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Angela Duckworth: True grit, 2013

by Angela Duckworth, 2013

Angela Lee Duckworth, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, shared highly regarded work on the psychology of success and why effort is as important as talent.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: TED talk: What makes a good life, 2011

by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 2011

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is one of the world's leading researchers in positive psychology. As the director of the Quality of Life Research Center, he specializes in research on psychological strengths of the human brain. He is known as the creator of the concept of 'flow', a satisfactory
state of being in which people feel completely absorbed in activity while losing their sense of time.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Living in flow – the secret of happiness, 2014

by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 2014

• What really makes us glad to be alive?
• What are the inner experiences that make life worthwhile?
• When do we experience ‘flow’ – a state of joy, creativity and total involvement?
• What does the research show about the beneficial effects of ‘flow’ on our happiness and wellbeing?
• How can we actively bring ‘flow’ into our lives at work, at play and in our relationships?
• Learning to live in harmony with ourselves, our society and the greater universe.

Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, USA, one of the greatest psychologists of our time, pioneering researcher into optimal experience or ‘flow’ and best-selling author of Flow: The classic work on how to achieve happiness

Ed Diener: A recipe for happiness (long version), 2014

by Ed Diener, 2014

Produced and Conducted by Michael B. Frisch
Ed Diener
World Authority on Happiness Research
Senior Research Scientist in the Gallup Institute for Global Well-Being

Ed Diener: On being an effective teacher, 2012

by Ed Diener, 2012

Ed Diener: A recipe for happiness (short version), 2014

by Ed Diener, 2014

Ed Diener: The new science of happiness, 2013

by Ed Diener, 2013

- Why is happiness important?
- What contributes to happiness personally and in society?
- What are the positive outcomes associated with increased levels of happiness?
- Is there an optimal level of happiness?

Professor Ed Diener, world's foremost expert on the science of happiness and life satisfaction, Joseph R. Smiley Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois, USA

Press Articles

The Positive Approach to Government’s Performance Problems

From Government Executive, February 3, 2015

The Danish Don’t Have the Secret to Happiness

From The Atlantic, January 30, 2015

Scholarly Publications

Happiness: An Interactionist Perspective
by Aaron Ahuvia, Neil Thin, Dan Haybron, Robert Biswas-Diener, Mathieu Ricard, Jean Timsit, 2015
 
Few would deny that happiness arises from a complex interaction of internal and external factors, like optimism on the one hand and money on the other. Yet research, as well as practical strategies for promoting happiness, tends to focus narrowly on one side or the other. A typical study, for instance, might examine the correlation between happiness and an internal variable like optimism, or an external variable like income. And practical strategies commonly divide into “change the world” versus “change your mind” approaches: promote health and wealth, for example, or cultivate gratitude for what you already have. This paper explores how our understanding of happiness is enhanced by “interactionist” approaches that emphasize the complex webs of interactions and feedbacks that give rise to happiness and unhappiness. While implicitly interactionist themes have increasingly characterized research on happiness, we anticipate that an explicit recognition of the interactionist perspective will foster greater attention to the complexities of happiness, particularly in the domain of human sociality, which involves especially rich and potent webs of interaction. A further upshot, we believe, is a greater awareness of our co-responsibility for one another’s happiness.
 
Keywords: happiness, income, quality of life, well-being, wellbeing, care giving, co-responsibility, felicitation

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