Positive Psychology, Ethnocentrism, and the Disguised Ideology of Individualism

By J. Christopher, S. Hickinbottom. 2008

334 citations recorded by the source corpus.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b8a17d5bfdb14632def298b40f5d3a61698101cf

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Citations in the corpus

Aversion to Happiness Across Cultures: A Review of Where and Why People are Averse to Happiness (2014, background): “Ever since the Enlightenment, Westerners have responded to the ideas of liberal modernity, hedonism, and romantic individualism (Christopher & Hickinbottom, 2008) by believing in the sovereignty of individuals over their personal happiness (Haybron, 2008), and the importance of positive mood and…”
Moving Beyond Subjective Well-Being (2014, background): “Seligman’s conceptions of happiness have been criticized by some scholars (Christopher & Hickinbottom, 2008), who have labeled them as ethnocentric.”
Problematic Ontological Underpinnings of Positive Psychology (2008, background): “Christopher and Hickinbottom (2008) make a strong case that positive psychology largely assumes the ‘universal truth’ of a ‘Western atomistic and interiorized self’ (p. 566).”
Eastern Conceptualizations of Happiness: Fundamental Differences with Western Views (2013, positive): “Contemporary western theories of happiness and optimal functioning also focus partly on individualistic virtues such as self-determination, autonomy, self-esteem, mastery, and control (Christopher 1999; Christopher and Hickinbottom 2008).”
Positive Psychology, Happiness, and Virtue: The Troublesome Conceptual Issues (2010, background): “Does not a virtue project that originates in the West “distort the experiences of those from other cultures” (Christopher & Hickinbottom, 2008, p. 581)?”
How WEIRD are positive psychology interventions? A bibliometric analysis of randomized controlled trials on the science of well-being (2018, background): “Further, to address past concerns about positive psychology being too Westerncentric (Cameron, 2016; Christopher & Hickinbottom, 2008), the current study examines whether positive psychology is truly a ‘WEIRD’ science, by analyzing the country of origins, educational level of the participants, the…”
Culture's Consequences on Student Motivation: Capturing Cross-Cultural Universality and Variability Through Personal Investment Theory (2014, background): “This criticism raised by Christopher and Hickinbottom (2008) exposes the weakness of relying exclusively on the imposed etic approach.”
Mental health, resilience and inequalities (2009, background): “Others have suggested that an undue emphasis on the individual self reflects cultural bias and a limited world view (Christopher and Hickinbottom 2008).”
Systems informed positive psychology (2020, background): “Universal claims are made, even as theories and approaches are often tested with selective samples and are predominantly grounded in Western values and assumptions (Christopher & Hickinbottom, 2008).”