Toward a Unified Framework for Positive Psychology Interventions: Evidence-Based Processes of Change in Coaching, Prevention, and Training

Abstract

Since 2000, research within positive psychology has exploded, as reflected in dozens of meta-analyses of different interventions and targeted processes, including strength spotting, positive affect, meaning in life, mindfulness, gratitude, hope, and passion. Frequently, researchers treat positive psychology processes of change as distinct from each other and unrelated to processes in clinical psychology. This paper presents a comprehensive framework for positive psychology processes that crosses theoretical orientation, links coherently to clinical psychology and its more dominantly “negative” processes, and supports practitioners in their efforts to personalize positive psychological interventions. We argue that a multi-dimensional and multi-level extended evolutionary approach can organize effective processes of change in psychosocial interventions, by focusing interventions on context-appropriate variation, selection, and retention of processes, arranged in terms of key biopsychosocial dimensions across psychological, biophysiological, and sociocultural levels of analysis. We review widely studied positive psychology constructs and programs and show how this evolutionary approach can readily accommodate them and provide a common language and framework for improving human and community flourishing. We conclude that Interventions should start with the person, not the protocol.

Theories of wellbeing, practical applications and implications for coaching

“…This approach is consistent with calls for a more personalised approach to wellbeing promotion (Ciarrochi et al, 2022), aligning with coaching-based practice. Over a period of four weeks students are introduced to a variety of PPIs from which they select specific interventions that they are intrinsically motivated to carry out, guided by processes known to be effective in groups of people, including strengths (Schutte & Malouff, 2019), personal values (Bojanowska et al, 2022), positive emotions (Fredrickson, 1998), psychological flow (Tse et al, 2021), equanimity (Eberth et al, 2019), fierce-compassion (Kirby et al, 2017), kindness (Hui et al, 2020), active hope (Pleeging et al, 2021), meaning and purpose (Vos & Vitali, 2018), meditation (Agteren et al, 2021), goal setting (Klug & Maier, 2015), physical activity (Buecker et al, 2021) and other health behaviours (Stenlund et al, 2022) (see also Agteren et al, 2021;Carr et al, 2020).…”

The Compassion Balance: Understanding the Interrelation of Self- and Other-Compassion for Optimal Well-being

“…Stated differently, the same processes do not necessarily drive well-being in the same way for all people. The alternative to making inferences about individuals from group estimates is to take an idionomic approach (Ciarrochi, Hayes, Oades, Hofmann, 2022), which involves examining individual data first and only making group-based generalization if it is consistent with or improves the individual level fit. This approach requires one to collect substantial data across time within-person, so that reliable individual models can first be estimated before shifting to the group level.…”

A personalised-approach to identifying important determinants of well-being

“…We still have much to learn about the within-person variation in the link between well-being and sleep, physical activity, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, diet, and other indices known to link to wellbeing at the group level. The EEMM seems well suited to serving as a kind of meeting place, an intellectual Agora, for the marketplace of ideas that will be needed for such a comprehensive turn in the mainstream methodology of behavioral science research (Ciarrochi et al, 2021) Our results show that there are substantial individual differences in the processes that drive well-being,but we do not yet know if this knowledge has treatment utility. Can experience-sampling measures and within-person analyses be used to improve treatment outcomes?…”

“…To put these processes into a wider context, we first nest them within a theoretical framework, the Extended Evolutionary Meta-Model (EEMM; Ciarrochi et al, 2021;Hayes et al, 2020b). The EEMM provides a coherent way, grounded in multi-dimensional, multi-level evolutionary science, of examining the wide variety of specific models of processes of change that currently exist.…”

“…and context (do clients know when to deploy new skills then they are needed). The EEMM has been shown to successfully summarise a wide variety of processes of change (Ciarrochi et al, 2021;Hayes et al, 2022a).…”