PSICOLOGIA POSITIVA E BENESSERE

[Autom. eng. transl.] What makes us happy, what makes us feel good and how can we define well-being? In the last twenty years in psychology the awareness of the need to deal with the definition of well-being and to identify the factors and behaviors that can improve our quality of life has matured. This is the task of positive psychology, oriented both to the study of factors that influence subjective well-being (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) and to the enhancement of individual abilities and resources, such as optimism, wisdom and resilience. In the chapter the researches and fields of study of positive psychology will be presented; then the relationships between stress and coping and the strategies aimed at enhancing the capacity to cope with stress will be considered; finally, the psychological factors that correlate well-being and health will be analyzed.