Happiness has become a big top in the social sciences. Many universities offer happiness courses that teach how to be happier. Many of the exercises that are being taught in these courses are not based on evidence of effectiveness. I am teaching a different course. The course is an introduction to the science of well-being. The aim of this course is to provide an overview of the empirical research on well-being.

Textbooks that cover well-being science are often written by textbook writers who are not experts on the topic. They are often pretty bad. A better alternative is the free textbook published by well-being expert Ed Diener on his free textbook site Noba publishing (link).

For my students, I wrote my own textbook. It is still a work in progress, but given the costly alternatives, I decided to make it public. As I said, it is a work in progress. I am always looking for ways to improve it and to correct it. Feel free to provide comments in the comment section or by email.

Wellbeing Science: In Search of the Good Life (Ulrich Schimmack)