Engineering Happiness

Manel Baucells and Rakesh Sarin have been conducting ground-breaking research on happiness for more than a decade, and in this book they distill their provocative findings into a lively, accessible guide for a wide audience of readers. Integrating their own research with the latest thinking in the behavioral and social sciences—including management science, psychology, and economics—they offer a new approach to the puzzle of happiness. Woven throughout with wisdom from the world’s religions and literatures, Engineering Happiness has something to offer everyone—regardless of background, profession, or aspiration—who wants to better understand, control, and attain a more joyful life.

• Shows how a few major principles can explain how happiness works and why it is so elusive

• Demonstrates how the essence of attaining happiness is choice

• Explores how to avoid happiness traps

• Tells how to recognize happiness triggers in everyday life

Manel Baucells is Professor of Business and Economics at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Rakesh Sarin is Paine Professor of Management at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Preface: Engineers on Happiness
Acknowledgments

Part I—Overview
Introduction: The Science of Happiness
1. Measuring Happiness
2. Defining Happiness

Part II—Laws of Happiness
3. The First Law of Happiness: Relative Comparison
4. The Second Law of Happiness: Motion of Expectation
5. The Third Law of Happiness: Aversion to Loss
6. The Fourth Law of Happiness: Diminishing Sensitivity
7. The Fifth Law of Happiness: Satiation
8. The Sixth Law of Happiness: Presentism

Part III—Engineering a Happier Life
9. The Treasure of Happiness: Basic Goods
10. Cumulative Comparison
11. Reframing
12. Living within the Laws of Happiness
13. Building a Happier Life

Notes
Index

An annex to this volume, “The Mathematics of Happiness,” is available online at www.ucpress.edu.