Clik here to view.
The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a...
This alumnus and Continuing Ed professor says embracing the highs and lows of being human leads to happiness. So leave your android perfection behind and get real.
View ArticleClik here to view.
Social security
Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D. ’89, M.P.H. ’89, used to work in the building adjoining that of James Fowler ’92, Ph.D. ’03, on Harvard’s campus. They did not know each other personally, though they...
View ArticleHappiness is…
Which would make you happier: winning the lottery, or losing the ability to walk? It may seem like a no-brainer, but Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard University, says the answer may...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In last semester, ‘Last Lectures’
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter will deliver official words of wisdom to the Class of 2010 next month at Commencement. Until then, a new “Last Lecture” series organized by the Senior...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on...
Government and happiness? Not so strange bedfellows, says Derek Bok, former president of Harvard and professor at Harvard Law School, who investigates how happiness research could affect policy.
View ArticleClik here to view.
How to get happy
What makes Derek and Sissela Bok happy? Family tops the list. Sharing in each other’s work also ranks high. The former Harvard president and his wife, a current Harvard fellow, offered their...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wandering mind not a happy mind
People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re doing, and this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy. So says a study that used an iPhone Web...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Connecting with freshmen
Harvard College freshmen got their first taste Aug. 26 of the world of ideas awaiting them over the next four years in a talk by Professor Nicholas Christakis, who argued that human social networks...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science
Happiness — how do we get it, how do we keep it, and where does it come from? Distinguished visiting fellow Sissela Bok plumbs the theories of philosophers, neuroscientists, and other specialists, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Decoding keys to a healthy life
For 74 years, one of the longest-running studies of normal adult development has been examining not disease and illness, but what may be life’s magic question: How can you live long and happy? The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ideas to improve the everyday
For the third straight year, a procession of all-star Harvard faculty members dazzled and provoked their audience in 10-minute talks Thursday night that framed big questions about happiness, stem cell...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Decision, decisions
Undergraduates packed Science Center E on Monday to hear two of Harvard’s leading social scientists discuss the way that humans make decisions, and whether having more choices really makes us happier....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Money, marriage, kids
Daniel Gilbert, Harvard professor of psychology and best-selling author of “Stumbling on Happiness,” on Wednesday presented an impressive array of scientific research from economics, psychology, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A quest for happiness
A gift to Harvard’s public health School will fund a new center to find out exactly how being happier can help make people healthier. At a signing ceremony in Hong Kong today, the Lee Kum Kee family...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Giving ‘good’ a rigorous inspection
Imagine a green forest that separates two tribes of shepherds, each with distinctive beliefs and moral codes. One hot, dry summer, the forest burns down, and after the rains come, a lush new pasture...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Can happiness lead toward health?
The ironic thing about modern health care is that it isn’t really about health at all, said Laura Kubzansky. It’s about disease. But the problem with a disease-focused health care system is that health...
View ArticleAn optimistic outlook may be a healthier one
In its Three Questions, Three Answers series, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Laura Kubzansky discusses the link between optimism and hypertension. Kubzansky, who is co-author of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New global survey looks at health, well-being
What’s your blood pressure? For most people, this is an easy question, a fundamental measurement taken at every doctor’s visit. Many supermarkets have free stations to check it. Even smart watches can...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Over nearly 80 years, Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy...
Second in an occasional series on how Harvard researchers are tackling the problematic issues of aging. When scientists began tracking the health of 268 Harvard sophomores in 1938 during the Great...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Happy? Want to learn how to be?
Arthur C. Brooks launched a course four years ago to teach his students not only how to increase their happiness, but how to make those around them happier as well. Now, he’s looking to spread the word...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Harvard photographer captures happiness frame by frame
I was walking along the Charles River, when I spotted Professor Daniel Gilbert on his recumbent bike, cruising down a hill toward the Newell Boathouse. He had a broad smile across his face and looked...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Brooks, Oprah can’t make you happy. But they can help.
Many Americans say they are unhappier now than they were a decade ago, before the explosion of social media, the physical and social isolation brought about by COVID, and the political polarization...
View Article
