HUMAN 105 - THE HUMAN STRUGGLE -- McLemore

The Oxford Handbook of Happiness is the definitive text for researchers and practitioners interested in human happiness. Its editors and chapter contributors are world leaders in the investigation of happiness across the fields of psychology, education, philosophy, social policy and economics.The Oxford Handbook of Happiness offers readers a coherent, multi-disciplinary, and accessible text on the current state-of-the-art in happiness research.

Daniel Nettle explores why we want to be happy, how we assess our levels of happiness, and the different ways that happiness is interpreted in different cultures. Using statistical information from the National ChildDevelopment Study, a project that has collected social and emotional data from thousands of people since 1958, Nettle shows the ways in which definitions and sources of happiness have changed over time.

Manel Baucells and Rakesh Sarin have been conducting ground-breaking research on happiness for more than a decade, and in this book they distill their provocative findings into a lively, accessible guide for a wide audience of readers. Integrating their own research with the latest thinking in the behavioral and social sciences--including management science, psychology, and economics--they offer a new approach to the puzzle of happiness.

Can we really answer the question what makes people happy? Is there consistency in the determinants of happiness across countries and cultures? Are happiness levels innate to individuals or can policy and the environment make a difference? How is happiness affected by poverty? By economic progress? Is happiness a viable objective for policy? This book is an attempt to answer these questions, based on research on the determinants of happiness in countries around the world, ranging from Peru and Russia to the U.S. and Afghanistan.

The positive psychology movement was founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives and to cultivate what is best within themselves. At the same time, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)--a mindfulness-based behavioral therapy that has many parallels to Buddhism--has been focused on helping people achieve their greatest human potential. Edited by leading researchers, this is the first professional book to successfully integrate key elements of ACT and positive psychology to promote healthy functioning.