Photo courtesy of Yale University

The most popular course taught at Yale is called “Psychology and the Good Life”. The reason it is so popular is likely that its’ lessons “are widely applicable—they address fundamental features of the human mind that make it difficult to appreciate things that seem like they’d be great. ‘Our minds are filled with a ton of little glitches that make it hard to enjoy the great things that we have,’ as Laurie Santos, the psychology professor who teaches the course, puts it.”

At this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival “Santos presented the ‘shortest possible crash-course version of the class,’ covering two primary ‘glitches’ (and how to counteract them) in less than an hour. ‘You can’t just shut off the kinds of biases that I’m talking about,’ she said. ‘But we can understand them.’”

Article: The Yale Happiness Class, Distilled