President Jane Close Conoley’s husband, Dr. Collie Conoley, will speak on the effect of positive emotions at California State University, Long Beach’s Psych Day Thursday.
The Psychology Student Association and Psi Chi Honor Society of California State University, Long Beach will host the 43rd annual, Psych Day event from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Dr. Conoley is a professor of counseling, clinical and school psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His speech, “Goal Focused Positive Psychotherapy: Combining Positive Psychology and Psychotherapy,” will stress how positive emotions affect us.
“It is nice to bring in speakers like me from other campuses because it brings in new ideas and gets people talking about other perspectives,” Conoley said.
The talk will discuss a new psychotherapy theory, GFPP, which binds positive emotions and strengths, Conoley said. The theory combines positive psychology with traditional psychotherapies to create a model that will help an individual in their current and future goals.
“When people have positive emotions, they only last for a brief moment,” Conoley said. “They cause people to feel more likely to engage in their environment or be more creative.”
Rosita Shouse, a senior psychology major and president of Psi Chi Honor Society, said all students could benefit from a talk like Conoley’s.
“Psychology of happiness can really touch a lot of people on a personal level,” Shouse said.
Conoley said that events like these are good for universities as it allows for something different to be presented to the community.
Shouse said the event is based on giving students information and tools that can prepare them for graduate studies.
“We’re just really trying to gear our students in the psychology department to be as well reared as possible after they graduate,” Shouse said.
At the fair, students will be able to show their knowledge in a research competition. The 62 participants will be judged by faculty members on originality and other factors. It will also give other students interested in research to learn about current projects being worked on.
Careers in psychology show a projected growth of about 12 percent in the next seven years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics states on its online page that candidates with a specialist or doctoral degree will have the best job opportunities. There is a rise in demand for psychologist with specific knowledge is those entering the industrial-organization field because they would have a broad background in training in quantitative research methods and computer science.
Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman, Director of the Penn Positive Psychology Center and the late Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychology and management professor at Claremont Graduate University, said that positive psychology was a new movement in 2000.
Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi stated in “Positive Psychology: An Introduction” that positive psychology was necessary because of the focus psychology had on negative aspects of life.