Extra! Extra!

Must-reads and online resources to explore happiness.

By Paula Boon

1. The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean my Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
By Gretchen Rubin
Gretchen Rubin spent an entire year trying to increase her happiness level. She shares her findings in this funny, informative account, which also contains tips, advice and research.

2. Happiness for Two: 75 Secrets for Finding More Joy Together
By Alexandra Stoddard
This volume contains 75 wise, practical and humorous short essays about finding happiness in a relationship. Stoddard demonstrates that couples can be happy together, not at each other’s expense.

3. The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work
By Shawn Achor
Human potential expert Shawn Achor draws on his academic research and experience with Fortune 500 executives to explain how to become more positive at work and what benefits will result.

4. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
By Jonathan Haidt
An award-winning psychologist examines Eastern and Western wisdom regarding happiness and the search for meaning and describes how it measures up against the findings of modern science.

5. Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being
By Martin Seligman
Seligman, the founder of the positive psychology movement, identifies the factors that can help people achieve well-being and provides techniques for improving your own life, relationships and approach to work.

6. Stumbling on Happiness
By Daniel Gilbert
This entertaining and insightful book describes how the human imagination throws us off course in our search for happiness. Gilbert’s explanation draws upon research in psychology, behavioral economics, philosophy and cognitive neuroscience.

7. The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being
By Derek Bok
The former president of Harvard University delves into happiness research and describes how indicators of societal well-being can and should shape social and political policy in the United States.

8. Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires
By Carol Graham
Graham presents a fascinating overview of happiness levels around the world and how they are affected by factors like income, health, democracy and equality.

MAGAZINE ARTICLES

1. The Atlantic, June, 2009
“What Makes us Happy?”
By Joshua Wolf Shenk
An overview of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has been following the well-being of its subjects since 1937. The online version includes a video of lead investigator George Valliant.

2. Psychology Today, Jan. 1, 2009
“The Pursuit of Happiness”
By Carlin Flora
Description of the major findings in happiness research, and a discussion of the fact that Americans as a whole have grown more anxious and depressed since this research began.

3. Time Magazine, Jan. 9, 2005
“The New Science of Happiness”
By Claudia Wallis
Outlines the genesis of the positive psychology movement, what it has taught us and the researchers who started it all: Martin Seligman, Ray Fowler and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

4. New York Times, Jan. 7, 2007
“Happiness 101″
By D.T. Max
Commentary on college classes in positive psychology and the effects they have on students. More than 200 colleges and graduate schools in the United States offer such classes.

5. Fast Company, March 2011
“The Corporate Pursuit of Happiness”
By Nancy Cook
Describes how Stanford marketing professor Jennifer Aaker is teaching her students and corporate clients how to find and create happiness to improve employee productivity and attract customers.

6. The Economist, Dec. 16, 2010
“Age and happiness: The U-bend of life”
Reports on a surprising study that shows people’s enjoyment and happiness dip through early adulthood and then rise again after middle age, and offers some explanations of why this is so.

7. Scientific American, Aug. 10, 2010
“Can Money Buy Happiness?”
By Sonja Lyubomirsky
Describes an international study showing that while money allows people to buy many things, it also interferes with their ability to enjoy their purchases.

ONLINE RESOURCES
8. Authentic Happiness:
authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu
A website created by positive psychology pioneer Martin Seligman, with information and resources on well-being and a wide variety of happiness-related questionnaires, surveys and scales.

9. The Chief Happiness Officer: positivesharing.com
This blog by Alexander Kjerulf, one of the world’s leading experts on happiness at work, offers advice for making work energizing, inspiring and meaningful so we enjoy it more while accomplishing more.

10. Raising Happiness:
psychologytoday.com/blog/raising-happiness
Christine L. Carter, Ph.D., a sociologist and happiness expert who teaches parenting and happiness classes online blogs about how to raise joyful, emotionally healthy kids and increase your own happiness at the same time.

11. Dan Gilbert asks, "Why are we happy?"
ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_ asks_why_are_we_happy.html
In this 21-minute TED talk, Gilbert describes how little we understand what makes us happy and why our ultimate happiness has nothing to do with whether we get what we thought we wanted.

Paula Boon is a freelance researcher, writer and editor whose work has appeared in publications in the United States and Canada.