Psychology, Justice and Well-Being: From Amelioration to Transformation

1. Psychology, Justice and Well-Being: From Amelioration to Transformation Isaac Prilleltensky Dean, School of Education University of Miami isaac@miami.edu http://www.education.miami.edu/isaac

2. Three Questions • What are the current approaches to well-being and what are their limitations? • How can we overcome the limitations of current approaches? • What can psychology do?

3. Question 1: What are the current approaches to well-being? • Subjective • Objective • Integrative

4. Seligman on Subjective well-being • Contribution: positive affect, positive behaviors, positive cognitions, sense of agency, strengths • Limitations: Minimizes importance of context • “If you want to lastingly raise your level of happiness by changing the external circumstances of your life, you should do the following: • Live in wealthy democracy, not in an impoverished dictatorship • Get married • Avoid negative events and negative emotion • Acquire a rich social network • Get religion” • Seligman’s Authentic Happiness (2002, pp. 61)

5. Seligman on Subjective Well-Being • “As far as happiness and life satisfaction are concerned, however, you needn’t bother to do the following • Make more money • Stay healthy • Get as much education as possible (no effect) • Change your race or move to a sunnier climate (no effect)” Seligman’s Authentic Happiness (2002, pp. 61) • Really? • If we follow Seligman’s argument to its logical conclusion we might think that there are a lot of people who are happy but dead!

6. Colombia: Happy but Dead • Highest rate of murders per capita in the world • Highest number of kidnappings in the world • Colombia 5181 in 7 years • Mexico 1269 • Brazil 515 • Venezuela 109 • Severe under reporting • Colombians report highest level of satisfaction 8.31 (out of 10) in the world in the 90s

8. Place Matters

9. Income Matters for Well-Being

10. Education Matters

11. Seligman Engages in Context Minimization Error • “Tendency to ignore the impact of enduring neighborhood and community contexts on human behavior. The error has adverse consequences for understanding psychological processes and efforts at social change” (Shinn and Toohey, 2003, p. 428).

12. Objective well-being • Contributions: understanding of external and material factors in health, life expectancy, capabilities, and human functioning • Limitations: without understanding of psychological dynamics it cannot explain unhappiness in wealthy environments and life satisfaction in less than optimal objective conditions

13. Wealth matters for life expectancy(Lynch, Smith, Kaplan, and House, 2003, Income inequality and mortality. In R. Hofrichster, R. Health and social justice, Jossey Bass, p. 220).

14. Income is not everything though (Inglehart and Klingemann, 2000, Genes, culture, democracy and happiness; in Diener and Suh, Culture and subjective well-being. MIT Press.

15. Relative deprivation matters in SwedenMarmot, 2004, The Status Syndrome. London: Times

16. Relative deprivation matters in UKM. Marmot, 2004, The Status Syndrome. London: Times

17. Male Life Expectancy by Inequality

18. Chinese happiness and democracy: democracy is not everything(Inglehart and Klingemann, 2000, Genes, culture, democracy and happiness; in Diener and Suh, Culture and subjective well-being. MIT Press.

19. Integrative approach • Contributions: Interactionist, ecological approach • Limitations: Insufficient attention to injustice in promotion of well-being at multiple levels

20. Stokols on Integrative Approach to Well-Being • “The healthfulness of a situation and the well-being of its participants are assumed to be influenced by multiple facets of both the physical environment (e.g., geography, architecture, and technology) and the social environment (e.g., culture, economics, and politics). Moreover, the health status of individuals and groups is influenced not only by environmental factors but also by a variety of personal attributes, including genetic heritage, psychological dispositions, and behavioral patterns.”

21. Stokols continues….. • “Thus, efforts to promote human well-being should be based on an understanding of the dynamic interplay among diverse environmental and personal factors rather than on analyses that focus exclusively on environmental, biological, or behavioral factors. (Stokols, 2000, p. 27)”

22. Question 2: How can we overcome the limitations of current approaches? • Definition of well-being • Well-being is a positive state of affairs in individuals, relationships, organizations, communities, and the natural environment, brought about by the simultaneous and balanced satisfaction of material and psychological needs; and by the behavioral manifestation of material and psychological justice in these five ecological domains.

