Dr. Laurie Santos: What Makes Us Happy?

Do we understand what makes us happy? And if we do, can we make ourselves happier? These are the questions Yale Professor Laurie Santos has been studying for years. As students navigate back to school, Dr. Santos and the U.S. Surgeon General explore how we can help our kids, and ourselves, find greater happiness through changing our behavior and shifting our mindset. In a world in which our happiness might feel driven by externalities, creating our own happiness is within our reach, says Dr. Santos. Tune in and see if you can figure out where your happiness lies. The answer might surprise you.

Dr. Laurie Santos, Professor of Psychology at Yale University and Host of the podcast, “The Happiness Lab”

Twitter: @lauriesantos

Instagram: @lauriesantosofficial

Facebook: @DrLaurieSantos

About Dr. Laurie Santos

Dr. Laurie Santos is Professor of Psychology at Yale University and host of the podcast The Happiness Lab. Dr. Santos is an expert on human cognition and the cognitive biases that impede better choices. Her course, “Psychology and the Good Life,” teaches students what the science of psychology says about how to make wiser choices and live a life that’s happier and more fulfilling. The class is Yale’s most popular course in over 300 years and has been adapted into a free Coursera program that has been taken by over 3.9 million people to date.

Dr. Santos has been featured in numerous news outlets including the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, CBS This Morning, NPR, GQ Magazine, Slate, CNN and O, The Oprah Magazine. Dr. Santos is a winner of numerous awards both for her science and teaching from institutions such as Yale and the American Psychological Association. She has been featured as one of Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10” young minds and was named TIME's “Leading Campus Celebrity.”