Scientific Pollyannaism : From Inquisition to Positive Psychology

This book argues that the story of the orphan girl Pollyanna (namely, her strategy of playing the “glad games” to manage loss, abuse, and social prejudice) serves as a framework for critiquing historical forms of Western scientific Pollyannaism. The author examines Pollyannaism as it relates to the sciences, demonstrating how the approach has been used throughout modern Western history to enforce happiness and to criticize negative human emotional states. These efforts, carried out by scientists and popularized as scientific, focus on negating the role of the environment and on promoting varied forms of emotional control. The book specifically highlights the Enlightenment-era demonization of “passions,” the Darwinian insistence on happiness as a mark of evolutionary superiority, the utopian eugenic “sciences of racial betterment,” the eugenic foundations of American behaviorism, and the contemporary “science of happiness” found in positive psychology.  Ultimately, the book emphasizes strategies used to compel individuals into becoming Pollyannas about science itself.