Damian Sendler: Positive psychology research has been exploding since 2000, with dozens of meta-analyses of different interventions and targeted processes like strength spotting and positive affect. Most of the time, researchers in the field of positive psychology treat the concepts of change in that field as distinct and unrelated. An integrative framework for positive psychology processes is presented in this paper, which links positively to clinical psychology and its more dominantly “negative” processes, and supports practitioners in their efforts to tailor positive psychological interventions for their clients. It is our contention that a multidimensional and multi-level extended evolutionary approach can organize effective processes of change in psychosocial interventions through the selection and retention of processes based on context-appropriate variation in the selection of processes across the psychological, biophysical, and sociocultural levels of analysis. There are many well-known concepts and programs in the field of positive psychology, and we demonstrate how this evolutionary approach can easily accommodate them. Interventions should begin with a person rather than a protocol, we conclude.
Damian Jacob Sendler: Two psychologists in 2000 argued that psychology had become too focused on negative traits, pathology, and the repair of psychological damage, and that it had neglected the study of flourishing in both the individual as well as society. Positive Psychology has flourished since that time, with thousands of studies on virtues, strengths, and positive emotions. There has been a surge in research on such topics as signature strengths and virtues (Schutte and Malouff, 2019), helping behavior (Lefevor et al., 2017), creativity (Acar et al., 2020), resilience (Liu et al., 2020), positive affect and broaden and build theory (Fredrickson, 2013), forgiveness (Wade et al., 2014), flow (Harris et al., 2021), (Carr et al., 2020). As a result of this research, the term “positive psychology” has come to encompass both positive and negative constructs, as well as a wider range of methodologies and levels of analysis (e.g., group, culture, etc.; Lomas et al., 2021).
Dr. Sendler: it is exciting to see so many promising approaches to positive psychology gaining traction, but it’s also challenging because of the field’s rapid expansion and diversity. We can clearly see progress in the past, but the best path forward is still a mystery. How can we expand the reach of our positive psychology interventions?
For example, the field could take a cue from clinical psychology and test new interventions against established ones to see which one performs better. There are few reasons to believe that this model’s impact on positive psychology will be any different than its failure to improve clinical psychology interventions (Johnsen and Friborg, 2015, Ljótsson et al., 2017, Jones et al., 2019). Another reason for not moving forward is that there is no evidence to suggest global happiness is increasing despite decades of efforts (Easterlin and Angelescu, 2009; Richter et al., 2019; Marquez and Long, 2021). We require a new strategy.
Positive psychology, we contend, must undergo two fundamental transformations if it is to maintain its current trajectory of progress. It is important to note that the first shift is from the evaluation of complex interventions to the evaluation of specific intervention elements (Hayes et al., 2020a). Having a better understanding of how and why positive psychology interventions work will help us refine and target our efforts. Our first mistake was assuming the same intervention would work for everyone. People in particular situations necessitate individualized treatment plans (Hayes et al., 2019). Using the best of our field’s existing knowledge, this paper will lay out a framework for understanding and implementing process-based, personalized positive psychology interventions.
Complex intervention packages should be tested against waitlist and active controls in the early stages of a new field. In the beginning, we don’t know if any of the interventions will have a significant impact, so it makes sense to use a “package” approach and be as comprehensive as possible. Two decades of research, however, have shown that positive psychology interventions have significant effect sizes, usually in the “medium” range (Donaldson et al., 2019; Schutte and Malouff, 2019; Boggiss et al., 2020; Carr et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2020; Manco and Hamby, 2021; Ntoumanis et al., 2021). The question now is whether or not continuing to analyze complex packages will help us improve our ability to promote health.
“No” is the most likely answer. That’s not only inefficient, but it also stifles our ability to advance our understanding of the subject matter. In the long run, a complicated package may be beneficial, but it also contains a lot of extraneous elements. Fordyce’s (1977) happiness program, for example, focuses on a wide range of goals, including streamlining daily life, boosting creativity, instilling a positive outlook on life, and fostering a positive self-concept. There isn’t much evidence to suggest that each of these components is equally important or valuable. Fordyce’s program isn’t being slammed here; rather, we’re acknowledging the limitations of our evaluation method. This approach does not allow us to evaluate the importance of individual components or the process of change that they engage. It is possible that we may feel pressured to administer the entire package or, if time or resources allow, select elements that we intuitively think will work best. This is a bad strategy for making progress in either science or practice.
