During working years, life satisfaction can be affected by the level of meaning people find in their work. People put more energy into jobs that they believe contribute positively to the world. They are also more resilient in the face of setbacks.
Meaningful work is as important as pay and security – and perhaps […]

Social contagion is a term for moods spreading from person to person. We are physically constructed to make this possible. Daniel Goleman in Social Intelligence (2007) writes about mirror neurons that fire in response to observing behavior or emotions in others. “For instance, when volunteers lay in an fMRI watching a video showing someone […]

My husband and I took my godmother’s new dog, a 10 month old schipperke, for a long walk across Duke East Campus, as far as the statue of Sower. What pleasure this wiggling, active, curious, explorative little creature is giving my godmother! It made me wonder what positive psychology can tell us about […]

We can get new ideas for gift selections from the pathways to happiness identified in positive psychology: The Pleasant Life — savoring and basking, The Engaged Life — intense involvement in worthwhile activities, and The Meaningful Life — living in service of something larger than ourselves.

Richard Davidson is a neuroscientist who uses brain imaging to study behavior and emotion. He claims, “Social and emotional learning changes the brain,” and “We can change the brain by training the mind.” Social and emotional learning is a process by which people become better at understanding and managing emotions and learn how emotions impact the choices they make, the relationships they have, and their outlook in life.

After I turned down the corner on the fifth page that I wanted to share with my positive psychology peers, I decided that a review of Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande made sense for Positive Psychology News Daily.
Dr. Gawande is a surgeon and a columnist for the New Yorker. In Better, […]

In the spirit of the Oscars, I nominate Sonja Lyubomirsky’s book, The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want for best single book about positive psychology to have on the shelf. There are many great books around these days, including books that go into specific topics in more detail. […]

Keltner and Haidt (2003) characterize awe as an experience of vastness and accommodation. Vastness is not hard to understand. We feel it when we look at the stars, when we see hurricanes and their aftermath, even when we perceive charismatic leaders with human reaches far beyond what we can imagine for ourselves. […]

Last summer, the journal Insulin published What people with diabetes want their caregivers to know: Development of the TCOYD patient concensus statement” based on the results of a workshop I ran at the 2004 Raleigh Taking Control of Your Diabetes conference. I’m going to look at three items from the patient consensus statement and show […]

In 2002, Barbara Fiese and colleagues published a review of 50 years of research on family routines and rituals, exploring whether there is sufficient scientific evidence that routines and rituals form a significant vehicle for promoting healthy families in the 21st century. They found that meaningful rituals contribute to marital cohesion during the transition to […]