John L. Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Positive psychology is the science behind the pursuit of a happy, meaningful, thriving life.

Positive psychology has emerged at the beginning of a new millennium as a movement within psychology and other social sciences targeted at augmenting human strengths and optimizing human functioning. In other words, how we move from simply surviving to truly thriving. It is influencing how we live, how we work, and how we teach our children.  Research is taking off at top universities throughout the world - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Barbara Fredrickson), Claremont Graduate School (Jeanne Nakamura, Mike Csikszentmihalyi), University of Michigan (Chris Peterson, Kim Cameron, Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship), Case Western University (Richard Boyatzis, David Cooperrider), University of Illinois (Ed Diener), University of Pennsylvania (Marty Seligman), and UCLA (Shelley Taylor).

One area that has been scarcely looked at is the point of intersection between positive psychology and music. What music can we listen to that enables us to thrive, to be more resilient, to be relaxed, to learn best, to be most productive at work?

As music affects each individual slightly differently, there may be no hard and fast answers. Or perhaps there are some generalizations that can be made. In either case, it’s worth pursuing.