Personalizing a positive psychology intervention improves well-being.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Positive Psychology
• Intervention Science

Background:

• Positive psychology interventions (PPIs) are known to boost subjective well-being.
• However, the effectiveness of PPIs varies significantly among individuals.
• Personalization strategies are needed to optimize PPI outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate strategies for personalizing PPI programs to maximize subjective well-being.
• To examine how different activity selection methods (self-selection, weakness-based, strength-based, random) influence PPI effectiveness.

Main Methods:

• Study 1 (N=516) surveyed participants' preferences and use of PPI activity selection strategies.
• Study 2 (N=112) experimentally assigned participants to PPIs based on random, weakness-based, or self-selection strategies.
• Subjective well-being and other outcomes were measured pre- and post-intervention.

Main Results:

• Participants preferred self-selection and most frequently used weakness-based strategies.
• Both weakness-based and self-selection personalization strategies led to greater improvements in subjective well-being compared to random assignment.
• PPIs, particularly life-skills lessons, significantly increased subjective well-being.

Conclusions:

• Personalizing PPIs through weakness-based or self-selection strategies offers significant benefits over random assignment.
• These findings have implications for optimizing psychological interventions in research and practice.
• Tailoring interventions can enhance individual and societal well-being.