How of Happiness

The most compelling stories heard about Olympians are stories of redemption—of overcoming adversity to reach new heights, of suffering being redeemed. Oscar Pistorius had both his legs amputated, yet grew up to sprint in the 2012 Olympics. Bryshon Nellum endured agonizing years of recovery after being shot in the legs, yet carries the U.S. flag at the Closing Ceremonies. Read More

The evidence is unequivocal that being married is correlated with happiness. The evidence is also unequivocal that the causal direction goes both ways. That is, having a strong marriage may make us happy, but those of us who are happy to begin with appear to be more likely to attract a marriage partner and to erect an enduring and fulfilling partnership. Read More

I recently published a review of Marty Seligman's new book, Flourish, in the journal Nature. It had to be significantly abridged, and I provide the original version below. Read More

In Poor Richard's Almanack, the incomparable Ben Franklin wrote, "Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards."

He was right, but only to a point. Read More

in my mind, one of the biggest misconceptions about money is that it can't make us happy - or rather, that the joys it offers can be only faint and fleeting. As it happens, a growing social science of money is showing how we can compensate for some of its damaging effects by getting the most out of our spending. The conclusion is that if we want to buy happiness, we need to wring as many rewarding and stretching experiences from our purchases as possible. Read More

Do you remember what the 2008 presidential election felt like?  Do you remember the moment you realized that an African-American candidate, peddling hope and change, had a bona fide shot at winning the White House? Notwithstanding your party affiliation - was that not electrifying?

How quickly we forget. Read More

From a young age, I've been drawn to "psychological" authors - those writers who understand what motivates us, writers who grasp the complexity of our emotions and the mysteries of our behavior. Read More

I met my husband, Peter, rather randomly, at all-the-Absolut-you-could-drink benefit for the Museum of Contemporary Art. Had we not met that night, we probably never would have ever chanced upon each other. Had one of us ventured several footsteps to the right or the left that evening, my husband, my children and my home might be subtracted from the life I lead today. Read More

The New York Times published an op-ed piece of mine titled "Why We're Still Happy" (Dec 27, 2008). Because it was cut substantially, I thought I'd post the original here. Read More

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As I was watching Michael Phelps receive his 14th gold medal—what a week!—this is what I was thinking: “How could anything in this 23-year old swimmer’s life ever top this?” And: “After he comes down from the high, will he ultimately end up less happy than the rest of us mere mortals?” Read More

I begin with a bit of self-disclosure. I don’t have a religious or spiritual bone in my body. (Yes, maybe even less than Richard Dawkins.) But this doesn’t mean that I’m not open-minded about research on happiness and religion. As I write in my book, The How of Happiness, just because (most) religious beliefs cannot be empirically tested or falsified doesn’t mean that the consequences of having religious faith, participating in religious life, or searching for the sacred cannot be studied. Indeed, a growing body of psychological science is suggesting that religious folks are happier, healthier, and recover better after traumas than nonreligious ones. Read More

As an experimental social psychologist, my job is not to analyze anyone’s personality, let alone an individual whom I’ve never seen larger than in a 42-inch image. However, Robert Draper’s and Scott McClellan’s characterizations of George W. Bush as a staunch optimist lead me to ask, “How much optimism and confidence is good for world leaders and how much is too much?” Read More

I’ve been traveling so much lately that I’ve started to play a little game by guessing what reading material people tend to bring on airplanes. The most frequently sighted book? The Secret. Read More