What is happiness? “Happiness is redneck bowling lanes, cheap nachos, and greasy pizza. gotta love not being in the city anymore.” Read the full messsage here.

Excellent storytelling by David Spark on the site Mashable about breaking up online friendships: “Jill received a message from her friend Megan asking, “When are we getting together? Miss you.” Moments after that message, Jill discovered that Megan had de-friended her on Facebook. That was odd. She gets a “let’s get together” message, the two [...]

Bas Haring is a thinker and an asker of questions, a writer and a speaker. In a clear and stimulating manner he aims to imbue science and philosophy with meaning for our lives. He does this by writing books, columns and making TV programs. Haring tried to paint some white in a black world. He [...]

Ruut Veenhoven studied sociology. He is currently professor of social conditions for human happiness at Erasmus University Rotterdam, in The Netherlands. Veenhovens definition of happiness is “enduring satisfaction with life as a whole”. It is commonly assumed that humans have an innate need for meaning, and that gratification of that need causes happiness. However, that [...]

Prof. dr. P. de Blot holds the Business Spirituality Chair at the Nyenrode Business University. The objective of the chair is to develop a high quality knowledge centre to improve the quality of the way business is done in general and the renewal and revitalization of business in particular using organizations’ own spiritual strength. Prof. [...]

Onno Hamburger (1969) studied psychology at Leiden university in the Netherlands and he specialized in the science of happiness at work. Hamburger is looking for evidenced based psychological tools in the area of happiness. In this way he fulfils his own mission by helping his clients to become happier and consequently more effective at work. [...]

Maarten Vansteenkiste is a Professor in Psychology at the Ghent University in Belgium. Throughout his work he tries to map out the reasons that motivate people’s behavior and the goals and ambitions that people pursue throughout their lives. He examines whether particular motives and goals are more likely to be associated with enduring persistence, high [...]

Dick Swaab is team leader ‘Neuropsychiatric Diseases’ within the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. The Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience is a merger of the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research and the Netherlands Ophthalmic Research Institute. Mr. Swaab talked about different brain regions and how they are related to things like social pleasures, higher order pleasures, epileptics [...]

2. An evolutionary approach to quality of life Bjørn Grinde is a biologist working in the fields of genetics and evolution, with a particular interest in human evolution. Presently he works as a chief scientist at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and as a professor at the University of Oslo. His presentation answered question [...]

Yesterday was the day of the 1st Dutch Positive Psychology symposium. At Thoughts on Happiness thought leaders from science and business gathered to talk about the meaning of life and how that affects your happines. A selection of the talks can be found here: 1. Happiness and the Brain, by Professor Dick Swaab. 2. An [...]