3 Projects: An Overview of Some of My Current Projects

Abstract

The overarching objective of this presentation is to give the audience an overview of three on-going projects for which I am seeking collaborators. The secondary objective is to give the audience a better idea of my research interests, which center on subjective well-being (or happiness). In the first project, I discuss how, although people believe that getting positive feedback from others (e.g., a boss) will motivate them just as strongly to work hard as would getting negative feedback, people believe that giving negative (vs. positive) feedback to others would motivate the others more strongly. In the second project, I focus on a prevalent, if somewhat perplexing phenomenon: why people are attracted to "gossip" magazines (like US Weekly or People). I propose some potential explanations and discuss how one might go about testing them. In the final project, I look to assess the relationship between fame and happiness. That is, I seek to find out if fame has any impact on happiness and whether any factors moderate this relationship.