We can’t compare interventions because of the package approach’s lack of clarity about the comparisons that are being made. It’s possible that programs with different names are altering similar processes (Wolitzky-Taylor et al., 2012) or that two similar programs (say, two “mindfulness” interventions) are targeting unique processes. Unless we know what we’re comparing, comparisons aren’t very helpful. In the absence of rigorous testing of interventions’ concepts, new approaches will not be able to build on previous findings.
Forman et al. (2012) and Arch et al. (2012) have found no clear winner in clinical psychology package comparisons (Arch et al., 2012). (Cuijpers et al., 2020). Since some have concluded that all interventions work regardless of their components (Budd and Hughes, 2009), this has left the field without direction and fails to acknowledge that interventions can work for completely different reasons.
Research in positive psychology is unique in that it does not focus on syndromes or hypothesized latent disease entities, unlike traditional clinical psychology. This is a huge step forward in empowering more precise and personalized targeting of changes that matter, but taking advantage of that opportunity requires an equally focused research program. Instead of studying evidence-based packages, we should instead focus on change processes and the intervention elements that move them forward (Hayes and Hofmann, 2018; Hofmann et al., 2021).
A process of change is one that is based on theory and proceeds in a predictable, empirically established sequence toward a desired outcome while being dynamic, progressed, contextually bound, and modifiable at multiple levels (Hofmann and Hayes, 2019). Let’s take a closer look at this definition and break it down into its components.
Non-linear and bidirectional processes are possible. Sudden disturbance and increased variability can result in a dramatic transformation if the challenge to one’s life is too great to assimilate (Hayes et al., 2007). Post-traumatic growth, such as a greater appreciation of life, deeper connections with others, and a stronger sense of one’s own inner strength and purpose, can occur in the wake of trauma (Tedeschi and Calhoun, 2004).
For optimal results, therapeutic change processes may need to be organized in specific ways. Preparing oneself for compassion by increasing self-esteem may be a useful step in the process. For example, a person who believes that they are worthy of compassion is more likely to treat themselves kindly.
Starting with the contextual factors that practitioners can influence is the best way to build useful processes. Because we need to implement processes that are sensitive to the context features of the client’s life, contextual knowledge is doubly useful (Ciarrochi et al., 2016). In a difficult situation, for example, skilled practitioners can help people think in a broader and more useful way (Kazantzis et al., 2018). This evidence suggests that reappraisal is a strong focus of change, and potentially more useful than something that is difficult to change, like personality or temperament.. To be effective in all situations and for everyone, reappraisal needs to be taken into consideration. As an example, youth may not be able to use reappraisal strategies as effectively as adults (Brockman et al., 2017). In the same way, it’s critical to know exactly what a contextualized skill is. It is well known that reappraisal is most beneficial when it promotes cognitive flexibility (Arch et al., 2012).
Several processes are intertwined. What about the concept of hope, or one’s sense of agency and efficacy in identifying pathways to accomplishing one’s objectives? (Snyder et al., 1991). Hope can be studied on a physiological, psychological, and social level.. Hope may be linked to an increase in heart rate variability at the cellular level (Schwarz et al., 2003; Oh and Chae, 2018). At the psychological level, self-reported hope is linked to an individual’s sense of well-being and success (Ciarrochi et al., 2007, 2015). Finally, groups can be hopeful or pessimistic, and the level of hope in a group can influence the level of hope in its members (Parker et al., 2015). As a result, a hope intervention (Snyder et al., 2002) may focus on biological, psychological, and social aspects of functioning.
When it comes to positive psychology products, there are two main issues. In a given situation, what type of intervention should we use? If we find that a loving-kindness intervention improves the well-being of a group of people, should we assume that this intervention will work for each individual patient? Do we view an evidence-based positive psychology package metaphorically as a pill that injects positivity into the life of each client? (Farias and Wiholm, 2015).
