10036: Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology...

About the Course:

This book is for those who wish to improve the world around them. It’s focus on how to enhance positive emotions moves individuals to experience greater contentment, gratification, and meaning. Dr. Seligman writes, the time has finally arrived for a science that seeks to understand positive emotion, build strength and virtue, and provide guideposts for finding what Aristotle called the `good life,’ . Seligman doesn’t just preach the merits of happiness e.g., happy people are healthier, more productive and contentedly married than their unhappy counterparts but he also presents brief tests and even an interactive Web site (the launch date is set for mid-August) to help readers increase the happiness quotient in their own lives. Trying to fix weaknesses won’t help, he says; rather, incorporating strengths such as humor, originality and generosity into everyday interactions with people is a better way to achieve happiness. Skeptics will wonder whether it’s possible to learn happiness from a book. Their point may be valid, but Dr. Seligman certainly provides the attitude adjustment and practical tools (including self-tests and exercises) for charting the course.

Author

Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D.

About the Authors:

Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D., is Kogod Professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author Learned Optimism and Helplessness, as well as seven other books on motivation, personality, and mental illness. He has been president of the Division of Clinical Psychology of the American Psychological Association and president of the American Psychological Association. Throughout his career he has done extensive research, with grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Aging, the National Science Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation.

Course Objectives:

1. To understand the application of science with “Positive Psychology”

2. To understand how happiness can be cultivated

3. To understand the taxomony of strengths and virtues

4. To explain how signature strengths can benefit health, relationships, and careers