Dr Katya Oparina

This course is available on the MSc in Behavioural Science. This course is not available as an outside option.

This course, or its standard assessment equivalent (PB421), is compulsory for students on the wellbeing stream of MSc Behavioural Science. 

This course aims to introduce students to the main concepts and tools of the growing science of happiness, with a focus on applicability across all sectors (government, business, and NGOs). To achieve this aim, the course is based on ten lectures covering: 1) what is happiness?; 2) evaluations of happiness; 3) experiences of happiness; 4) attention and adaptation; 5) anticipation and mistakes; 6) relative comparisons; 7) happiness across individuals and societies; 8) happiness by design; 9) a dark side to happiness?; 10) the frontier of happiness research.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the WT.

Students will be paired with a dissertation supervisor for one-to-one and group meetings in WT/ST.

Books

Dolan, P. (2014). Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life. London: Penguin.

Dolan, P. (2019). Happy Ever After: Escaping the Myth of the Perfect Life. London: Allen Lane.

Layard, R. (2005). Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. London: Penguin.

Journal articles

Adler, M. D., Dolan, P., & Kavetsos, G. (2017). Would you choose to be happy? Tradeoffs between happiness and the other dimensions of life in a large population survey. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 139, 60-73.

Bryson, A., & MacKerron, G. (2015). Are You Happy While You Work? Economic Journal, 127(599), 106-125.

Card, D., Mas, A., Moretti, E., & Saez, E. (2012). Inequality at Work: The Effect of Peer Salaries on Job Satisfaction. American Economic Review, 102(6), 2981-3003.

Dolan, P., Peasgood, T., & White, M. (2008). Do we really know what makes us happy? A review of the economic literature on the factors associated with subjective well-being. Journal of Economic Psychology, 29(1), 94-122.

Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A. (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(38), 16489-16493.

Kahneman, D., Krueger, A. B., Schkade, D. A., Schwarz, N., & Stone, A. A. (2004). A Survey Method for Characterizing Daily Life Experience: The Day Reconstruction Method. Science, 306(5702), 1776-1780.

Killingsworth, M. A. (2021). Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(4), e2016976118.

White, M. P., & Dolan, P. (2009). Accounting for the Richness of Daily Activities. Psychological Science, 20(8), 1000-1008.

Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2003). Affective forecasting. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 35, 345-411.

Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2008). Explaining Away: A Model of Affective Adaptation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(5), 370-386.

Dissertation (100%, 10000 words) in the post-spring term.

You are required to write a 10,000 word dissertation (replacing the 3000 word summative assesment on PB421). You are expected to attend the course teaching on the half-unit that you choose to write your dissertation on.