Course Catalog

The Science of Well-Being: What makes people and societies happy? What defines a good life? Good friends, perhaps? A happy family? Living in a safe place? Or maybe something like religion or self-actualization? The search for the good life has preoccupied philosophers for millennia. Psychologists and sociologists, by contrast, started to care about that topic only a few decades ago. In this emerging Science of Well-Being, researchers have focused on how people evaluate their lives. These evaluations include peoples emotional reactions to events, their moods, and judgments they form about their life satisfaction, fulfillment, and satisfaction with domains such as marriage and work. In this seminar, you will learn about the basic theories of well-being and happiness and what different kinds of a good life there are. We will discuss how individual characteristics, like marital or socioeconomic status and societal characteristics, like certain economic development and taxation are related to well-being.