offense specific forgiveness was measured by using Enright Forgiveness Inventory (Enright & Human Development Study Group, 1998).These tests were administered on 400 students (200 males and 200 females) in the age range of 16-20 years. Descriptive statistics, t-ratios and stepwise discriminant functional analysis was used to analyze the data. Results clearly revealed that males are higher on the various dimensions of forgiveness. Results are discussed in detail.

Pages:435-439
Sonam Dullat (SUS College of Research and Technology, Tangori, Mohali, Punjab) Sangeeta Trama (Department of Psychology, Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab)

The productivity of the work force is the most decisive factor as far as the success of an organization is concerned. The productivity in turn is dependent on the psychosocial well-being of the employees. Stress can affect one's health, work performance, social life and the relationship with family members. The stress response is a complex emotion that produces physiological changes to prepare us for fight or flight. To defend ourselves from the threat or flee from it. The stressors and its consequences are to be understood at individual and organizational level. Stress in the workplace has emerged as a major issue for businesses and has reached alarming proportions. Organizations must develop stress prevention as well as stress reduction techniques. This research focuses on practices adopted by organizations to prevent, minimize and to overcome the stress. The study aims at understanding use of yoga, meditation and soothing humor by different organizations as an antidote to workplace stress.

Pages:445-447
Renuka Joshi and Sapna Tomar (Department of Psychology, DAV (PG) College, Dehradun, Uttarakhand )

The present study was planned to find out the level of depression and coping strategies among optimists and pessimists. Total sample consisted of 255 optimists and 191 pessimists subjects selected by using quata random sampling technique and were administered individually Optimistic-Pessimistic attitude Scale developed by Prashar (1998), Depression Scale of Karim and Tiwari (1986) and Ways of Coping Questionnaire developed by Folkman and Lazarus (1988). Findings revealed that both the groups differ significantly from each other on both the variables of the study. Findings revealed that Pessimists have significantly higher level of depression than the Optimists subjects. On total Depression and on its dimensions namely, apathy, sleep disturbance, pessimism, fatigability, irritability, social withdrawal and self centeredness, dejected or sadness, self-acquisition, self-harm, social reoccupation and indecisiveness pessimists scored significantly higher mean values as compared to optimists. Optimists were found to have higher tendency of using distancing, seeking social support, planful problem solving and positive reappraisal as a technique of coping strategies than pessimists.

Pages:452-454
Shweta Singh (Department of Applied Psychology, V.B.S.Purvanchal University, Jaunpur, UP)

Happiness does not lie in the objects of enjoyment because happiness is a state of mind. Happiness is a pleasant emotion made out of contentment, love, joy, inner peace and fulfillment. The aim of the present paper is to explain the concept of 'Happiness' in Indian perspective. Vedas are describe the happiness with so many different ways like astrology, moksha or mukti etc. This paper tries to expalin all these expalnations of the happiness.

Pages:458-462
Vinod Kumari (CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Campus Kaul, Kaithal, Haryana)

Increased urbanization and industrialization have disturbed the extended family setup of Indian society for simple economics reasons, thereby making state and the community think of elderly care. The growing incidence of elder abuse in the multigenerational family or household has forced many older persons to abandon their family home. Both the absolute and relative size of population of the elderly in India will gain the strength in future. Elderly people are highly prone to mental morbidities due to ageing of the brain, problems associated with physical health and socio-economic factors like break down of family support and decline in economic independence. The issue is more acute for women, not only because of their progressive predominance numerically with age, but also because women are disadvantaged in the predominantly patriarchal societies in which most of them live. Hence, the present study was undertaken to examine the mental health profiles of aged rural women. A semi-structured questionnaire on socio-demographic and mental health profiles of women was developed to assess their mental health status. Most of the aged women under study were living with their families and about half (53.7%) of them were married while rests were widows. More than 80% aged women reported that they could concentrate on work and could play a useful role in the family provided they were given due respect and health care. However, 21.3% of sampled women were not able of making sound decisions and 32.5% were not feeling happy. The main reason reported for unhappiness was lack of due consideration and respect given by family members in various domestic affairs and they felt ignored. It was interested to note that 92.5% of aged women still felt that they were able to enjoy normal life and 86.3% had the capability and confidence of overcoming their difficulties. As regards to negative mental health attributes of aged rural women, it was found that more than half of them (57.5%) remained under stress due to one or the other reason. Some of them lost confidence in self (23.7%), lost sleep (13.7%) and thought themselves as worthless person (6.3%). The results of the study indicated differences in mental health attributes of aged women across different age groups. More mental stress was observed in women of 50-60 years of age (72.2%) followed by 61-70 years (58.1%) and more than 70 years (15.4%). The overall mental health level of aged rural women declined with age and it was found that more than 75 per cent of women were having good mental health. The study showed the role of age played in mental health and functioning of an elderly woman. This is an important marker to the further deteriorating conditions in various other health profiles of these “assets of the society”. Thus, these vulnerable groups of our society need special concern and better attention in their welfare programmes and health care services.

Pages:467-470
Dalbir Singh Saini (District Social Welfare Officer, Hisar, Haryana)

HIV/AIDS is spreading rapidly around the world. It is out of control in South Africa, and is now spreading massively in India. The population of India is growing at an enormous rate, and the spread of HIV/AIDS has become a matter of great concern for our nation. If necessary actions are not taken, HIV/AIDS can damage our whole economy. An attempt has been made in the present paper to highlights on psychological management of HIV/AIDS and interventional strategies. Research has also shown that awareness programs for HIV/AIDS and psychological management of HIV/AIDS are effective interventional programs for prevention of HIV infection.

Pages:474-477
Pravakar Duari (Department of Applied psychology, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry ) Pravakar Duari (Department of Applied psychology, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry )

Self-esteem reflects a person's overall self-appraisal on their own worth. Self-esteem is the dispositions to experience for student to become competent and to cope with the basic challenges of their life and of being worthy of happiness. Self-esteem is impotence concept for student for success, achievement, fulfillment, happiness in his/her life. Considering the importance, the study was designed to measure the self esteem of students. In the contemporary life-style, students are susceptible to stress in every phase of life. From the childhood to the late adulthood, stress acts as a threat to health-physical, psychological, social and spiritual. This two-group study includes 160 participants selected by random sampling method, out of which 80 males and 80 females. The subjects were administered by Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale (1965) and Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen & Mermeistein, 1983) and the data were analyzed by means of 't' test and Pearson 'r'. The results revealed that female students were significantly higher in self esteem and than males. Self esteem was found to have significant positive relationship with academic performance. Self esteem was significantly negatively correlated with perceived stress among school students. Implications and future direction of the study have been discussed in light of related literature.