Self-Esteem Research, Theory, and Practice Toward a Positive ...

Self-Esteem and Positive Psychology 239as an academic discipline humanistic psychology is more rigorous thanmay meet the eye, the fact that it is often embraced by popular and selfhelppsychology makes humanistic positive psychology guilty by association.Perhaps positivistic positive psychologists drew a line betweenthemselves and this body of work to avoid a similar fate. Although understandable,limiting access to material in this way is both regrettable and,as we shall see momentarily, unnecessary.The other factor that limits humanistic psychology’s influence inpositive psychology is specifically paradigmatic, although methodologicalopenness is a case in point. We saw this deeper, more structural issuein Chapter 2 when we compared the scientific paradigms used to researchself-esteem. For one thing, mainstream psychology is founded on the logicalpositivism of psychology practiced as a natural science, which is tosay that it is objective and factual but reductionistic and deterministic.Thus, when positivistic positive psychology calls for empirical research, itmeans quantified studies; those based on the right side of the methodologicalcontinuum and that support a clear hierarchy of value in termsof what is acceptable.Humanistic psychology is not as uniform in its approach because itrealizes the need for multiple methods, both quantitative and qualitative.This aspect of the human science paradigm is seen as a strength becauseit allows researchers to access phenomena as they are actually lived.However, methodological diversity also generates a less uniform body ofwork. Thus, whenever humanistic psychology attempts to bring its materialto the psychological table, such as the one for positive psychology, itmust jump two hurdles right from the beginning: skepticism toward itswork in principle and a range of findings that are too diverse to be placedunder a single roof. Consequently, it is easy to see how the naturalisticform of positive psychology dismisses as irrelevant, non-scientific, and soforth, humanistic work on positive topics. In this light, it also is not difficultto comprehend why the human science approach fires back withugly charges of hegemony, intellectual imperialism, and the like.Fortunately, however, things are not as clear-cut as they seem. Forexample, the following quotation appears in a special issue of theAmerican Psychologist only 1 year after the first article on this topic inthat prestigious and important journal.Positive psychology is thus an attempt to urge psychologists to adopt amore open and appreciative perspective regarding human potentials,motives, and capacities. Such an endeavor is surprisingly difficultwithin psychology’s reductionist epistemological traditions, whichtrain one to view positivity with suspicion, as a product of wishfulthinking, denials, or hucksterism. It is probably appropriate that psychologistsreceive such training because all people are prone to be taken