Happiness: It's All in Your Head

This past weekend on To the Best of Our Knowledge, a weekly radio program on Wisconsin Public Radio, listeners had the chance to hear a smattering of the most intriguing and up-to-date research on an elusive subject: happiness. The show, which you can listen to in its entirety by clicking here, was a part of the program's "Future Perfect" series and featured several famous and noteable names in psychology:

• Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist who suffered a stroke and has since written and spoken extensively on the experience. In her latest book, My Stroke of Insight, she addresses the euphoria she felt during the stroke and how being forced to utilize her right brain (due to left brain damage caused by the stroke) has led her to greater happiness.


• Richard Davidson of UW-Madison speaks about his research on meditation and Buddhist monks. Friend of the Dalai Lama, he has famously performed fMRI scans on meditating monks, and suggests it is a way to "train" our brains for happiness.


• Sonja Lyubomirsky, from the University of California-Riverside, discusses current research on happiness and areas of interest. One that I found interesting (and that we've discussed in class under a different name) was "hedonic adaptation": the phenomenon whereby you obtain something or achieve something that makes you happy...but the happiness inevitably fades.


• Robert Biswas-Diener, the "Indiana Jones" of happiness research, addresses cultural differences and cultural constants when it comes to happiness. Turns out that we ALL desire happiness, but what happiness is may differ from culture to culture.