If you were searching for the path to lasting happiness, Slough probably wouldn’t be the place you’d start. But for Richard Stevens, a leading psychologist, the Berkshire town proved the ideal location for a pioneering experiment: take all the theory and speculation about what makes human beings happy and test it over ten weeks on people in an ordinary British town. He believes he now knows what works...From Shrinkette, thanks. I assume this study will eventually be published somewhere.
And at the end of the experiment, did Stevens’s post-hippy message of connection, love, transcendence, meaningful labour and suspicion of materialism work? “We designed a complex assessment survey and the results showed a significant overall effect on the volunteers’ reported levels of happiness in areas such as work and relationships,” he reports. “We produced more change than we expected. Generally, people misjudge what makes them happy, particularly in relation to materialism...”
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