Why Are We So Bad at Being Happy? The Psychology of Happiness

Nearly every human being strives to be happy in some form. Yet despite how universal and powerful that goal is, most of us are surprisingly bad at actually pursuing it, often falling well short of our own happiness goals.

Dr. Iris Mauss, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, studies why this gap exists and what the science actually says about closing it. In this talk, she'll unpack the psychological research on why the pursuit of happiness so often backfires, from setting the wrong goals to chasing happiness in ways that push it further away.

Iris will also take on a bolder question: should we give up on the pursuit of happiness altogether? Her answer, grounded in years of research, lands somewhere more hopeful. There are real pitfalls, but greater happiness is genuinely possible if we go about it differently.