Social Science Bites

Are university students unhappy? We won’t generalize, but many are, and this was something Bruce Hood noted. Being an experimental psychologist who teaches at the University of Bristol,  an opportunity presented itself. Why not start a course on the science of happiness, and while teaching it collect data from the students attending? The resulting course (created with advice from one his former students, Laurie Santos) proved popular, and Hood last year published a book, The Science of Happiness: Seven Lessons for Living Well. In this Social Science Bites podcast, Hood explains to interviewer David Edmonds the scientific basis of happiness, some details on how to measure it, and then some of those lessons for harvesting its benefits. Hood explains how scholarship has determined some genetic basis for happiness, how circumstances contribute to but don’t dictate happiness, and how individuals focus more on the negative than the positive, which clearly not the most nurturing environment for happiness. The