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    Psychology of Happiness

    Promote happiness and wellbeing by building strong habits grounded in research-based practices in psychology and neuroscience.

    About this Workshop

    Campus: Wellesley College | Rising Grades: 10,11,12

    Everyone wants to be happy, but what does that actually mean? How can we achieve happiness and design a life of meaning? This course will give you the tools, strategies, and habits to increase happiness, all while thinking critically about what happiness looks like and how to take a scientific approach to measuring and cultivating it. Dive deep into quantitative and qualitative research about happiness, and learn about personal behaviors that can contribute to a greater sense of well-being. Drawing from positive psychology, analyze how different parts of everyday life impact happiness, such as physical exercise, social media, relationships, habits, environment, and biology, using case studies, experiments, and research. Try out different methods proposed by experts to increase your happiness, including yoga, meditation, behavior tracking, and gratitude journaling. Use your experiences to design a research project to test different strategies to develop your own theory of happiness. Finally, develop strategies to cultivate happiness and a mindfulness practice that will carry through to school, college, and career.

    Highlights

    Build a Mindfulness Practice
    Try yoga and meditation, start a gratitude journal, and track behaviors to learn research-based strategies used to promote happiness.

    Create a Personal Research Project
    Develop a theory of happiness, and design a research project around the factors that contribute to happiness.

    Interdisciplinary Approach
    Research, study, and learn about happiness through a variety of disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, biology, and philosophy.