Vivien Giannopoulos is a Psychology Honours student from Monash University in Melbourne. She is currently researching wellbeing. And would love your assistance. Find out more about participating in her research.

What is your research about?

I’m looking into peoples well-being. I’m interested in looking at interventions which are thought to increase people’s levels of happiness and positive emotion.

Why are you researching happiness?

This research is important because it will assist health professionals to gain a better understanding of how interventions can help people become happier.

It will also help to determine whether an individuals happiness orientation, that is, whether they seek happiness primarily through pleasure, engagement or meaning, influences how effective the intervention is at making people happier.

In today’s world where more and more people are sufferring from stress, depression, and anxiety what could be more important that figuring out what helps make people happier?

What is happiness orientation about?

There are thought to be three main ways to experience happiness.  The first is through pleasure.  The main goal here is to maximise pleasure and minimize pain. The pusuit of pleasure in the modern Western world is widely endorsed as a way to achieve satisfaction, i.e. ‘dont worry-be happy’

The second way is happiness through meaning.  That is about being true to one’s inner self, identifying one’s virtues, cultivating them and living in accordance with them.

The emphasis here is that people develop what is best within themselves and then use these skills and talents in the service of greater goods including in particular the welfare of other people or humankind at large, i.e. ‘be all that you can be and make a difference’

The third way is happiness through engagement.  This orientation has been influenced by the concept of ‘flow’: the psychological state that accompanies highly engaging activities. Time passes quickly, attention is focused on the activity, the sense of self is lost and the aftermath of the flow is invigorating. Flow is nonemotional and nonconscious.

What makes you happy?

Family and friends

Why should people get involved in your research?

As I mentioned above this type of research could help benefit many people and getting involved could also give you an idea of what you can do personally to improve your own levels of happiness.

Find out more about Vivien’s wellbeing research and how you can participate.

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