Poster Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Development And Validation Of The Prioritizing Positivity Scale (#542)

Lahnna I. Catalino 1 , Aaron J. Boulton 2 , Kimia Mahdavi 1 , Emma Waldspurger 1 , Catherine Weiss 1 , Carolyn Williams 1
  1. Scripps College , Claremont, California, United States
  2. University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, United States

Research reveals the objective benefits of positive emotions, but how do people deliberately and effectively pursue the experience of positive emotions?  Evidence reveals that people who pursue positivity by deliberately arranging their daily lives to include pleasant events tend to be happier and less depressed (Catalino, Algoe, & Fredrickson, 2014).  The tendency to structure daily life to include pleasant experiences is called prioritizing positivity.  This personality dimension is measured with a six-item scale and initial evidence suggests it has a unidimensional structure (Catalino, et. al., 2014).  The purpose of the current project is to refine and validate the prioritizing positivity scale. In three independent samples (data collection complete: sample 1, n = 176; sample 2, n = 228, sample 3, n = 242), we will test the factor structure of the scale, its reliability and convergent/discriminant validity.  We hypothesize the factor structure will be unidimensional, the reliability will be high, and prioritizing positivity will be associated with theoretically relevant personality measures and show near zero associations with irrelevant personality measures.