Popular Course Helps Students Increase their Happiness and Well-Being: an Interview with Bruce W. Smith Ph.D.
November 22, 2024 - By Rick Robb
What would you think about a college class that could help you approach life and school in a more positive way? In my last post, I wrote about the accelerated online (AOP) Bachelors’ degree program in Psychology. In researching that piece, I happened to chat with Dr. Bruce W. Smith, an Associate Professor in UNM’s Department of Psychology whose research areas of interest include clinical psychology and health psychology.
In addition to his very popular Positive Psychology course (PSYC454), he’s authored or co-authored over 80 journal articles including “The Effects of an Online Positive Psychology Course on Happiness, Health, and Well‑Being” (2023) for the Journal of Happiness Studies. Reading through the titles, keywords like resilience, kindness, optimism, hope, and mindfulness jump out. He’s also written two popular books on positive psychology. I wanted to talk with him more about this course and the subject he is so passionate about and to see if he had any suggestions for us as the holidays near.
Rick Robb: Thanks for taking the time to talk about your work, Dr. Smith. Can you start by telling us about the path that brought you to The University of New Mexico?
Bruce W. Smith: I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area and came to love the Southwest while camping with my family. I got a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Arizona State University in 2002, and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroimaging at the National Institutes of Health.
RR: How long have you been at UNM?
BWS: [I’ve] been at the University of New Mexico for 20 years.
RR: While the name seems to say it all, in a sentence, how would you explain “Positive Psychology”?
BWS: Positive Psychology is the science of happiness and well-being and what makes life worth living. Rather than only focusing on reducing mental illness and treating what can go wrong with us, it focuses on how we can be at our best and live our lives to the fullest.
RR: I believe that your Positive Psychology course generally has the largest enrollment and has more than once been voted as the most popular online class. How long have you been teaching it?
BWS: Actually, before the online version of the course was first developed in the spring of 2018, the face-to-face version of the course was twice voted the best class at UNM. Since then, the online Positive Psychology course has quickly grown to where it’s taught every fall with parallel sections; one for students in the Accelerated Online Program (AOP) and another for non-AOP students.
RR: Do you have an idea of how many students have taken the class in that time?
BWS: Overall, including this fall, the online Positive Psychology course will have been taught 8 times to a total of 1,020 students, including when it was first taught in the spring of 2018. That number includes 246 in the AOP program plus 774 non-AOP online students. The non-AOP section has had as many as 163 students and the AOP section has had as many as 70 students enrolled as it has this fall.
RR: That’s a nice-sized group to reach! As a 400-level course, it would seem that it was designed for Psychology majors and those going into fields where they would be working with clients in clinical or social work settings. What was the original intent of the course when you designed it? Were there unexpected benefits that arose after it was taught?
BWS: One of the wonderful things about positive psychology is that it applies to everyone, whether they are psychology majors or not, because it’s about enabling us all to be happy, successful, and make the most of our lives. Thus, while the majority have been psychology majors, there have been students from a variety of majors including education, business, other social sciences, engineering, law, medicine, and several allied health professions.
Since it’s a 400-level course, it’s often been taken by students in the year before they graduate, and several students have told me that it has helped them make a successful transition to graduate school and live after UNM.
RR: That’s a nice bonus. I wish it had been available to me when I was looking at that transition.
BWS: When I originally designed and taught the face-to-face version of the course in 2005, it was targeted to upper-level psychology majors. But I quickly saw that it applied to everyone. Now after having taught the face-to-face version of the course over 30 times and the online version 8 times to a total of over 6,000 students, I am never ceased to be surprised and delighted at how it has been — and can be — beneficial for people of all ages and interests and from all places and walks of life.
I think one of the main reasons for this is that the class has weekly assignments where the students are asked to practice activities and exercises that research has shown to consistently increase our happiness, well-being, and success. As the teaching assistants and I see, read, and grade these assignments, we are consistently inspired and enriched by the ways that our students are putting what they learn into practice and by how much of a difference it can make. Some of the frequent examples I see involve things like deciding on a major, getting into graduate school, leaving abusive relationships for healthy ones, dealing with trauma and the loss of loved ones, getting help for anxiety, depression, and substance abuse, and charting a positive path towards a better future.
RR: You have also used this course in research to discover the effects of an 8-week online positive psychology course on students’ happiness, health, and well-being. What were the results of that study?
BWS: My research lab has done research comparing the changes in students taking the positive psychology class with students taking other psychology classes. First, we examined students taking the 16-week face-to-face positive psychology class and compared them to other students taking general 16-week face-to-face psychology classes.
RR: And what did you see?
BWS: We found that the positive psychology students had significant improvements in happiness, positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment, health, and significant decreases in negative emotions and loneliness.
RR: That’s incredible. It seems to be a really impactful class.
