Can the Apple iPhone, which supplies hours of entertainment, actually measure your happiness?

The UK-based New Economics Foundation published the Happy Planet Index (HPI) 2009 on July 4 with Costa Rica winning the title as the happiest and most environmentally friendly country, according to a report by Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po. Latin American countries occupied nine of the top 10 positions on the list. Chinese mainland ranks [...]

A nice 18 minute talk by cognitive researcher Nancy Etcoff who looks at happiness from a scientific perspective. Followers of The Virtual Happiness Research are allready familiar with what happens in the brain and how social interaction is key for happiness.
But… this presenation is from 2004! It’s nice to look at it now and [...]

In an attempt to nail down what psychological aspects factor into “the successful life,” researchers have been following 268 Harvard students from the 1940s until now, conducting extensive physical and psychological tests each year.
In a lengthy but fascinating piece, The Atlantic reports on what’s known as the Grant Study and its current lead, Dr. George [...]

Master Thesis by Jim Stolze, April 2009
Lemniscaat Management School

Abstract
We asked five thousand readers of a magazine aimed at women to complete an online survey to assess the frequency and appreciation of their time spent with reading the magazine and the magazines’ online Forum. The goal was to examine the relationship between Internet usage and happiness [...]

Today Jim Stolze gave a talk at TED University about the Virtual Happiness Project. It’s a six minute talk about his month offline, the results of the project and 5 practical tips how the internet can make you happier.

Looking for the slides of this presentation?
And here’s the transscript:
Could you live without the internet?
Ask yourself [...]

If you’re feeling great today, you may end up inadvertently spreading the joy to someone you don’t even know.
New research shows that in a social network, happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another. That means when you feel happy, a friend of a friend of a friend has a slightly [...]

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 evolutionary approach [...]

‘Afstand scheidt enkel de lichamen, niet de geesten’ (Erasmus)
Desiderius Erasmus, the well known Dutch Renaissance humanist, once said that:
“Distance only separates our bodies, our minds are always connected”.
Which is a remarkable contribution to the Virtual Happiness Hypothesis. Especially when you think of the fact that Erasmus lived from 1469 - 1536.
And no, he didn’t [...]

My good friend Maarten Lens-Fritzgerald is on an amazing journey. You should definitely check out his weblog about his fight against a tumor named Theo.
But the reason that I mention him here, is that he shared a book by Alain de Botton with me that is titled “The Architecture of Happiness“.
A little preview on the [...]