Happier? The History of a Cultural Movement That Aspired to Transform America

In Happier? the intellectual and cultural historian Daniel Horowitz explores the origins and social, cultural, economic, and political resonances of happiness studies and positive psychology in the United States from the second half of the twentieth century to the present. Horowitz begins and ends with one of the most well-known figures in the field, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman, who originally developed the theory of learned helplessness in depression and later moved on to look at happiness. Much of the early part of Happier? focuses on a loose collection of scholars, as well as some popular figures, who created the basis of happiness studies. Horowitz ties these to big trends in American culture and politics, particularly the pessimism of the 1970s and the optimism of the 1980s. As he describes the explosion of positive psychology in the 1990s and 2000s, he examines the crossing of boundaries between popular and academic expressions of optimism and the marketing opportunities in telling people how to have more satisfying lives

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Great Depression · Happiness · Learned helplessness · Optimism · Pessimism · Political science · Politics · Positive psychology · Sociology · Law · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Social Psychology

• Well-being at the cost of welfare

  Open Access•Ian J Davidson•History of the Human Sciences•2026

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