Because researchers have used classical group comparison statistics to test nearly all positive psychology interventions, our current knowledge base assumes that the average effect at the group level applies to the individual development of people in the group over time, at least probabilistically speaking. Since Birkhoff (1931), this assumption has been accepted in the physical sciences as valid only if the modeled events are “ergodic” (Molenaar, 2004). Love-kindness may have an effect on a group of participants, at least probabilistically, but it may not have an effect on every participant. A 1-point increase in happiness over the control group is expected in the majority of participants, but some may see their happiness rise by 3 points while others may see their happiness fall by 2 points if the loving kindness intervention is successful. The assumption that ergodicity requires both that the phenomenon studied is stationary and that the same dynamic model applies to all persons is violated in psychological areas (Hayes et al., 2019) and thus cannot be used to predict or model within-person variation. It’s not just that averages don’t apply to individuals, but that group effects can’t even be used to model individual change even probabilistically if ergodicity is violated.
Experience sampling and other methods of high temporal density can be used to investigate psychological phenomena and to track the evolution of interpersonal connections over time. Nomothetically aggregating these idiographic relationships is possible, but only if such generalizations improve the precision of idiographic findings, or what we’ve dubbed a “idionomic” approach, can be achieved (Hayes and Hofmann, 2021).
The underlying assumptions of classical statistical approaches cannot be violated when using idionomic research and analysis to model processes of change that are by definition non-stationary. A more personalized approach to intervention impact modeling is possible when idionomic research is used in the context of change processes. It is our belief that moving away from a package-based approach to a process-based approach will increase the effectiveness of positive psychology interventions.
We can begin with the lessons we’ve learned from the package approach at this stage of development: In groups, what are the processes that are most likely to be successful? Promoting hope, meaning, and positive activities, as well as kindness and self-compassion, are just a few examples. Every one of these steps is essential to the success of any intervention. What processes are most important to a particular client, at this time, given this goal, in this context, will be the focus of our next step as a practitioner. An idiographic and idionomy-based case conceptualization is what we need to create (Hayes et al., 2020b). Changes in these biopsychosocial processes are then easier to influence with the addition of specific components.
Our earlier discussion of positive psychology’s greatest strength was that it discouraged the use of diagnostic and statistical manuals like the DSM-IV-TR to label people with mental disorders (DSM). Practitioners cannot rely on the traditional DSM diagnostic approach because it is neither valid nor useful (Hayes et al., 2020b). For example, if two people have seven out of ten symptoms of generalized anxiety, we could draw the conclusion that they share the same “disorder” using the DSM. Since the two clinically anxious people may be experiencing anxiety in completely distinct ways, this approach will likely fail. It’s possible that the first person was traumatized by an attack, while the second person was fired from their job. Is it reasonable to assume that they’ll get the same treatment? This is an assumption that no one in the field of personalized psychology would make.
Strength-based approaches are less likely to make the same mistake, but it is possible. Consider a scenario in which two people want to increase their physical activity. An overwhelming sense of well-being, however, makes the first-person difficult to maintain long-term goals. In contrast, the second person is incredibly well-organized but lacks motivation or positive feelings. Depending on the severity of their conditions, each of these individuals may require a unique course of treatment. Behavioral activation and goal setting may be more effective for the former, while value clarification and motivation may be more effective for the latter.
This is where a methodical approach shines. Individuals should not be given the same type of treatment. The fact that someone has difficulty getting out of bed in the morning does not imply that they have some sort of disorder or deficit. Instead of making the demonstrably false assumption that the same processes drive activity in all individuals, we can figure out what motivates that specific individual.
The agreement on terms is perhaps the most important step in creating a unified positive psychology. This is a difficult task due to the large number of positive psychology theories and measures, each of which uses its own terminology. Take a look at the long list of terms used in positive psychology that are associated with positive thinking: hope, optimism, primal beliefs, positive reappraisal and confidence in one’s own abilities, self-concept and self-esteem, and so on. In psychology, this problem is not unique to positive psychology. When words sound different but are the same, researchers call it the “jingle-jangle” fallacy (Marsh et al., 2003).
To begin, one option is to work within a single theoretical framework and try to incorporate all terms within that framework. While it’s tempting to use only one theory as a guide, such as Martin Seligman’s PERMA theory of well-being (Seligman, 2011), we run the risk of appearing to be out of touch with other theories like self-determination or the broaden-and-build approach (Garland and Fredrickson, 2013). Furthermore, any set of terms contained within a current theory runs the risk of becoming obsolete as new theories emerge, as new terms are required, or as old theories fade away. Does “Primal World Beliefs” (Clifton and Yaden, 2021) need a new theoretical framework with new terms or can it be integrated into one of the older theories?
