“Although we don’t live in the past, we live with the past.” – Rabbi Mark Miller

Sonja Lyubomirsky, PhD
Professor of Psychology
Department of Psychology (Social)
University of California, Riverside

e-mail: sonja.lyubomirsky[at]ucr.edu

RESEARCH INTERESTS: happiness, positive psychology, Continue Reading

Uncertainty enhances our experiences, making the pleasant experiences more pleasant and the unpleasant even more unpleasant. This has been demonstrated in a series of studies by Bar-Anan, Wilson, & Gilbert (2009) in which feelings of uncertainty were shown to heighten positive and negative experiences respectively. This the authors claim to be the first studies to show that uncertainty intensifies affective reactions (our positive and negative experiences).

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How can you know what graduate school will be like as a psychology major? For prospective students, like myself, this is a difficult question to answer even with the whole world wide web at our finger tips. The good news is that the great folks at Jonathan Haidt’s lab at the University of Virginia’s social psychology program have given an example of what such an answer should look like. Continue Reading

“Our neighbor’s experience can provide greater insight than our own best guess.” (Gilbert, Killingsworth, Eyre, & Wilson, 2009, p. 1619) In other words, another person sharing their first hand experiences (surrogation), helps us to make better predictions than our own best guess (simulation) of how we will feel when experiencing the same event. At the same time,  all participants believed that simulation would be superior to surrogation, even after it had failed them. Continue Reading

Our emotional well-being benefits when we have positive expectations and suffers when we have negative expectations. This holds true irregardless of the actual out come of the anticipated turn out of events. Prior to knowing how things will turn out, positive expectations generate a pleasant state of savoring while negative expectations generate an unpleasant state of dreading what is to come. Continue Reading

In this study Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson (2009) together with other researchers have demonstrated that when we anticipate an upcoming event as important, we are more motivated to remember and build stronger and more lasting memories of it. On the other hand if the sense of importance is only established in retrospect, the motivation that helps establish the memories is weak or missing, and we are much less likely to remember the past. Continue Reading

Timothy D. Wilson, PhD
Sherrell J. Aston Professor of Psychology
Department of Psychology (Social)
University of Virginia

e-mail: tdw[at]virginia.edu

RESEARCH INTERESTS: affective forecasting, positive psychology, Continue Reading

Daniel T. Gilbert, PhD
Professor of Psychology
Department of Psychology (Social)
Harvard University

e-mail: gilbert[at]wjh.harvard.edu

RESEARCH INTERESTS: affective forecasting, positive psychology, Continue Reading

Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD
Professor of Psychology
New School of Psychology
Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya

e-mail: talb[at]idc.ac.il

RESEARCH INTERESTS: positive psychology, perfectionism, happiness, and positive emotions. Continue Reading

Todd B. Kashdan, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychology
Department of Psychology (Clinical)
George Mason University

e-mail: tkashdan[at]gmu.edu

RESEARCH INTERESTS: positive psychology, curiosity, positive emotions, personal strengths, interpersonal relationships, the assessment & cultivation of well-being, gratitude, meaning & purpose in life, anxiety disorders, and self-regulation. Continue Reading

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?” (Williamson, 1992, p. 165)

Willliamson, M. (1992). A return to love: Reflections on the principles of a course in miracles. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

“Memory is the personal journalism of the soul.” - Richard Schickel

This is a last-minute announcement of the upcoming positive psychology conference held Claremont Graduate University on January 24, 2009, 8:45-18:45 (GMT-8 Pacific Time).

Sign up now for web participation or to be wait-listed for in-person attendance.

The purpose of this symposium is a gathering of major researchers in the field of positive psychology, to discuss how the science of positive psychology can be applied for the improvement of society. For those of you who are interested in positive psychology and would like to hear what this conference can teach you, then I invite everyone to attend via web. In-person attendance is sold out, and I personally think the “webinar” registration is better than to be wait-listed. However, you will have to books your ticket(s) immediately as sales will close very soon. If you are unable to be in California, like me and Hans, then you can also sign up for web participation, which is only $25 plus a $0.99 registration fee. Continue Reading

Here are my favorite B.C. comic strips of December 2008.

I just recently started reading B.C. and just felt like sharing the one’s that made me laugh the most. I hope you’ll have some good laughs as I did.

Dec 1, 2008

Dec 7, 2008

Dec 8, 2008

Dec 11, 2008

Dec 12, 2008

Dec 19, 2008

all comic strips are embeded through Comics.com