Science of Happiness

Sigmund Freud argued that pursuing happiness is pointless and irrelevant to human survival; Pascal argued that humans have no choice but to desire it. Yet what is happiness? How do we define it and pursue it? And how do we know if we’ve achieved it? Dr. Nancy Etcoff is among the leading medical researchers conducting trail blazing research in the field of positive psychology, specifically the study of happiness. She reveals why it is just as critical to understand exactly how our mental and physical health is benefitted by emotions like happiness and joy as it is critical to comprehend how our health is devastated by emotions like anxiety and depression. Dr. Etcoff surveys the most recent technologies being implemented by medical researchers to study, measure and answer seemingly subjective questions, long considered the purview of philosophers and artists.