Exploration of Happiness : Present and Future Perspectives

This specially selected collection of landmark work from the Journal of Happiness Studies maps the current contours, and the likely future direction, of research in a field with a fast-rising profile. This volume, which inaugurates a series aiming to explore discrete topics in happiness and wellbeing studies, features selected articles published in the Journal of Happiness Studies during its first decade, which culminated in an ‘impact factor’ in 2011. As the introductory work in the series, it provides readers with a vital overview of the prominent issues, problems and challenges that well-being and happiness research has had to overcome since its appearance on the scientific stage. The journal’s very success evinces both the high scientific quality of the research covered, and the steadily growing interest in a subject that draws responses from a vast range of epistemological aiming points, taking in economics, sociology, psychology, philosophy, education and medicine.

The series of volumes following this debut publication will represent a unique contribution to the literature in their multidisciplinary focus on particularized topics. It is reckoned that this will help strengthen cross-disciplinary synergies among authors investigating the same topic, as well as whet the appetite for happiness research among professionals and experts inhabiting a variety of academic domains. This volume addresses the theory of well-being and happiness, the different research approaches now probing their features and components, and the socio-economic and cultural issues that impact on their promotion..

Antonella Delle Fave, MD specialized in Clinical Psychology, is professor of Psychology at the University of Milano, Italy. Her studies concern optimal experience and individual psychological selection, that is the lifelong process of differential replication and cultivation of activities and competencies. Her cross-cultural studies have produced the largest international data bank on these topics. On the basis of research findings, she has developed and supervised intervention projects in the domains of health and education, disability and social maladjustment. She is author of 120 articles and chapters in peer-reviewed books, author/editor of 10 books and 2 special journal issues, member of several Editorial Boards and Boards of Reviewers. She is presently President of the European Network of Positive Psychology (ENPP) and member of the Board of Directors of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA).