Bringing Coherence To Positive Psychology: Faith In Humanity

Currently, positive psychology is experiencing problems with coherence, and the field could benefit from more organizing concepts linking disparate findings and researchers within the field. This incoherence can be seen in several domains. At a conceptual level, the field has produced an abundance of important studies clarifying predictors of well-being, but no consistent theory has emerged explaining why these factors predict well-being. In addition, disunity has emerged between first wave positive psychologists and second wave positive psychologists, and also between practitioners and researchers. The field could benefit from more unifying constructs that explain links between constructs and practices within positive psychology. Faith in humanity (FIH) has potential as a unifying construct. FIH is like a forgotten sibling whose important story is mentioned rarely and mainly obliquely. In fact, this construct, though seldom mentioned, already implicitly pervades much of positive psychology, and the field would benefit by explicitly recognizing this fact.