Overview of Positive Psychology in Latin American Countries

CASTRO SOLANO, ALEJANDRO

Positive Psychology in Latin America

Springer

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2014; p. 3 - 20

This chapter aims to outline the expansion and development of Positive Psychology (PP) in Latin America and provides an overview of the book. PP was first introduced in Argentina by Maria Martina Casullo in the past decade. Since 2006, PP Iberoamerican Meeting are held annually, involving the majority of Latin American countries, especially from South America. These meetings were the basis to identify the impact of PP in the southern region. Four basic tendencies can be found: 1) topics were mainly developed in relation to classical positive psychology constructs: psychological well-being, resilience, creativity, quality of life and human values; 2) in recent years, there has been a growth of papers dedicated to the validation of instruments to study positive constructs; 3) there was a main concern about positive interventions in many settings, but the programs were not consistently validated; and 4) many authors pointed out the need of cross cultural studies and ?emic? versions of positive constructs, but PP constructs were taken as though they were ?etic?