In your most recent book, you introduce the concept of PERMA. Can you define PERMA, and what does it equate to? >> Well, positive psychology is in general about what free people not suffering choose to do. And I think there are five elements that we choose under those conditions. And the acronym is PERMA. P is positive emotion, where happiness is a good shorthand. E is engagement, being one with the music. R is good relationships. M is meaning and purpose. And A is accomplishment. So those are the five things that I believe human beings, when they're not suffering, choose. What's north of indifference. >> So it's PERMA equative? Does PERMA equal flourishing? >> Yes. So for me having PERMA equals flourishing. >> What do you see as the connection between character strengths and PERMA? >> I don't think we really know. I think of character strengths as the backbone of PERMA. So I think, when you know your character strengths and when you act on them, that gives you more positive emotion. It gives you more engagements, gives you better relationships, gives you more meaning, and it gives you accomplishment. So for me, character strengths are something like physical health, that the more of it you have, the more it feeds in to PERMA. So that's my guess about the role of character strengths in PERMA. And it makes character strengths primary to well being. >> How should schools think about PERMA? >> Schools have two aims. One is to produce learning, that's the traditional aim, but the other aim is to build well being, and that means increasing PERMA. Learning is, in some ways, subsumed by the A in PERMA. But very importantly the P, the positive emotion, the engagement, how good your relationships are with the teacher, and the meaning all amplify the A. And the A also amplifies how happy you are, how good your relationships are, how much meaning you have, so I see them as causally bi-directional. If you increase PERMA, you increase how much kids learn in school. If you increase how much they learn, you increase PERMA. >> If you could speak to every teacher about how you could go about improving PERMA in your classroom, what would be on your list? >> So let's say you decide that your goal as a teacher is to increase PERMA in your students, and you're gonna measure it. So that means at time one you sit down, and there are plenty of ways of measuring PERMA in kids in school, and you measure it. And then you find ways over the next week that are local to your classroom that increase PERMA, and then you measure it again next week. It's called an invisible hand argument, and it's structure is simply, once you decide you value it and you're gonna measure it, you will think of all the ways of doing it. So, this puts creativity back in the hands of the teachers.
