Human Happiness and the Pursuit of Maximization

1. Happiness and Maximization: An Introduction
Hilke Brockmann, Jan Delhey

2. Is More Always Better? The American Experiment
Peter C. Whybrow

3. More Nonsense and Less Happiness: The Uninteded Effects of Artificial Competitions
Mathias Binswanger

4. Happiness by Maximization?
Kurt Bayertz

5. Maximization and the Good
Valerie Tiberius

6. How Wise is Mother Nature? Maximization, Optimization and Short-Sighted Resource Use in Biological Evolution
Hanna Kokko

7. Towards a Neuroscience of Well-Being: Implications of Insights from Pleasure Research
Kent C. Berridge, Morten L. Kringelbach

8. From Treating Mental Dysfunction to Neuroenhancement
Michael Koch

9. Do Aspirations and Adaptation Impede the Maximization of Happiness?
Ulrich Schimmack, Hyunji Kim

10. My Car is Bigger than Yours: Consumption, Status Competition, and Happiness in Times of Affluence
Hilke Brockmann, Song Yan

11. Some Lessons from Happiness Economics for Environmental Sustainability
Heinz Welsch

12. Public Policy and Human Happiness: The Welfare State and the Market as Agents of Well-Being
Robert Davidson, Alexander C. Pacek, Benjamin Radcliff

13. Should the State Care for the Happiness of its Citizens?
Aloys Prinz

14. A “Happiness Test” for the New Measures of National Well-Being: How Much Better than GDP are They?
Jan Delhey, Christian Kroll

Keywords: Social Sciences, Quality of Life Research, Positive Psychology, Behavioural Sciences, Financial Economics