Drawing on recent research on determinants of subjective well-being, we developed and conducted a pilot study of an employee well-being questionnaire using M. Seligman's (2011) Positive psychology is a quite new branch of psychology the roots of which can be traced back to Martin E. P. Seligman's 1998 Presidential Address to the American Psychological Association (Seligman, 1998). As APA president, Seligman initiated a shift in psychology's focus toward more positive psychological topics, such as well-being, contentment, hope, optimism, flow, happiness, savouring, human strengths, and resilience. In contrast with the classical focus of psychology on curing mental illness, positive psychology emphasizes understanding the factors that build strengths, help people to flourish and contribute to mental health, as well as on subjective wellbeing and happiness. All of these factors and processes may underlie optimal human functioning. (Seligman, 2002, p. 4).
The message of the positive psychology movement is to remind our field that it has been deformed. Psychology is not just the study of disease, weakness, and damage; it also is the study of strength and virtue. Treatment is not just fixing what is wrong; it also is building what is right. Psychology is not just about illness or health; it also is about work, education, insight, love, growth, and play. And in this quest for what is best, positive psychology does not rely on wishful thinking, selfdeception, or hand waving; instead, it tries to adapt what is best in the scientific method to the unique problems that human behavior presents in all its complexityConsidering the basic statement Seligman proposed, how can we define positive psychology? There are as many definitions as there are positive psychologists, for example: "Positive psychology is a scientific field that studies the optimal functioning of individuals, groups, and institutions" (Gable and Haidt, 2005).
