Documents & Sources

The most influential works are those which have more citations whitin the corpus. As it was said, the paper The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (2001), written by Barbara Fredrickson, highlights very much with respect to the others, obtaining 6412 citations. The article appears alongside the inauguration of the positive psychology movement by Martin Seligman. In contrast with traditional psychology, that used to prioritizes the study of mental diseases, traumas and deviations, Fredrickson argues, in a very solid and even overwhelming way, that there are important empirical evidences of how positive emotions affect all aspects of human life, even providing strength of resilience.

With less than a fifth of the citations in Scopus, the second most cited work is the article The Contours of Positive Human Health by Carol D. Ryff and Burton Singer (1998), that also is a positive psychology foundational reference. They suggest that positive human health should go beyond the absence of illness and that the medical approach should be complemented with a philosophical account of the goods, together with the importance of physiology and the interrelation of body-mind for achieve a fulfillment life.

Only with a few citations less, again another work of Barbara Fredrickson, this time written together with Marcial F. Losada: Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing (2005). This is another key reference of the positive psychology movement where Fredrickson unites her positive emotions approach to the nonlinear dynamics model that Losada had implemented to measure team performance. As a result, they propose a ratio of positive to negative affect which determine the accomplishment or not of human flourishing. It is important to note that this work was strongly criticized because the use of mathematical methods without a well-founded scientific criteria. Of course, this is a reason that explain the level of citations. However, it is also important to observe that the purpose of measure human flourishing is still a very remarkable trend in most current institutional research.

The next most citated work is the article of Keyes (2007), also previosuly referred, with 879 citations. Without doubt, the approach developed by Keyes contributes very much to the consolidation of the view given some years before by Fredrickson. Keyes provides more evidences to support the benefits of the positive psychology, and its implementations on national healthcare planifications.

The book of Andrew Sayer Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical Life (2011) with 534 citations follows the list. The author applies the concept of human fourishing to social sciences, defending that it is also needed a change of view in this field. Social science has to be worried about how people have to deal with the world, their well-being and dignity. It is something that Sayer relates with a reason oriented by values generating a practical wisdom that is what really matters in human life.

Flourishing Across Europe: Application of a New Conceptual Framework for Defining Well-Being (Huppert & So, 2013) is the next reference in number of citations with 524 at the time of the collection. They explore how cultural differences in the understanding of elements such as positive emotion, positive relationships, resilience, self esteem, and vitality determine the well-being, which has to be evaluated not just by life satisfaction, but as a multi-dimensional construction.

A Participatory Inquiry Paradigm (1997) is a paper written by John Heron and Peter Reason with 503 citations in Scopus database. It is an article about research methods in general, defending a methodology based on cooperative relations between coresearchers; and an axiology that affirms the primary value of practical knowing in the service of human flourishing.

Intelligent Virtue (Annas, 2011) is a book that develops an account of virtue which, in a contemporary version, foregrounds the idea that virtue is an exercise of practical intelligence (ideally, a form of practical wisdom) similar to the practical exercise of a skill.

Mental health in adolescence: Is America's youth flourishing? is another article of Keyes (2006) with 311 citations where he develops a study of the correlation between mental health and human flourishing analyzing different population strata, specially focussed on young people.

Health and Social Justice is a book of Jennifer Prah Ruger (2009) where she proposes a health capability paradigm. Society as a whole should consider health as a moral imperative, in the intersection of ethics, economics, political science, law and human rights. Health it is not given by itself, but is somenthing to achieve with effective institutions and social and scientific systems supported by a proceduralist and consequentialist notion of justice. Ruger dedicates the first chapter of the book to talk about the relation between health and human flourishing.