23. Ecological Model of Well-Being

24. Ecological Model of Well-Being: Some positive and negative factors

25. Social Justice • Cardinal question of justice is whether there are • “any clear principles from which we may work out an ideally just distribution of rights and privileges, burdens and pains, among human beings as such” (Sedgwick, 1922, p. 274). • To each his or her due (Miller)

26. Dominant ideology Ability Effort Alternative ideology Ability Effort Needs Rights Opportunities Power How Do We Decide What Is Due A Person, Family, Or Group?

27. The role of context • context should determine what criterion or criteria must be preferred in each case • In social conditions of inequality, we must accord preference to needs over ability

28. Context of Relative Equality • Under conditions of relative equality, where the gap between classes is not very pronounced, it is possible to favor effort over needs.

29. Context of Plenty of Opportunities • In a context of plenty of opportunities for everyone, it is possible that ability and effort will be the preferred choice.

30. Justice Out of Context • Societies aspiring to justice must seek equilibrium among all criteria • When context of inequality calls for need and equality, but culture favors effort, it’s because privileged groups benefit. • As a result, group interests that influence the choice of allocation pattern often disregard the context-specific situation.

31. Well-Being  Justice

32. Proximal caring Caring Compassion Empathy Therapy Distal caring Justice Equality Liberation Social action Question 3: What can Psychology Do?

33. AMELIORATION Treatment Symptoms In the office Charity Individualistic Passive victim Neglects Power TRANSFORMATION Prevention Root causes In natural setting Justice Communitarian Agents of change Attends to Power Balancing amelioration with transformation

34. From DRAIN Deficit orientation Reactive Alienation Individual change To SPEC Strengths-based Primary Prevention Empowerment Community change Changing how we work

35. How can we balance our work in the community? Collective X Reactive Preventive Individual

36. Contextual Field in Helping Professions Collective Quadrant IV Examples: Food banks, shelters for homeless people, charities, prison industrial complex Quadrant I Examples: Community development, affordable housing policy, recreational opportunities, high quality schools and health services Reactive Proactive Quadrant II Examples: Skill building, emotional literacy, fitness programs, personal improvement plans, resistance to peer pressure in drug and alcohol use Quadrant III Examples: Crisis work, therapy, medications, symptom containment, case management Individualistic

37. 9/7/1854…Removing the Handle

38. Getting To The Bottom Of It…. • No mass disorder, afflicting humankind, has ever been eliminated, or brought under control, by treating the affected individual • HIV/AIDS, poverty, child abuse, powerlessness are not eliminated one person at a time.

39. Too much reaction, not enough preventionInvestments in Reactive vs. Proactive Interventions in Health and Community Services (Nelson et al, 1996; OECD, 2005; de Bekker-Grob et al., 2007) Investments in Prevention: Italy 0.6% USA 3% Netherlands 4.3% Canada 8% Prilleltensky

40. Ratio of Benefits to Costs in National Exemplary Prevention Models(Lynch, 2007, page 19) Prilleltensky

41. How can we balance our work with individuals? Strengths X Detachment Empowerment Deficits

42. Affirmation Field in Helping Professions Strength Quadrant I Examples: Voice and choice in celebrating and building competencies, recognition of personal and collective resilience Quadrant IV Examples: Just say no! You can do it! Cheerleading approaches, Make nice approaches Detachment Empowerment Quadrant III Examples: Labeling and diagnosis, “patienthood” and clienthood,” citizens in passive role Quadrant II Examples: Voice and choice in deficit reduction approaches, participation in decisions how to treat affective disorders or physical disorders Deficit

43. Values that support SPEC in Practice

44. Values that support SPEC in Policies and Programs

45. It’s like Venice…..

46. Venice’s Lesson • “The psychotherapist, social worker or social reformer, concerned only with his own clients and their grievance against society, perhaps takes a view comparable to the private citizen of Venice who concerns himself only with the safety of his own dwelling and his own ability to get about the city. But if the entire republic is slowly being submerged, individual citizens cannot afford to ignore their collective fate, because, in the end, they all drown together if nothing is done” (Badcock, 1982)