The Good Life

Positive psychology and what makes life worth living.

by Christopher Peterson

A Quiet Positive Psychology

I just finished reading a terrific book written by Susan Cain (2012), who also writes blog entries for Psychology Today. Read More

Big Goals Matter

Success in golf depends less on strength of body than upon strength of mind and character. — Arnold Palmer Read More

Social Class and Unethical Behavior

“Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior.” This is the title of a research report by Paul Piff and colleagues (2012) published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. My attention was piqued. Read More

A “So What” of Humility

"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less." - Rick Warren My colleagues and I have studied strengths of character for more than a decade (Park & Peterson, 2010; Peterson and Seligman, 2004). The most important conclusion from our work is that character is plural. Read More

The Family Meal

I recently prepared a lecture on parenting from a positive psychology perspective. Although psychologists have had much to say about parenting, often the focus has been on eliminating undesirable actions on the part of kids, like talking back, tantrums, and tattling. These behaviors are of course annoying, but what about encouraging desirable actions? Read More

US Cities: Sinful and Saintly

"What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness." - Joseph Brodsky. A recent Internet article by Jordan Rane (2012) caught my eye because it resonated with my interest in psychological variations across United States (US) cities. Read More

What's Wrong With Red Hair?

"Part of the problem with redheads is that there aren't enough of them. They make up just two percent of the population. So they're pretty extraordinary. Redheads are too numerous to be ignored, too rare to be accepted." - Grant McCracken Read More

Positive Psychology and the Anna Karenina Principle

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. - Leo Tolstoy Read More

Gestures as Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, Negative and Positive

I watched the recent 46th NFL Super Bowl between the Patriots and the Giants but sooner rather than later changed channels during the halftime show, which featured Madonna. As a result, I missed seeing live the beginning of the mini-scandal that ensued when one of her backup singers, M.I.A., made an obscene gesture to the viewing audience. Read More

Happy Family Day!

I love Canadians, and I love Canada. Here is just one of many reasons. On the third Monday of February, Family Day is observed in the provinces of Alberta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan. Family Day celebrates the importance of families and family life to people and their communities. Read More

A New Merit Badge for the Girl Scouts: The Science of Happiness

I was never a Scout, but as I was growing up I was aware of the merit badges that could be earned by Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, and they always seemed pretty cool as indicators that someone was an expert in a given endeavor. Many of domains of merit badge expertise seemed exotic to me as a kid in the Chicago suburbs, like climbing, fly fishing, and wood carving. Read More

Other People Matter: From Birth to Death

Let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. —1 John 4:7 Read More

Another Morning With President Obama

Some while ago, I wrote a blog entry about the 2010 University of Michigan Commencement Address by Barack Obama. At the time, I thought that hearing a standing President speak would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me. I was wrong, because he spoke in Ann Arbor on Friday, January 27, 2012, and I was among the 4000 people in attendance. Read More

On the Virtue of Compromise

The word compromise is used in two different senses, one typically positive and the other typically negative. The good sense of compromise is finding a common ground with another person.The bad sense is being untrue to your core values and beliefs. Read More

Are We as Bad as the Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done?

Politicians and everyday people are certainly capable of doing bad things, and most of us do a few of these during our lives. The issue I would like to raise is whether it makes sense to judge a person solely on the basis of the worst thing he or she has ever done. Read More

The Face of Leadership

A "gee whiz" study was recently described by Elaine Wong, Margaret Ormiston, and Michael Haselhun (2011). These researchers were able to predict the financial success of Fortune 500 companies from the facial width-to-height ratio (WHR) of the CEO. That is, how wide was the CEO's face relative to how long it was? Read More

The Presenter's Paradox: When Less is More

Life Satisfaction in the Wake of Disability

One of the parable studies in positive psychology is an investigation reported some years ago by Phillip Brickman, Dan Coates, and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman (1978). These psychologists were then at Northwestern University, and the state of Illinois had just started to run a lottery. Read More

Learning from the Life of Steve Jobs

Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?- Steve Jobs

Is It Time for Negative Psychology?

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief; it was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of Light; it was the season of Darkness. It was the spring of hope; it was the winter of despair. We had everything before us; we had nothing before us. Read More

Affirmation on Your Desktop

I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest. — Muhammad Ali Read More

False Positive Psychology

You've got to accentuate the positive,Eliminate the negative,And latch on to the affirmative.Don't mess with Mister In-Between- Johnny Mercer (1944)

This essay is not about positive psychology, false or true, although I hope the deliberately ambiguous title drew some of you readers here. Read More

11/11/11 – Hail to Corduroy Day

The news, like always, is not all that uplifting today. From the cascading scandal at Penn State to the ongoing NBA lockout to the yo-yo-ing stock market, there is little going on that brings a smile to my face. Read More

Is Good Enough Really Good Enough?

An important study by Justin Arneson, Paul Sackett, and Adam Beatty (2011) was recently published looking at the relationships between ability as measured by standardized tests and performance as measured by what people actually accomplish. Read More

Banning Men from Sporting Events … and Elsewhere?

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting. - George Orwell Read More

Doing the Right Thing for the Right Reason

We make a living by what we do, but we make a life by what we give. - Winston Churchill

It has just come to my attention that on July 19, 2011, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution about happiness. Unlike many matters that concern the UN, this resolution was unanimously supported.

Among the ideas set forth in the resolution are the following, thoroughly consistent with recent theorizing and research in positive psychology: Read More

The 800-Pound Gorilla

"Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility." --Peter Drucker Read More

Bow Ties and Other Signatures

Wearing a bow tie is a statement. Almost an act of defiance. - Rick Kaplan

I was surfing around this morning and found several websites devoted to well-known men who wear bow ties, from Aaron Beck and George Will to Pee Wee Herman and Donald Duck.