Without agreed-upon terms and assumptions, a field can’t move forward (Alexandrova, 2017). The Extended Evolutionary Meta-Model, or EEMM, is a meta-theory that we propose to use as an organizing framework (Hayes et al., 2020a,b). Evolution is the foundation of all life sciences, so few major psychological theorists argue that their views are in opposition to an evolutionary account. Each of the well-known creators of PERMA, SDT, and broadening and building theories, for example, has written about the importance of evolutionary theory to their ideas (Cohn and Fredrickson, 2006; Seligman et al., 2006; Seligman, 2011; Ryan and Deci, 2017).
Modern evolutionary science principles can be applied not only to genes, but also to epigenetics, behavioral learning, and symbolic thought, as well (Jablonka and Lamb, 2006). The concept of evolution can be applied to both individuals and groups, as well as to different fields of study and cultural contexts. A strong foundation for positive behavioral and cultural change can be laid on this model (Wilson et al., 2017). It’s crucial to note that modern multidimensional and multi-level evolutionary principles can be used in a prosocial manner that avoids any suggestion of eugenics or social Darwinism (Wilson et al., 2017). Using evolutionary principles to promote equality, reconciliation, peace, prosocial behavior, and a life worth living is a straightforward process (Wilson et al., 2017).
The principles of variation, selection, and retention are at the heart of evolutionary change (Wilson et al., 2017; Hayes et al., 2020b). It’s impossible to change behavior without variety. In fact, encouraging healthy variation is a primary goal of some positive psychology interventions. To put it another way, a positive psychologist might be able to influence people’s emotional state so that they are more likely to engage in risk-taking, socialize, and develop new skills and resources (Fredrickson, 2001). Mindfulness, on the other hand, is expected to broaden one’s awareness and increase one’s variability (Garland and Fredrickson, 2013). While psychopathology is often characterized by rigidity, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy aims to increase values-based behavioral activation and exploration even in the face of distress (Hayes and Ciarrochi, 2015; Hayes, 2019).
Damian Sendler
Selection can be viewed as the desired outcome or outcome of the intervention. It’s all about what works best for the customer in a given situation. For example, the client may want to achieve a goal; develop meaning; connect with others; experience joy; be curious; be healthy; or live in a meaningful way. Short- and long-term needs and values are taken into consideration by practitioners when evaluating each intervention. Self-determination theory’s needs, for example, can be viewed as selection criteria for change processes (Hayes, 2019). Does this process support the client’s need for autonomy, competence, and/or connection, might a self-determination practitioner ask?
Adaptive behavior can be maintained through the process of retention. Many positive psychology interventions promote retention through maintenance, follow up, homework, practice, broadening psychological patterns, or habit formation (Kazantzis et al., 2018).
It’s important to keep in mind that no process of change will be effective if we don’t take the time to consider the context. It may be beneficial at home, but it can be detrimental at work. All of these things come together to make up the client’s context. People can shape their environments and social groups, as well as the environments and social groups they choose to be a part of. This is referred to as context by positive psychologists. When it comes to modern evolutionary theory, action and context are inextricably linked, and it recognizes that people are not simply passive recipients of their surroundings but are instead actively involved in shaping and shaping those environments. Job crafting interventions, for example, encourage employees to reimagine their workplaces in order to better meet their needs (Tims et al., 2013). Relationship-enhancing skills and mate-selection assistance aid people in creating more supportive social niches in which they can grow their lives (Siette et al., 2017; Hielscher et al., 2021; Veronese et al., 2021).
Variation, selection, and retention are all terms we can use to describe interventions and the processes of change. For example, imagine you are working with a student who is procrastinating and consistently does not feel smart enough to achieve their academic goals (low and rigid self-concept), and does not have a clear sense of why they are attending the university in the first place (low, or unclear motivation) and feels incompetent, with no sense of academic self-efficacy. An outcome of this situation is that the student is at risk of dropping out, and something must be done to prevent this from happening. However, the hypothesized processes of change in this case include a rigid and low self-concept, unclear academic motivation, and a lack of a sense of behavioral competence and self-efficacy in the student.
