“Happiness reminds us that ultimately this is a world of people, of families, of communities all alike – of human beings seeking the same thing. When we grasp this universal simplicity – this sense of a shared planet and shared fate for those who walk on it in a common quest for happiness, well-being, and […]

This is an excerpt. Show this

Back in February 2011 I looked at the British government’s plans to measure the nation’s well-being. Now the National Statistician, Jil Matheson, has published her Reflections on the National Debate on Measuring National Well-being. Was it worth waiting for?  Have we learnt anything new about well-being?  Was it worth the £2m it cost to conduct […]

In this month’s article for Positive Psychology News, I look at the government’s plans to measure the UK’s well-being in 2011, and Martin Seligman’s new Well-being Theory. Stop Press: the Office for National Statistics has now announced the four well-being related questions that will be included in this year’s Integrated Household Survey. They are: • […]

* Hope and Hell are both located in Michigan… One of the aspects of studying positive psychology which really appeals to me is its sheer breadth – the fact that it applies in so many fields of human endeavour and experience.  Positive psychology appears in disciplines as diverse as art and design, education, politics, and […]

Here’s a great animated video supporting Daniel Pink’s presentation on intrinsic motivation and why profit-related pay (PRP) doesn’t actually motivate people to work harder. According to Pink, psychology research shows that economists have got it all wrong. If you want to motivate and engage people, and get them work harder, they need to experience the […]

In this month’s posting for Positive Psychology News Daily, I reviewed some brand new research from Professor Carol Graham, Soumya Chattopadhyay, and Mario Picon (all from the University of Maryland). Their objective was to better understand the effects of the US economic crisis on well-being and to determine if individuals adapt both to the bad […]

Daniel Kahneman (Nobel prize winner and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs Emeritus at the Woodrow Wilson School as well as the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton University) talks about the complexity of happiness and how it is different for the ‘experiencing self’ and the ‘remembering self’. With the aid of a […]

Here’s a link to a US radio show ‘To the point’, featuring Barbara Ehrenreich, author of  ‘Bright-sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America‘ and Robert Biswas-Diener, a psychology instructor at Portland State University; they discuss the connections between Positive Psychology, happiness and positive thinking and health and the economy (you need […]

If you happen to be in London on Wednesday 21st October, the Employee Well-being Forum might be worth a visit. The programme boasts that “at this event you will hear a wealth of best practice case studies offering practical advice to improve wellness strategies and decrease absence and stress in the workplace through the recession”. […]

Here’s a link to my posting to Positive Psychology News Daily this month, reviewing some of the keynotes at the recent CAPP conference at Warwick University: Well-Being and Behavioural Economics : David Willetts, MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Innovations, Skills and Universities, UK Half-Life – Education for Well-being : Anthony Seldon, Master, Wellington College, […]

A great article from The Guardian yesterday about the plans of Lord Layard, the so-called ‘Happiness Tsar’, to bring happiness to the UK masses. As an economist, his epiphany was the realisation that above a certain point, money and happiness aren’t correlated. Putting aside the argument about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and depression (which is one […]