Happy in a crummy world: Implications of primal world beliefs for increasing wellbeing through positive psychology interventions.

are a recently-identified set of basic perceptions about the general character of reality (e.g. the world is boring) thought to have many psychological implications. This article explores implications relevant to wellbeing and positive intervention research. After summarizing the supposed general function of primal world beliefs, I specify ten hypotheses concerning gratitude, curiosity, optimism, trust, self-efficacy, positive emotions, engagement, meaning, life satisfaction, and overall wellbeing. Each variable may involve behavioral patterns that present as trait-like personality characteristics while actually being context-specific reactions to underlying (and malleable) perceptions. Experimental research could test these hypotheses by (a) examining whether primal world beliefs partially mediate the wellbeing impact of established interventions such as Three Good Things and (b) creating novel interventions specifically targeting primal world beliefs. To foster the latter, I discuss elements that novel interventions might incorporate, illustrating with an example called the Leaf Exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]