Professor Ed Diener
Professor of Psychology,
University of Utah & University of Virginia
Senior Scientist, Gallup Organisation
Psychological Well-Being for Public Policy
26 October 2016, 5.00pm - 6.30pm
In recent years, there has been a growing awareness that although economic indicators of progress are important, they are not sufficient by themselves to guide policy and maximise the quality of life in societies. Measures of psychological well-being, including “happiness,” or how people feel about and appraise their lives, are gaining widespread recognition as a way of supplementing economic indicators in policy deliberations. The well-being measures point to factors beyond GDP that influence the well-being in societies.
In this talk the validity of the measures of well-being will be briefly discussed, but a major focus will be on why we need societal measures of well-being. Although personality has an effect on people’s well-being, a very large influence comes from the societies and communities in which people reside.
A second focus will be on the policies that thus far have been found to increase well-being, and the progress nations have made in adopting these measures. As societies grow in wealth, there is likely to be a growing concern for quality of life beyond money alone, and the well-being measures can help us create societies in which the well-being of citizens is high.
Join us as Professor Ed Diener, also known as “Dr Happiness”, shares his insights on the need for national accounts of well-being and the policies which can positively impact societies in these areas.
About The Speaker
Professor Ed Diener is Alumni Distinguished Professor of Psychology (Emeritus) at the University of Illinois, where he has been a faculty member since 1974. He is currently a professor of psychology at the University of Utah and the University of Virginia.
Prof Diener joined Gallup Organisation as a Senior Scientist in 1999 and is an advisor on research in psychological well-being. His current research focuses on the theories and measurement of well-being; temperament and personality influences on well-being; income and well-being; cultural influences on well-being; and how employee well-being enhances organisational performance.
Prof Diener has received several prestigious scholarly awards. He received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association and the William James Fellow Award for outstanding contributions to scientific psychology from the Association of Psychological Science. He also was awarded the Distinguished Quality-of-Life Researcher Award from the International Society of Quality of Life Studies. Studies.
Prof Diener’s work has appeared in more than 330 publications; about 250 of these focus on the psychology of well-being. Prof Diener has co-edited three books on subjective well-being: Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology, Advances in Quality of Life Theory and Research, and Culture and Subjective Well-Being. He also co-edited the Handbook of Multimethod Measurement in Psychology. Prof Diener wrote a popular book on Happiness with his son, Robert Biswas-Diener and is the co-author of Well-Being for Public Policy.
Prof Diener is past president of three scientific societies: the International Society for Quality of Life Studies, the International Positive Psychology Association, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He is also a fellow of five professional psychological associations and societies.
Prof Diener earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from California State University, Fresno and his doctorate in personality psychology from the University of Washington. Prof Diener has also received several teaching awards.