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September 4, 2009
In June of this year, Joshua Wolf Shenk published the fascinating essay “What Makes Us Happy?†in The Atlantic.
It was riveting.
Joshua spent about a month in the file room of the Harvard Study of Adult Development hoping to learn the secret of happiness. The project is one of the longest-running and probably the most exhaustive longitudinal studies of mental and physical well-being in history. Basically, for 72 years researchers at Harvard have been following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s–following them through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age.
A brilliant man named George Vaillant has directed the study for 40-plus years, compiling and processing all the information.
So what did Joshua learn? What makes for happiness??
Read Article in Full:Â http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/09/04/what-makes-us-happy-my-interview-with-joshua-wolf-shenk/