For example, the practitioner might encourage the client to engage in something new, such as a mindfulness intervention designed to help notice and let go of negative self-talk, which will help to counteract the low self-concept. Let’s say we implement the intervention, but the student’s self-concept or procrastination hasn’t improved after a week or two. It’s not surprising that procrastination didn’t decrease after this variation-focused intervention failed to elicit healthy variation in self-concept. As a result, the practitioner’s motivation and self-efficacy may now be at a low or unclear level.
When the student is ready, she asks him or her to consider and elaborate on the most positive outcome they associate with achieving their goal, as well as the most important obstacles to the goal. This is known as mental contrasting. A week later, we find that mental contrasting has increased academic motivation and self-efficacy and reduced procrastination. For this person, motivation and self-efficacy are key processes of change, and mental contrasting is a key intervention, as evidenced by the success of this intervention Working with the patient to develop and maintain motivation and self-efficacy may be part of the practitioner’s role in the future. This simple example demonstrates how intervention personalization can be achieved through the use of variation, selection, and retention. Mental contrasting, on the other hand, might have worked better with a different client or in a different situation.
Complex problems can be solved using the same basic principles of variation, selection, and retention. Suppose a client recently received a promotion and is struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance. They are under constant pressure to complete their tasks on time, but they also want to ensure that no one will ever be able to fault them. Their children and their partner have been put at risk as a result. Despite the fact that this is a common issue, there is no single solution. The context and requirements of each individual are likely to differ significantly. There are many ways in which a skilled practitioner can help a patient. To keep things simple, we’ll assume that the client is a perfectionist at work and has overcommitted to the values of the workplace over those of his or her own home. One way we might try to alleviate the stress of doing something imperfectly is by acknowledging our own discomfort and clarifying our work/life values. We might also try to increase mindfulness and be more present at home in order to better manage our physiological stress levels. If it alters specific processes of change and improves work-life balance, each of these interventions may introduce something new into the client’s life.
Modern multi-dimensional, multi-level evolution science provides a conceptual framework for examining adaptive and maladaptive change processes. Steven C. Hayes, Stefan G. Hofmann, and Joseph Ciarrochi are the sole owners of the artwork. Permission has been granted to use this material.
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: Affect, cognition, attention, self, motivation, and overt behavior are all included in the extended-evolutionary meta model. These aspects were discovered through a thorough examination of clinical intervention change processes (Hayes et al., 2020a). The processes can easily be categorized into one of these or a combination of them. Instead of making hard and fast distinctions, we found the dimensions to be helpful. In addition to the psychological, sociocultural, or biophysiological levels of analysis, change processes can occur. An additional method for determining whether or not a process is adaptable is to conduct an experiment.
What follows is a discussion of how researchers in positive psychology have proposed the process of change. Literature helped us identify these processes in a variety of ways: As a first step, we enlisted the help of Ciarrochi and Oades in the field of positive psychology (first and third author). According to a recent bibliographic study of positive psychology, we identified the process (Hendriks et al., 2019). Finally, we looked at all of the articles published in the Journal of Positive Psychology between 2016 and 2021 to see if there were any common themes.
While all three of these programs are meant to be comprehensive, there are many aspects that are unique to each of them. We might be tempted to create a “meta” program that incorporates the best features of each individual program. A program of this scope could, however, grow out of control and become irrelevant to some users. That’s what we believe would be the best path forward, and we’d like to hear your thoughts on how to get there. Instead of starting with the procedure, focus on the individual. People who are physically inactive or who have unrealistic expectations of what constitutes physical fitness, for example, could be the focus of a targeted intervention. In the event that a coworker is unable to comprehend other people’s motivations, an intervention may focus on perspective-taking.
Damian Jacob Sendler
All models, even the ones we see today, have their roots in a previous incarnation. The EEMM connects to the past in four significant ways. In the first place, our approach is based on and extends approaches that focus on tailoring treatment to the unique individual and their specific situation (Norcross and Wampold, 2018). Treatment adaptation, responsiveness, individualization, personalization, and tailoring are some of the terms used by researchers to describe these approaches, all of which aim to focus research on change processes on the specifics of a specific individual in a specific context.
