By Elizabeth King Humphrey, Scientific American MIND Stumped by a crossword puzzle? Try taking a break to watch a funny TV show. Recent research shows that people in a lighthearted mood more often have eureka moments of sudden inspiration. Karuna Subramaniam, then at Northwestern University, and her...

by Paul Bloom How do Americans spend their leisure time? The answer might surprise you. The most common voluntary activity is not eating, drinking alcohol, or taking drugs. It is not socializing with friends, participating in sports, or relaxing with the family. While people sometimes describe sex as...

by Richard Florida "A week or so ago, Newsweek 's Julia Baird pointed to my analysis of the connection between national happiness and tolerance. That reminded me and my MPI colleagues of the Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom Index . The index, which covers 183 countries, is based on...

From TED "Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics...

By John Tierney "Could it be that humans are not quite as gullible as advertised? For a couple of decades now, social psychologists and behavioral economists have been amusing themselves manipulating consumers into doing odd things. They’ve delighted in debunking the notion of homo economicus, that...

From TED "Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics...

Laura Sizer Happiness is something we all want and strive for. But what is it and why do we want it so badly? Philosophers have offered two sorts of answers to the first question, identifying happiness either with a psychological state or condition (a feeling, emotion or set of judgments), or with the...

“Defining Wisdom” is an interdisciplinary research program within the Arete Initiative at The University of Chicago. Twenty groups of researchers from a wide range of disciplines have been awarded two-year grants under the program to investigate the nature and benefits of wisdom. As a group, we have...