Psychology and the Good Life — The Most Popular Course in Yale History
Undergraduate students at Yale College are, by many measures, destined for success. Equipped with their prestigious bachelor’s degrees, they will set out into a receptive job market and embark, in all likelihood, on lucrative careers in positions of power. But will it make them happy?
Yale has always been considered a liberal arts educational institution, so we might expect them to teach students philosophical theories and encourage them to examine their lives and ponder the big questions. What is a good life? What really makes people happy and fulfilled? In recent years, education has become increasingly careerist and turned away from such lofty contemplation, and Yale is as much a part of that trend as the next college.
One maverick professor bucked the trend and the enthusiasm for her act of rebellion was immense. Read on to find out how what was once a “joyous gratitude for the sense of the sublime” became a “Hack Yo Self Project” as we take a look at Yale’s Psych 157, Psychology and the Good Life created by Dr. Laurie Santos.
Yale Students Are More Stressed Than Ever
For some context, consider that over half of undergraduate students at Yale have sought mental health counselling. Nationwide, 84% of undergraduates report feeling overwhelmed by the pressures of school and 25% of students faced bouts of depression that make it hard to function.
Dr. Santos believes Yale students have been working hard since middle school, putting a low priority on happiness and focusing on doing whatever it takes to get into the competitive institution. Students are striving desperately from an early age to get an edge in the rat race. Starting in middle school to work towards that top-ranked college, then focus on getting the best possible test scores or landing the perfect internship in order to get an amazing first job or get admitted to the best graduate school. They are under constant pressure to succeed. But what will “succeeding” do for them?
The Most Popular Course In The History Of Yale
Dr. Santos could see Yale students clearly had a problem. The emphasis on education had shifted from creating well rounded, philosophical “gentlemen” to arming students for brutal combat in competitive workplaces, and in the process, students had lost their joie de vivre, and had, indeed, become miserable. The solution? A return to considering the big questions, now armed with new knowledge from recent scientific efforts to find clues to the answers.
Dr. Santos designed a class entitled Psychology and the Good Life. Yale administrators approved it enthusiastically, certain it would be very popular with students, who had already been clamoring for a course on “positive psychology.” Within three days of the class opening for enrollment, about 300 people had signed up. Three days later, the number had more than doubled, and less a than week after the class was posted, 1,200 students, one quarter of Yale undergraduates had signed up, a record in the 316 year history of the renowned university.
Positive Psychology — A Science Of The Good Life
While psychology has often focused on diagnosing and explaining dysfunction and psychological problems, a new field called ‘positive psychology’ is emerging. Back in 2001, Michael Argyle offered this pithy definition: “the scientific study of what makes life most worth living.” Bonnie Bernard further expanded on this definition: “the scientific study of positive human functioning and flourishing on multiple levels that include the biological, personal, relational, institutional, cultural, and global dimensions of life.” In the past decade, according to Santos, research has shown that “our intuitions about what will make us happy, like winning the lottery and getting a good grade — are totally wrong.” Dr. Santos’ course starts with studying positive psychology, and then takes an additional step.
A Practical Approach — The Applied Science Of Happiness
Dr. Santos was not the first Ivy leaguer to offer a course focused on positive psychology. Harvard offered a course in 2006 that was titled, simply, Positive Psychology that attracted 900 students. But Dr. Santos’ course is different. In addition to presenting the ideas, Dr. Santos requires students put them into practice. What good, after all, is knowing what the good life is without the behavioral change to reach manifest your knowledge?
Tough Homework
Grades probably won’t make you happy, so Santos encourages students to take the class on a pass/fail basis. Some students see the class as being quite easy, but Santos points out if you really understand the class, it’s a bit harder. Sure, you can pass the class with little effort, and learn some interesting things about happiness. But to truly benefit from those things, you have to do some work.
As with most classes, there are quizzes and a midterm, but the main emphasis is on the final assessment. Students must conduct a “Hack Yo’ Self Project” — as Santos calls it, couching it in terms of the youth of today. Stylistically, it is a far cry from Yale’s old goal of instilling a “joyous gratitude for the sense of the sublime,” but in urging students to live an examined life, Yale is returning to its aristocratic roots, bringing back the goal of helping young people mature into complete adults instead of just propelling them to Wall Street by the most expedient path possible.
Working towards the final project, students distill the insight from recent scientific investigations of happiness into direction action items. They strive to identify good and bad habits, discarding bad habits of thought and action and forming new ones. To achieve a real change, Santos believes it is very important for students to remain focused on their project and hold themselves accountable every single day. That’s why the course is hard. It offers the promise of happiness, but you must reach for it.
Knowing what is truly important, what can truly make us happy and fulfilled, is a wonderful thing. But only by acting on this can we truly manifest our best selves and truly shine in this life.
Take The Course For Free
Are you disappointed we did not give away any concrete tips for happiness? Sadly, the Yale course’s immense popularity created serious logistical and staffing challenges made it rather ironically unpopular with other faculty members teaching to empty classrooms, so it won’t be offered again at Yale. But there is good news: you can take a version of the course for free on Coursera, and save the price of tuition at Yale!
Explore The Good Life With Rascal
Please join us as we continue on our metaphorical voyage of discovery through the amazing archipelago of thoughts and theories on The Good Life. You can follow our articles here on Medium if you have an account, or simply bookmark our Medium page or follow us on Facebook.
For insight into the struggle between happiness and perfection, check out our article on satisficers vs maximizers and Bruce Lee’s theory of the top dog and the underdog. We will tell you how you can add years to your life in our article on the benefits of yoga. We also consider some more abstract topics, like John Maynard Keynes thoughts on the art of life, or non-being and its place at the root of luxury, or the conceptual art color the blackest black, Vantablack. Enjoy!