Another similarity between Measurement-based Care (Scott and Lewis, 2015; Lewis et al., 2019) and the goals of the EEMM is that both aim to improve usual care by collecting and analyzing client data at various points in time during the intervention. Measures of important processes that promote change should guide action, for example, by alerting a practitioner if an intervention fails to meet its goals. We suggest that the processes and outcome measures feed into an interactive network, so that processes don’t just affect the outcome in a one-way and linear manner, but also influence other processes and are influenced by the outcome.
Third, our process model has consilience with many ideas in implementation science. As an example, Presseau et al. (2019) suggest that interventions should have a detailed specification of the behaviors targeted for change and an alignment between intervention components and outcomes. According to them, we can describe behavior in terms of the action, the actor, the environment, the target, and the time. In addition to this, our model suggests that we can use actions to promote variation, selection and retention, across six dimensions and multiple levels.
A fourth advantage of our approach is that it allows us to compare specific process-based interventions like Barlow’s universal protocol (Barlow et al., 2017) or specific process-based models like the psychological flexibility model in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (AcT) (Hayes et al., 1999). As a “evolutionary meta-model,” the EEMM provides a common language and well-accepted framework in evolutionary science to allow different theorists to communicate what is essential about their approach to the study of change. It is thus possible to investigate whether specific concepts or methods are required to broaden a conventional approach to ACT (Hayes, 2019) by looking at it as a process-based intervention. Similarly, we can look at the Unified protocol (Barlow et al., 2017) as a set of interventions and make efforts to expand the protocol coherently if specific areas of the EEMM are not well-covered (Barlow et al., 2017a).
The EEMM can be used to examine the processes and methods used in a positive psychology or other protocol, but it does not suggest a specific protocol or process by itself. The EEMM cannot be compared to, for example, the PERMA or broaden and build approach, but it is possible to use the EEMM as a process-based coaching approach to further develop PERMA or broaden and build. If outcomes are improved by dynamic tailoring, it is possible to compare “off the shelf” ACT and ACT as a form of process-based therapy, to see if the improvement is due to larger or broader movement of psychological flexibility processes or other processes that may be suggested by the EEMM.
The way we approach interventions has been transformed by positive psychology. It has caused a proliferation of new, positive interventions and shifted the focus away from fixing problems and toward promoting thriving. Negative functioning isn’t simply the absence of a positive one, as positive psychologists have pointed out. In fact, anxiety and joy, success and failure, and socially skilled and unskilled behavior are often present at the same time. Contrary to popular belief, these aren’t necessarily diametrically opposed.
This article suggested a number of ways in which the field can continue to advance. For starters, the field needs to shift its focus away from complex packages and toward evidence-based processes that are often embedded in them. Using this approach, we will be able to identify and combine the most powerful ingredients in different interventions, which will help us achieve our goals. ORBIT (Czajkowski et al., 2015) models can be used to systematically evaluate treatment components, combine them into a proof of concept package, and conduct pilot and feasibility testing if the goal is to build a treatment package that works for many people. However, even with packages designed this way, we cannot assume that the package will work the same way for each individual. What is needed is an approach to tailoring intervention kernels based on idionomic findings that can maximize gains for specific individuals. There will be no one-size-fits-all packages in the future, but rather models that can easily be modified.
As a second consideration, we must look at the interplay between negative and positive processes in order to affect individual results In a dynamic network, we can think of positive and negative as processes that interact, but they cannot be reduced to one single continuum (Hayes et al., 2019). Positive emotions, such as happiness, can help people cope with and recover from stressful situations (Ong et al., 2006). Practicing self-compassion and self-love can help people avoid the negative effects of low self-esteem (Marshall et al., 2015).
Finally, we need to tailor positive psychology to the individual. Our understanding of the ingredients that are likely to lead to positive change has improved greatly, but now we need to ask which of these ingredients is most relevant to a particular person in a specific context. While promoting positive thinking appears to be a universally “good” process, there are contexts in which it is potentially unhelpful, such as when focusing on the positive reinforces experiential avoidance (Foody et al., 2013), encourages self-focus and loneliness (Mauss et al., 2012), promotes harmful attachments (Sahdra et al., 2016), incorrectly focuses blame for a lack of positivity on the person rather than a toxic situation, or incorrectly places blame on the person rather than the situation (Ciarrochi et al., 2016).
