Sonja Lyubomirsky

Sonja Lyubomirsky is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside. Originally from Russia, she received her A.B., summa cum laude, from Harvard University (1989) and her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Stanford University (1994). Lyubomirsky currently teaches courses in social psychology and positive psychology and serves as graduate advisor. Her teaching and mentoring of students have been recognized with the Faculty of the Year and Faculty Mentor of the Year Awards.

In 2002, Lyubomirsky's research was recognized with a Templeton Positive Psychology Prize. Currently, she is an associate editor of the Journal of Positive Psychology and (with co-principal investogator Ken Sheldon) holds a 5-year million-dollar grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct research on the possibility of permanently increasing happiness. Her research has been written up in dozens of magazines and newspapers and she has appeared in several TV shows, radio shows, and feature documentaries in North America and Europe.

In her work, Lyubomirsky has focused on developing a science of human happiness. To this end, her research addresses three critical questions: 1) What makes people happy?; 2) Is happiness a good thing?; and 3) How can we make people happier still? For example, to answer the first question, she has developed a construal theory of happiness, which posits that to understand why some people are happier than others, we must understand the thoughts, goals, and behaviors that serve to maintain people's chronic happiness.

Lyubomirsky's current focus is on exploring different psychological processes that play a role in sustaining or increasing happiness -- for example, counting one's blessings, practicing altruism, and avoiding obsessively dwelling about oneself and making excessive social comparisons. She is currently testing the potential of such happiness-sustaining activities to durably increase a person's happiness level higher than his or her 'set point.'