Positive Psychological Science: Improving Everyday Life, Health, Work, Education, and Societies Across the Globe

Positive psychological science has experienced extraordinary growth over the past two decades. Research in this area is revealing new strategies and interventions for improving everyday life, health and well-being, work, education, and societies across the globe. Contributions from luminaries in the field provide excellent reviews of the selected topics, summarizing empirical evidence, describing measurement tools, and offering recommendations for improving several aspects of life.

Comprehensively updated, this second edition not only incorporates the more recent empirical findings, three new chapters on relationships and love, the importance of purpose and the stimulation of education practice have been added. Focused on peer-reviewed and theory-driven psychological science, this book uniquely establishes a bridge between the intellectual movement for positive psychology and how it works in the real world. This collection of chapters will inspire the reader to creatively find new opportunities to better the human condition, whether these are in our lives, schools, health care settings or workplaces.

This book will be of interest to all psychologists and social scientists, applied researchers, program designers and evaluators, educators, leaders, students, and anyone interested in applying the science of positive psychology to improve everyday life, and/or to promote social betterment and justice locally and globally.

Stewart I. Donaldson is a Distinguished University Professor, Executive Director of the Claremont Evaluation Center, and Director of The Evaluators’ Institute at Claremont Graduate University.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University. He is also the founder and co-director of the Quality of Life Research Center at Claremont Graduate University.

Jeanne Nakamura is an Associate Professor in the Division of Behavioral & Organizational Sciences at Claremont Graduate University. She co-directs the Quality of Life Research Center at Claremont Graduate University.