Damien Sendler: A clinical or positive psychologist can use the Extended-Evolutionary Meta Model described here to target the potential active processes of change. It is important to identify the core processes that are likely to apply to each individual client before developing a personalized approach (Hayes et al., 2020a). One client may require more attention to the development of hope, while another may require more attention to the development of social skills. Thereafter, a process-based intervention can be implemented by the practitioner. During the intervention, the practitioner would get feedback from the client on what is working and what isn’t, and then adjust the case conceptualization and intervention as necessary to reflect that. As a result, the practitioner can use a variety of research-based processes (variation), pick those that are most beneficial to the client, and then aid the client in retaining the skills they’ve learned. This approach’s full details are beyond the scope of this paper, but those who are curious can consult Hofmann et al (2021).
Finally, we must assess the EEMM’s usefulness. To demonstrate its usefulness, we argue that the model must address current literature in a way that fits with its assumptions and purposes, build on existing and well-supported concepts that have precision, scope and depth without arbitrarily leaving aside issues that should be addressed, and address what is known without distortions or narrow adjustments to deal with anomalies. Lastly it must lead to new and testable insights. The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence in support of the aforementioned three claims. We can conclude that positive psychology’s evidence-based processes can be sorted using the EEMM, which doesn’t exclude any major theoretical position or approach. Positive psychology and clinical psychology were shown to be intertwined in this study. This dispelled the myth that the two fields are mutually exclusive and, as a result, could not be combined. Many new research questions need to be explored, including the possibility that idiographic and process-based tailored interventions may improve outcomes above and beyond well-established and relatively comprehensive intervention protocols, such as Barlow’s Unified Protocol (Barlow et al., 2017). A process-based strategy appears to be the most promising one so far, according to preliminary findings (Fisher et al., 2019).
The efficacy of positive psychology interventions has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. More people need these interventions. People who are “languishing” are those who are not able to achieve their full potential (Keyes, 2006; Keyes and Westerhof, 2012; Nelson and Padilla-Walker, 2013). Mental illness affects 20–25% of the population (Baumeister and Härter, 2007), trauma affects 25% of young people (Perkonigg et al., 2000), and bullying in the workplace affects 50% of the population (Baumeister and Härter, 2007). (Chatziioannidis et al., 2018; Ng and Chan, 2021). As a result, many languishing people go unaided (Ciarrochi et al., 2002; Cusack et al., 2006; Sheppard et al., 2018).
Process-based approaches to positive psychology can help, we believe. More people may be able to help, as well as more effective interventions, because of this. In order to deploy evidence-based kernels that meet human needs, people are not required to complete postgraduate study in clinical psychology or psychiatry. Using evidence-based processes does not necessitate specialized training or elaborate professional guilds. In the same way that people may own packages and training programs for hypothetical diseases, no one owns these evidence-based processes. Several of the research-based methods described in Tables 2 and 3 could be taught to and used by regular people, such as bartenders and business leaders and hairdressers and coaches and personal trainers and clergy and educators. People who work to empower people can track the processes of change and tailor intervention kernels to the specific needs of the people they work with with the help of appropriate technology.
Focusing training on specific intervention kernels linked to specific processes would be the most effective way to teach specific processes to a specific helper in a specific context. For example, youth mentors can learn the most relevant processes for supporting young people to stay engaged in school when emotions arise that might lead to avoidance or withdrawal. Exposure therapy, for example, is not something they need to learn. They simply need to know what they are capable of and who to turn to for assistance with the things they cannot handle themselves.
There will be difficulties in educating a large number of mental health professionals with a process-based approach. Studies show that therapy and mindfulness-based training can lead to negative outcomes (Cuijpers et al., 2018; Britton, 2019; Curran et al., 2019). We need a set of core skills for helpers to learn in order to reduce the likelihood of client alliance ruptures and to minimize helper behavior like rigidity and over control. Clients who are subjected to any of these tactics may feel devalued and deprived of their agency (Curran et al., 2019). Individuals’ process-based needs may necessitate the use of technological aids for high temporal density assessment. A process-based approach will help positive psychology move forward and assume its rightful place in human development around the world, even with these training challenges. The challenges we face as a human race are too large to be addressed by a small group of experts. For the sake of those we serve, we need a more democratic and broad-based positive psychology.