Redefining success in America : a new theory of happiness and human development / Michael B. Kaufman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kaufman, Michael, 1964- author.

Series:

Chicago scholarship online.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Harvard University--Alumni and alumnae--Longitudinal studies.

Harvard University.

Success--United States--Longitudinal studies.

Success.

Well-being--United States--Longitudinal studies.

Well-being.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2018.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Work hard in school, graduate from a top college, establish a high-paying professional career, enjoy the long-lasting reward of happiness. This is the American Dream-and yet basic questions at the heart of this competitive journey remain unanswered. Does competitive success, even rarified entry into the Ivy League and the top one percent of earners in America, deliver on its promise? Does realizing the American Dream deliver a good life? In Redefining Success in America, psychologist and human development scholar Michael Kaufman develops a fundamentally new understanding of how elite undergraduate educations and careers play out in lives, and of what shapes happiness among the prizewinners in America. In so doing, he exposes the myth at the heart of the American Dream. Returning to the legendary Harvard Student Study of undergraduates from the 1960s and interviewing participants almost fifty years later, Kaufman shows that formative experiences in family, school, and community largely shape a future adult's worldview and well-being by late adolescence, and that fundamental change in adulthood, when it occurs, is shaped by adult family experiences, not by ever-greater competitive success. Published research on general samples shows that these patterns, and the book's findings generally, are broadly applicable to demographically varied populations in the United States. Leveraging biography-length clinical interviews and quantitative evidence unmatched even by earlier landmark studies of human development, Redefining Success in America redefines the conversation about the nature and origins of happiness, and about how adults develop. This longitudinal study pioneers a new paradigm in happiness research, developmental science, and personality psychology that will appeal to scholars and students in the social sciences, psychotherapy professionals, and serious readers navigating the competitive journey.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1. The Study of Success and Happiness

Part 1. Patterns in Lives

Chapter 2. Brightness and Darkness

Chapter 3. The Varieties of Experience

Part 2. Observations and Longitudinal Models

Chapter 4. The Qualitative Assessment of Well- Being: An Innovation in Happiness Research

Chapter 5. The Stability Model

Chapter 6. Stability Tested Quantitatively

Chapter 7. The Change Model

Chapter 8. Beyond Success: The Relationship between Career and Happiness

Part 3. Comparison and Summary

Chapter 9. A Conventional Measure of Happiness: A Reexamination

Chapter 10. A Paradigm for Understanding Adult Life

Chapter 11. The Forces Shaping Our Well- Being

Acknowledgments

Appendix 1: Primary Psychobiographical Sketches

Appendix 2: Sample Selection and Participation

Appendix 3: Roster of Interviews

Appendix 4: Study's Methods of Analysis

Appendix 5: Variables and Measures

Appendix 6: Aspects of Remembered Early Life Appearing in Interviews

Appendix 7: The Creation of Remembered Early Life Affect Scale

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

Also issued in print: 2019.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Feb 2020)

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (EBook Central, viewed July 17, 2025).

ISBN:

9780226550299

022655029X

OCLC:

1090499836