Positive psychology articulates a role for hope, wisdom, courage, spirituality, responsibility, and perseverance in human adaptation in sharp contrast, proponents claim, to the negative biases of a conventional psychology that is too focused on distress and psychopathology to the exclusion of positive experiences. We now turn to the first of these flawed areas of inquiry, positive psychology’s perspective on attitude and emotion influencing survival after diagnosis of cancer. In their enthusiasm to advance positive psychology, its advocates have created an enormous gap between their assertions and scientific evidence. Nonetheless, the areas of inquiry we discuss in this article, which have drawn tremendous attention from within behavioral medicine, the broader psychological community, and the popular press, are scientifically flawed. Recent theoretical and empirical contributions revealing the role of positive affect in human adaptation and evidence demonstrating people’s previously unrealized resilience in the aftermath of adversity demonstrate the potential benefits that can accrue from applying the best of psychological science to the study of positive aspects of people’s lives. In offering this critique, we are not implying that all of positive psychology is flawed or that focusing on human strengths is inherently unscientific. In doing so, they have failed to live up to the pronouncements of the field’s spokespeople while promulgating bad science. Yet, we will argue that, in making these claims, positive psychology researchers have run well ahead and even counter to what we know, have failed to check theory against evidence, and have been seemingly oblivious to the cumulative empirical base of the broader psychological and cancer literatures. We have chosen these areas because they represent the most distinctive and provocative claims of positive psychology about cancer and because they enjoy considerable popularity, resonating as they do so well with cultural beliefs and media accounts of the psychology of cancer. In this article, we examine four areas of positive psychology critically relevant to readers of Annals- (1) the role of positive factors, particularly a “fighting spirit” in slowing the progression of cancer and extending the life of persons diagnosed with cancer (2) the effects of interventions cultivating positive psychological states on immune functioning and cancer progression and mortality (3) benefit finding in the face of health threats and (4) post-traumatic growth following serious illness and other highly threatening experiences. xxiii).” From its inception, positive psychology has insisted that what distinguishes it from previous positive psychologies (there have been several) is its “cumulative empirical base” (, p.7) and its “reliance on empirical research” (, p.252). Positive psychology will rise or fall on the science on which it is based (p. He reminds us that “ositive psychology is psychology-psychology is science-and science requires checking theories against evidence. In his foreword to the second edition of the Handbook of Positive Psychology, Peterson warned of “the temptation for those of us associated with this new field to run ahead of what we know” (p.
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