Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness

Everybody wants to lead a satisfying life filled with happiness. While it's impossible to be happy all the time, this course will help you find pathways that can increase your sense of well-being and your overall satisfaction with life. The course starts with an explanation of what happiness is, why we seek it, and whether the drive to be happy is universal. Next, we will cover the different factors that impact happiness and well-being. Are we seeing our lives as meaningful? Are we forming satisfying relationships? Are we feeling like the tasks we're doing are struggles, or are we experiencing a sense of productivity and flow? These are the types of questions that this section focuses on. It also includes recommendations for how to improve our happiness. 

Next, the course will look at how governments and the policies they enact can influence the happiness-or lack thereof-in their countries. Finally, we will turn our attention to helping behavior and develop an understanding of how helping others can lead to benefits for our well-being. In addition to providing an understanding of all these issues, this course contains many practical recommendations for how you can increase the positivity, satisfaction, and sense of well-being in your life.

Learning objectives

• Define positive psychology, well-being, and happiness.
• Discuss simple ways to increase happiness and well-being.
• Explain how earlier psychological research fostered the development of positive psychology.
• Describe the research of the psychologists who founded positive psychology.
• Discuss the major criticisms of positive psychology.
• Identify the factors that affect subjective well-being.
• Discuss how positive psychology is used in interventions.
• Describe how psychological well-being is measured across different societies and countries.
• Discuss cultural differences in desired levels of happiness.
• Explain how policy informs the factors that affect well-being.
• Discuss the factors that determine when individuals help others in need.
• List the steps involved in making decisions to help.
• Describe ways to increase helping behavior.