TABLE 2.

Summary of the proposed solutions to the criticisms and critiques of positive psychology.

No	Criticism	Proposed solutions	Categories of proposed solutions	Example quote
1	Lack of proper theorizing and conceptual thinking	Incorporate diverse perspectives	• Diverse philosophical approaches • Insights from other disciplines • Multidisciplinary collaboration	“We can learn a lot from other philosophical approaches like Stoicism and Buddhism…(sic) disciplines like political sciences and evolutionary biology to help us understand people better”
		Develop holistic meta-theories	• Synthesize holistic theories • Identify linkages	“I think we need something like a meta-theory for wellbeing that pulls everything we’ve done together into one coherent framework. Kinda (sic) like Eriksons theory on human development and how it pulls in psycho-social development stuff with like personally development etc.,”
		Bottom-up approaches and consensus building	• Bottom-up approaches • Consensus on terminology	“…it (definitions of wellbeing) is different from person to person not just country to country, so we need to build models that define wellbeing from the person’s own perspective…” “Academics need to be consistent with the words they use to describe things. One person calls it grit, the other calls it tenacity, the other calls it hardiness… this is confusing”
		Collaborative theory building	• Distinguish academic and practical focuses	“..there needs to be some collaboration between theory and practice because they (academics) are too concerned with things that don’t matter to us (practitioners) and vice versa. They want to explain stuff but we need to do things… we need tools and they need our insights…”
2	Problems with measurement and methodology	Expand methodological approaches	• Alternative assessment tools • Balance objective and qualitative data • Assess collective experiences • Narrative approaches	“Surveys and interviews by themselves cant capture nuances of peoples understanding of wellbeing. Like, we need new types of tools and things like story telling approaches and more mixed method research…. We also need more collective assessments and perspectives on things like wellbeing, not just based on the person…”
		Promote open science practices and data sharing	• Publish non-significant results • Embrace open science practices	“Publish results that aren’t significant and make it open so people can see for themselves”
		Control for social biases and respondent reactivity	• Minimize social desirability • Ensure respondent accuracy	“We should do what the personologists do and start to use more subtle indirect measures to control for social desirability when they complete assessments”
3	Issues with replication and evidence	Improve public science communication	• Educate public on science • Promote responsible media reporting • Establish ethical guidelines	“Academics have a duty to communicate their findings to the public in a responsible manner and the public must be trained to understand what the science actually means so they don’t buy snake oil”
		Centralize communication	• Professional societies publish comprehensive evidence	“There should be a unified platform through which we can communicate things. Like the ENPP can use their website as the basis to communicate research to others. Other professional societies like EAWOP could also help.”
		Actively engage with critics	• Test and communicate on pseudoscience claims • Develop solutions collaboratively	“Look, we do need the critics and we have to engage with them otherwise we stay in a closed loop, and we have to provide evidence that we aren’t a fly by night science”
4	Lack of novelty and self-isolation	Bridge divides through collaboration	• Clarify differences from mainstream psychology • Offer alternative explanations • Explore interplay between perspectives	“.. And a systemic effort is needed to clarify our brand to the outside world, so that we can drop the title of “not focusing on the negative “… we just provide a different lens through which to understand things but its also our responsibility to engage with different domains so we can see where and how we complement each other…”
5	Positioning as decontextualized ideology	Enhance cultural responsiveness	• Test cross-cultural applicability • Build bottom-up theories • Prioritize contexts	“Our theories need to be flexible to accommodate different perspectives from different cultures… we need something like a cross-cultural positive psychology”
		Adopt social responsibility ethos	• Acknowledge societal implications • Focus on diverse populations • “Do no harm” principle	“We can’t just focus on the WEIRD contexts, we have to start focusing on other contexts and stop ignoring broader societal issues as what we are currently doing can cause harm”
		Balance positive and negative	• Explore negative aspects • Avoid one-sided perspectives	“…like the paper from Gerben and Ernst that presented a more unified view of how mental illness and mental health work together. That’s a major step in the right direction…”
		Ensure intervention quality	• Tailor to individual • Formalize training and standards	“With AI we can now do things like present hyper-personalized results to people and I think we are not far off from creating hyper personalized interventions that are completely tailored to each individual”
6	Critiquing as capitalistic venture	Balance access and expenses	• Offer free basic services • Open access initiatives	“It’s easy… we have like a freemium type model, where we can provide like general interventions for free, but the more personalized things need to be paid… we can also make sure that any public funded intervention’s content is made public so we can all learn and grow together”