I gave a presentation at South by Southwest earlier this month. I appreciate the many people who voted for my idea, who attended my talk, and who gave me feedback via twitter or face to face afterwards. It was a great experience. It was a great experience, not for the people I met or for the thrill of speaking , both [...]
I recently wrote/created (though the graphic design is not mine) the below infographic for Good Magazine in an issue dedicated to societal trends. The idea here is that the material economy (which produces physical goods like cars and electronics) is being replaced by the experiential economy (which produces experiences like food and vacations). The psychological data is [...]
Recently, an unprecedented study was done in Oregon where (due to budgetary, not research reasons) a lottery was held to randomly decide which applicants for Medicaid would actually receive the opportunity to receive Medicaid. There has never been an opportunity to randomly assign people to have access to a program like Medicaid, and so this represents [...]
I recently finished Tony Hsieh’s book, Delivering Happiness, which is partially a business book, detailing his remarkable story where he has won ( selling Link Exchange to Microsoft in his 20s for $265 million ) and lost (selling almost everything to turn Zappos around) fortunes. Zappos, an online shoe seller, has gone on to become the model for [...]
Whenever I bring up the concept of maximizing (“never settling for less than the best”), the discussion inevitably evolves into thinking about what domains a given person maximizes in. For example, I definitely don’t maximize in terms of my clothing choices, but am more of a maximizer in my career choice. Actually, even within my career [...]
Watching baseball can be a frivolous pursuit and a distraction from psychology research, but last night something happened which demonstrated a psychological finding far more effectively than any study or paper. Armando Galarraga, a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, was very close to pitching a perfect game. For non-baseball fans, its a very rare occurrence, comparable to other [...]
I highly recommend the Atlantic article for those who do the research. Most all of the concerns are debatable, but it is good to know where critics are coming from.
The CNN Interview with Gretchin Rubin is interesting. The search for happiness is an often personal journey and it’s interesting to follow hers, though I would guard against thinking that what works for her would work for anyone. For example, this likely isn’t true for manypeople, but true for many others….
Probably the most interesting news articles recently are the articles quoting Dr. Robert Patulny concerning women being happier during the day more often than men. I haven’t been able to find the article as I would like to know the methodology since it so clearly contradicts this analysis of many large national representative samples -> [...]
The Hartford Courant piece is worth reading, based on Justin Wolfers & Betsy Stevenson’s paper detailing that men are happier than women on average. I thought this was interesting. “Larry, why does it surprise you that researchers looking into the emotional lives of human beings are female? Most men aren’t interested in emotional lives. ” [...]
I recently read this blog post by Justin Wolfers defending the use of United States gross domestic product rather than measures of subjective well being (e.g. gross national happiness) to measure how well our country is doing. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this debate, you can see this below video or this link to the [...]
As a liberal social psychologist who has helped create a science of positive psychology course at the University of Southern California, I could not help but be interested in Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book, Bright-Sided, which states how the positive psychology approach (in academia, business, health, and economics) has undermined America. First, I would think we [...]
As a liberal social psychologist who has helped create a science of positive psychology course at the University of Southern California, I could not help but be interested in Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book, Bright-Sided, which states how the positive psychology approach (in academia, business, health, and economics) has undermined America. First, I would think we would [...]
People who study happiness can be annoying in their pollyannish prescriptions to just look on the bright side of life. Just ask Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America . So it’s always refreshing to see someone put basic research findings (being grateful is important) into more common sense language [...]
Facebook just launched a gross national happiness index which uses analysis of words used in Facebook posts to measure the country’s mood. I’m sure those who study the taxonomy of emotion would love to see more complex measures included. However, this is a potentially wonderful tool and the fact that Facebook is willing to publish this data means [...]
It looks like the government of France is following in the footsteps of Bhutan and the United Kingdom and is taking the idea of using happiness as a national indicator more seriously. The article from the Telegraph is consistent with a growing drumbeat among academics and politicians to consider national indicators of well being. The [...]
Some of the group that run yourmorals.org are considering writing a paper focusing on Libertarians and so I’ve been looking at the data for triends. One consistent pattern we have found is that Libertarians (unsuprisingly) are more self rather than other oriented. They aren’t just extreme conservatives, but are qualitatively different. They seem to moralize less [...]
I am just getting back from the Gallup Positive Psychology conference where we talk a lot about measuring happiness and well being rather than GDP to inform policy. In case anyone wonders what some of my posts on happiness have to do with public policy, here is a tidbit I recently came across. The basic idea is [...]
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I recently wrote/created (though the graphic design is not mine) the below infographic for 
Recently, an unprecedented study was done in Oregon where (due to budgetary, not research reasons) a lottery was held to randomly decide which applicants for Medicaid would actually receive the opportunity to receive Medicaid. There has never been an opportunity to randomly assign people to have access to a program like Medicaid, and so this represents [...]
I recently finished Tony Hsieh’s book, Delivering Happiness, which is partially a business book, detailing his remarkable story where he has won ( 
Whenever I bring up the concept of maximizing (“never settling for less than the best”), the discussion inevitably evolves into thinking about what domains a given person maximizes in. For example, I definitely don’t maximize in terms of my clothing choices, but am more of a maximizer in my career choice. Actually, even within my career [...]
Watching baseball can be a frivolous pursuit and a distraction from psychology research, but last night something happened which demonstrated a psychological finding far more effectively than any study or paper. Armando Galarraga, a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, was very close to pitching a 
People who study happiness can be annoying in their pollyannish prescriptions to just look on the bright side of life. Just ask Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote 
Some of the group that run yourmorals.org are considering writing a paper focusing on Libertarians and so I’ve been looking at the data for triends. One consistent pattern we have found is that Libertarians (unsuprisingly) are more self rather than other oriented. They aren’t just extreme conservatives, but are qualitatively different. They seem to moralize less [...]