Friedman Harris L, Brown Nicholas J L
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.
J Humanist Psychol. 2018 May;58(3):239-261. doi: 10.1177/0022167818762227. Epub 2018 Mar 29.
An extraordinary claim was made by one of the leading researchers within positive psychology, namely, there is a universal-invariant ratio between positive to negative emotions that serves as a unique tipping point between flourishing and languishing in individuals, marriages, organizations, and other human systems across all cultures and times. Known as the "critical positivity ratio," this finding was supposedly derived from the famous Lorenz equation in physics by using the mathematics of nonlinear dynamic systems, and was defined precisely as "2.9013." This exact number was widely touted as a great discovery by many leaders of positive psychology, had tremendous impact in various applied areas of psychology, and, more broadly, and was extensively cited in both the scientific literature and in the global popular media. However, this finding has been demonstrated to be bogus. Since its advent as a relatively new subdiscipline, positive psychology has claimed superiority to its precursor, the subdiscipline of humanistic psychology, in terms of supposedly both using more rigorous science and avoiding popularizing nonsense. The debunking of the critical positivity ratio demonstrates that positive psychology did not live up to these claims, and this has important implications, which are discussed in terms of "romantic scientism" and "voodoo science." In addition, articles in the special issue on the "Implications of Debunking the 'Critical Positivity Ratio' for Humanistic Psychology" are introduced, as they also delve into these concerns.
积极心理学领域的一位顶尖研究者提出了一个非同寻常的主张，即积极情绪与消极情绪之间存在一个普遍不变的比例，这个比例是个体、婚姻、组织以及所有文化和时代中的其他人类系统中繁荣与衰落之间独特的临界点。这个被称为“关键积极率”的发现据称是通过运用非线性动力系统的数学方法从物理学中著名的洛伦兹方程推导出来的，并被精确地定义为“2.9013”。这个确切的数字被许多积极心理学的领军人物广泛吹捧为一项重大发现，在心理学的各个应用领域产生了巨大影响，更广泛地说，在科学文献和全球大众媒体中都被大量引用。然而，这一发现已被证明是假的。自作为一个相对较新的子学科出现以来，积极心理学就声称在使用更严谨的科学方法以及避免传播无稽之谈这两方面都优于其前身——人本主义心理学子学科。对关键积极率的揭穿表明积极心理学并未兑现这些承诺，这具有重要意义，将从“浪漫科学主义”和“巫术科学”的角度进行讨论。此外，还介绍了关于“揭穿‘关键积极率’对人本主义心理学的影响”特刊中的文章，因为它们也深入探讨了这些问题。
