Dana Arakawa

For those new to positive psychology, the movie, Happy, is a great introduction to the field and the work of some of its most prominent researchers, including Ed Diener, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Sonja Lyubomirsky, and Richard Davidson. Happy weaves a lot the research we’re already familiar with into a story that takes us from the slums …

To describe how much I enjoyed and recommend the Positive Psychology Workbook series by Robert Biswas-Diener and colleagues, I thought of the positivity ratio proposed by Barbara Fredrickson, that flourishing happens when positivity outweighs negativity by 3 to 1, but above 11:1, the effect disappears. I loved the series and would highly recommend it, so …

The act of organizing is a powerful tool to regain a sense of control, opening the door and creating space for proactivity and self-motivation to flourish.

Does the custom of sitting longer in a café mean that Argentines are savoring more than Americans do? I don’t know. Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff proposed the term savoring to capture “the active process of enjoyment, the ongoing interplay between person and environment.” Savoring is a personal experience, distinct from pleasure, though they are …

A few months ago, I had an intense conversation with a friend who is a U.S. Navy SEAL. I asked him whether or not he was ready to kill someone. His response was unequivocal—yes, he was ready. He was strongly motivated by the conviction that evil people with no regard for human life must themselves …