Martin E. P. Seligman

• Date of birth: August 12, 1942
• Place of birth: Albany, New York
• TYPE OF PSYCHOLOGY: Motivation; personality; psychopathology

Seligman is the world’s leading authority on positive psychology and optimism.

Life

Martin E. P. Seligman earned a BA in psychology from Princeton University in 1964 and his doctorate in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. Shortly thereafter, he accepted a position in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1975, he published Helplessness, a book describing how to deal with the emotional distresses that can lead to depression, anxiety, and failure. A few years later, Seligman and David L. Rosenhan coauthored a popular textbook, Abnormal Psychology (1984), that included the latest nuclear technology for mapping the brain. For his work on preventing depression, Seligman received the Merit Award of the National Institute of Mental Health in 1991.

Seligman served as the director of the Clinical Training Program of the Psychology Department of the University of Pennsylvania for fourteen years. His primary emphasis and research efforts concentrated on learned depression and pessimism and learned optimism. In 1995, he was presented the Pennsylvania Psychology Association’s award for Distinguished Contributions to Science and Practice. One year later, he was elected president of the American Psychological Association (APA) by the widest margin in history. His focus as APA president was on joining psychological practice and science in a united effort to combat mental illness. He is the founding editor-in-chief of Prevention and Treatment Magazine, the APA electronic journal.

In 1999, Seligman was appointed as the Robert A. Fox leadership professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2000, he has advocated positive psychology, the study and implementation of positive emotions, positive character traits, and positive-oriented mental health institutions. His efforts have established a firm foundation for research that involves the study of human happiness as a basis for optimal human functioning. In 2021, he continued to teach at the University of Pennsylvania as the Zellerbach family professor of psychology and founding director of the university's Positive Psychology Center.

Seligman has written more than thirty books and published more than 350 scholarly articles dealing with learning, motivation, personality, and psychopathology. His books on positive psychology—including Learned Optimism (1991), The Optimistic Child (1995; with Karen Reivich, Lisa Jaycox, and Jane Gillham), and Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (2002)—have made him a best-selling author. In Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being (2011), he sets out what he calls a “new theory of well-being” encapsulated by the mnemonic PERMA: positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. In the mid-to-late 2010s, he published three books: Homo Prospectus (2016; with Peter Railton, Roy F. Baumeister, and Chandra Sripada); The Hope Circuit: A Psychologist's Journey from Helplessness to Optimism (2018); Positive Psychotherapy: Clinician Manual (2018; with Tayyab Rashid). Seligman continued to present and publish in the 2020s, includingTomorrowmind: Thriving at Work with Resilience, Creativity, and Connection—Now and in an Uncertain Future (2023), which he coauthored with Gabriella Rosen Kellerman.

In 2003, Seligman established the master of applied positive psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania as part of the Positive Psychology Center. In honor of his research, he has been awarded the 2017 APA Award for Lifetime Contributions to Psychology, the Tang Award for Lifetime Achievement in Psychology, the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, the Laurel Award from the American Association for Applied Psychology and Prevention, and the William James Fellow Award and James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society.

Bibliography

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, and Isabella Selega Csikszentmihalyi. A Life Worth Living: Contributions to Positive Psychology. Oxford UP, 2006.

Gibbon, Peter. "Martin Seligman and the Rise of Positive Psychology." Humanities, vol. 41, no. 3, 2020. National Endowment for the Humanities, www.neh.gov/article/martin-seligman-and-rise-positive-psychology. Accessed 12 Dec. 2024.

McNutty, James K., and Frank D. Fincham. "Beyond Positive Psychology? Toward a Contextual View of Psychological Process and Well-Being." American Psychologist, vol. 67, no. 2, 2012, pp. 101–110.

Ong, Anthony D., and Manfred H. M. Van Dulmen. Oxford Handbook of Methods in Positive Psychology. Oxford UP, 2007.

"Positive Psychology Theory." Penn: Authentic Happiness, Trustees of the U of Pennsylvania, 2024, www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/learn. Accessed 12 Dec. 2024.

Review of Tomorrowmind: Thriving at Work—Now and in an Uncertain Future, by Gabriella Rosen Kellerman and Martin Selig. Kirkus Reviews, 17 Oct. 2022, www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/gabriella-rosen-kellerman/tomorrowmind/. Accessed 12 Dec. 2024.

Seligman, Martin E. P., et al. "Mental Health Promotion in Public Health: Perspectives and Strategies from Positive Psychology." American Journal of Public Health, vol. 101, no. 8, 2011, pp. e1–e9.

Sheldon, Kennon M., et al. Designing Positive Psychology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward. Oxford UP, 2011.

Simonton, Dean Keith. Great Psychologists and Their Times: Scientific Insights into Psychology’s History. Amer. Psychological Assn., 2002.