ABSTRACT
We have seen in the course of this book that happiness is a major dimension of human experience, including positive mood, satisfaction with life, and cognitions such as optimism and self-esteem. There has been extensive research on the causes of happiness, and we now have a very good idea what they are. This research consists partly of big social surveys, sometimes of many countries, and also of longitudinal and “quasi-experimental” studies which can tease out the direction of causation.
