Explore The How of Happiness with researcher and author Sonja Lyubomirsky and learn how your intentional activities are enough to shift you into a happier place. Finding the activities that best fit your personality and beiief system are key elements to making positive and lasting changes. Don’t miss this informative and eye-opening conversation about the science and study of happiness.
Sonja Lyubomirsky is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside. Originally from Russia, she received her A.B., summa cum laude, from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in Social/Personality Psychology from Stanford University. Sonja’s teaching and mentoring of students have been recognized with the Faculty of the Year and Faculty Mentor of the Year Awards and her research – on the possibility of permanently increasing happiness — has been honored with a Science of Generosity grant, a Templeton Positive Psychology Prize, and a million-dollar grant (with Ken Sheldon) from the National Institute of Mental Health. Lyubomirsky’s 2008 book, The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Penguin Press) has been translated into 18 languages. Her work has been written up in hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, and she has appeared in multiple TV shows, radio shows, and feature documentaries in North America, South America, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
In her work, Lyubomirsky has focused on developing a science of human happiness. To this end, her research addresses three critical questions: 1) What makes people happy?; 2) Is happiness a good thing?; and 3) How can we make people happier still? Lyubomirsky’s current focus is on exploring different psychological processes that play a role in sustaining or increasing happiness – for example, counting one’s blessings, practicing altruism, and avoiding obsessively dwelling about oneself and making excessive social comparisons.
She is currently testing the potential of such happiness-sustaining activities to durably increase a person’s happiness level higher than his or her “set point” and to thwart adaptation to positive experiences.
