Pollyanna and the Glad Game: A potential contribution to positive psychology

Abstract

The popular 1913 novel, Pollyanna, introduced the Glad Game. Its author showed how the use of the Glad Game could contribute to the mastery of stressful life events and daily hassles. The Glad Game consists of developing the habit of not dwelling on dysphoric emotions in relation to life's disappointments or threats. The player is taught not to deny negative emotions, but to turn one's attention away and to think of something one could feel glad about in the situation. Eleanor Hodgman Porter emphasized that the Glad Game could be taught. Based on the novel, a number of testable psychological hypotheses, potentially useful to practitioners, can be derived. These include the value of persistence in using a psychological mediator to arouse hope, and personality characteristics consequent to the use of the Glad Game. Popular writings are fruitful sources of insight and hypotheses about psychological processes.

Keywords:

• Positive psychology
• psychological mediators
• cognitive antidote

Acknowledgments

I wish to express my appreciation to colleagues J. Gayle Beck, David V. Perkins, Robert Haskell, and my wife, Adeline Levine, for their helpful critiques of earlier drafts of this paper. I am glad they did it.