New Year reset: Seven things to add or subtract for happiness, according to science

Psychologist and researcher Jacqueline Nesi on the lifestyle changes that have been proven to boost well-being. As a clinical psychologist and researcher, I love learning about the science of happiness. Nothing brings me happiness like studies about well-being: how to increase it, how to maintain it, how to spread it to others.

There’s just one, pesky little problem: many of these studies are nonsense. So, how do we know what to believe? What will actually make us happy? Let’s take a look at the science. The science of happiness Scholars and philosophers have always been interested in what makes for a good life, but the scientific study of happiness took off in the late 1990s with a new field called Positive Psychology.



The next decade saw an explosion of research on happiness, with hundreds of studies on the topic published in academic journals..