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Nearly all of us buy into the myths of happiness—beliefs that certain adult achievements (marriage, wealth) will make us forever happy and that certain adult failures or adversities (illness, divorce) will make us forever unhappy. Overwhelming research evidence, however, reveals that there is no magic formula for happiness and no sure course toward misery. Read More

Why does having kids reduce our happiness? When posed on his late-night eponymous show, Stephen Colbert deemed the answer obvious:

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
Singapore Airlines announced recently that it will begin flying all-business-class flights across the Pacific – Newark to Singapore started in May and Los Angeles to Singapore will start in September. The demand for business class seats is apparently enormous, so this new venture sounds like it makes perfect business sense. But the psychological scientist in me wonders whether, at the end of the day, this will prove to be such a good idea.
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?”
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.
Is it our genes? Is it where, how, and with whom we live? Or is it entirely something else?