BWS: After that, we examined students taking the 8-week online positive psychology class relative to students taking other 8-week online psychology courses. There, we found that the positive psychology students again had significant changes in all the same variables as the face-to-face class. In addition, we included several other variables and found that relative to the students taking other psychology classes, the positive psychology students had significant decreases in anxiety, depression, and stress, and significant increases in resilience, optimism, hope, and self-kindness. Moreover, the size of the changes in the combined scores for overall well-being were large suggesting that on average students have meaningful increases in well-being that would likely make a real difference in their lives.
RR: Can you tell us about how the PERMA™ model — Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment — fits into your course?
BWS: Before the birth of Positive Psychology around 2000, psychology primarily focused on reducing mental illness and the things associated with negative emotions such as anxiety, depression, and stress. While not downplaying the value of reducing these things, Positive Psychology has added a focus on increasing the kinds of positive things included in the PERMA model – which then often also reduces the negative.
PERMA is an acronym where the five letters stand for these five things: Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Martin Seligman, often identified as the founder of Positive Psychology, developed this PERMA model of well-being. The goal of this model was to identify the primary elements of well-being that we as human beings seek for their own sake, and which enable us to be happy and live our lives to the fullest. Both the face-to-face and online positive psychology courses that I have developed and taught were primarily designed to increase our happiness and well-being. Thus, the course presents the PERMA theory of well-being at the beginning of the course and challenges students to use the course to increase each of the five elements of PERMA for themselves.
RR: How does that play out?
BWS: In addition, the students complete a questionnaire assessing the elements of PERMA in their lives at the beginning of the course, 1/3 of the way through the course, 2/3 of the way through the course, and at the end of the course. They can use their scores as a way to track changes in their scores and see their improvements.
Along with the PERMA model, the other important Positive Psychology model to be aware of is called the Values in Action (VIA) classification of strengths. It’s a well-developed model of human strengths that enables us to improve our individual and collective well-being across time and cultures. If increasing happiness and well-being are the goals of the courses, enabling students to identify and better use these strengths is the means to enable them to do this. Thus, early in the course, students fill out a questionnaire to identify their top strengths. Then, through the course, they learn how to better build their lower strengths and use their top strengths to reach their own goals about improving their happiness, well-being, and success.
RR: In grad school, we looked at The Hero’s Journey in relation to storytelling. I understand that you use it in your course as well. Tell us about that.
BWS: Using Joseph Campbell’s idea of a “hero’s journey” I tie together the use of our strengths to improve our lives and frame it in the context of a common human journey. The hero’s journey has several stages or steps that Campbell identified as often occurring in stories across time and culture and which can be seen in some of our favorite stories including things like Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings. Thus, early in the class, I talk about the hero’s journey as a road map that students can use to inspire, motivate, and guide them in their efforts to use their strengths to improve their lives – and also to see how much they are on a common journey with other students and people.
RR: I think we can see why the subject matter of your course has become so popular.
BS: I hope so. I could add or reiterate that because it’s directly relevant to what each of us cares about the most in our lives — how to be happy, successful, and make the most of our lives.
RR: The holiday season can be especially trying for many people. Combined with the stresses that accompany the end of the semester with its final exams and papers, it may especially affect students. How can the principles of positive psychology help them deal with it?
BS: One thing is to realize that when we become stressed and overwhelmed, we tend to focus more on the negative than the positive in our lives. Here is where some of the specific activities and practices that have been identified, developed, and improved can be so relevant and important.
- Self-Compassion – take whatever time and space you can to take care of yourself by trying to eat well, get enough sleep, exercise, and reach out for support from those you love, trust, and feel good with.
- Three Good Things – every day, try to note at least three good things that happen during the day and see what you can do to pay more attention and make them happen more in your life.
- Savoring – make a list of the things that you enjoy the most such as food, friends, music, pets, and activities you do – and take the time to regularly and mindfully savor them. You can even savor happy memories or dreams of a better future.
- Kindness – go through lists of acts of kindness and find new ways to be kind to both strangers and people you know every day. Experiment with different acts of kindness until you find those you enjoy and love to do the most.
- Strengths – take the free Values in Action survey to identify your top strengths. Then use the 340 Ways to Use Your Strengths to find new ways to use them and try a new way every day.
- Gratitude – once a week make a list of the things you are grateful for and write a gratitude letter to someone you have not fully thanked and share it with them. Make a list of those things in which you see something good or beautiful about them and tell them about it.
- Best Possible Life – no matter how anxious, stressed, or depressed you may be feeling now, dare to write about what would make your life better and the future, what you could do to make it happen, and take one small step to get started.
RR: That’s some really great advice. Is there anything else you’d like students to know about your Positive Psychology course?
BWS: Everyone is welcome and feel free to invite your friends and family members to take it with you!
RR: Thanks for your time, Dr. Smith.
For information on online classes and degree programs, contact the UNM Online student support team at 505-277-9000 or online@unm.edu. We also have virtual drop-in advisement hours via Zoom on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 to noon, mountain time. This is a great way to connect and we are able to share our screens. Join us via Zoom. The meeting code is 967 7118 3893. We look forward to chatting with you.
