The Good Life

Positive psychology and what makes life worth living.

Christopher Peterson is professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. See full bio

October 20, 2008

The Jerk in the Corner Office

Last week I gave a talk on my campus about positive psychology in the workplace. I was pleased with how it went, although the questions were difficult. I am better at being conceptual than being practical, and some of those in attendance--staff members from different units--wanted to know what to do about those in their midst who were relentlessly negative, pessimistic, and mean. Read More

October 11, 2008

Happy Days and Happy Times

In an earlier blog entry ("The Geography of Bliss"), I wrote about happy places--physical locales where people are likely to be happy. In this entry, I write about a related topic: happy days and happy times--days of the week and times during these days when people are likely to be in good moods. Read More

September 28, 2008

Leadership Style and Employee Well-Being

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles, but today it means getting along with people.--Gandhi

An important literature review was recently published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Jaana Kuoppala, Anne Lamminpää, Juha Liira, and Harri Vaino looked at studies linking workplace leadership to the well-being of those led.

September 17, 2008

Ikigai and Mortality

"Only the good die young." While this may have been true in the adolescent fantasies of Billy Joel, it does not square with the results of a recently-published study by Toshimasa Sone and colleagues at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine in Sendai, Japan. Read More

July 2, 2008

The Happiness of Most Nations is Increasing

Findings that happiness can change for individuals need not mean that the happiness levels of given societies can change. Perhaps individual-level changes are idiosyncratic, meaning that the relative gains and losses of different individuals within a given nation cancel each other out, resulting in no discernible shifts for a society in the aggregate. Research to date has supported this view--that the average life satisfaction of people in a given nation is fixed--but now this conclusion has been challenged. Read More

June 27, 2008

Book Review: The Geography of Bliss

The staid meaning of "happy place" seems to be an internal location to which one goes to be happy, serene, and untroubled. Happiness can no doubt be found in an internal place, but that has not stopped people from searching for literal happy places, settings--sometimes neighborhoods and cities but usually nations--where everyone is happy.

June 18, 2008

Tim Russert and the Boston Celtics: What Does Positive Psychology Have To Say?

A great deal of discussion has ensued about Tim Russert and his untimely death. Why was he so widely admired? And why did he die when he did? Discussion is also ensuing about why the Boston Celtics won the NBA Championship. Did their players have special strengths of character? The more general question is the degree to which positive psychology (or psychology per se) can speak to any singular event that will never be repeated. Read More

June 17, 2008

Other People Matter: Two Examples

"Other people matter." I say that in every positive psychology lecture I give and every positive psychology workshop I conduct. It sounds like a bumper sticker slogan, but it is actually a good summary of what positive psychology research has shown about the good life broadly construed. Let me provide two examples that illustrate that other people matter. Read More

June 13, 2008

Does Happiness Have A Cost? Part Two

In my previous blog entry ("Does Happiness Have a Cost?"), I discussed some studies showing that experimentally-induced happiness can have a cost. I cautioned that state research is not the same as trait research. But sometimes state research and trait research point to the same conclusion. An important paper by Shigehiro Oishi, Ed Diener, and Richard Lucas, published in 2007 in Perspectives on Psychological Science, showed that dispositional happiness (rendered as life satisfaction) can have costs.

June 13, 2008

Does Happiness Have A Cost?

Positive psychology theory and research have helped dispel the long-standing "happy and stupid" stereotype. New research, therefore, deserves attention because it is at odds with this conclusion.

Happiness Basics

Research on how to increase positive moods and capitalize on your strengths has proliferated lately thanks to the positive psychology movement, and has shed light on ongoing insights into personality, mood, and cognition.

Go to the Happiness Basics page for more on Happiness including:

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