Positive psychological capital

Positive psychological capital is defined as the positive and developmental state of an individual as characterized by high self-efficacy, optimism, hope and resiliency.

For decades psychology has been associated as dealing mainly with the treatment of mental illness, although other areas of research and application have existed since its origins. At the very end of the twentieth century a new approach in psychology gained popularity: positive psychology.

Positive psychology, the study of optimal human functioning, is an attempt to respond to the systematic bias inherent in psychology's historical emphasis on mental illness rather than on mental wellness (Seligman, 2002), mainly by focusing on two, forgotten but classical psychological goals:

Since Martin Seligman, a former head of American Psychological Association, chose positive psychology as the theme of his presidency term, more empirical research and theoretic development emerged in this field.

Two new branches of positive psychology are being implemented into the industrial-organizational world.

Drawing from positive psychology constructs and empirical research, four psychological resources were determined to best meet the POB scientific inclusion criteria: Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism and were termed by Luthans and colleagues as psychological Capital or PsyCap Positive In combination, the four constructs making up PsyCap were empirically determined to be a second-order, core construct that had a stronger relationship with satisfaction and performance than each of the components by itself. The four components are defined as follows:

'Relationship of PsyCap with various representative organizational outcomes ''''''''''[edit]

PsyCap has positive correlation with desired employee attitudes, behaviors and performance.[12]

A meta-analysis of 51 independent samples found strong, significant, positive relationship between PsyCap and desirable attitudes (e.g., satisfaction, commitment, and well-being), behaviors (e.g., citizenship) and performance (self, supervisor rated, and objective) and a negative relationship with undesirable attitudes (e.g., cynicism, stress, anxiety, and turnover intentions) and behaviors (e.g., deviance).

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