Redefining Success in America: A New Theory of Happiness and Human Development
Autor Michael Kaufmanen Limba Engleză Paperback – 24 iun 2019
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.
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.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780226550152
ISBN-10: 022655015X
Pagini: 304
Ilustrații: 18 line drawings, 32 tables
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.39 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press
ISBN-10: 022655015X
Pagini: 304
Ilustrații: 18 line drawings, 32 tables
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.39 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press
Notă biografică
Michael Kaufman is an interdisciplinary psychologist who has been director of the Harvard Student Study for the past fifteen years at the University of Chicago in the Department of Comparative Human Development and the Center on Aging. Currently a Fulbright Scholar in Tanzania carrying out cross-cultural research in human development, he is visiting professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Tumaini University Makumira as well as a senior research scientist at the Kilimanjaro Clinical Research Institute.
Cuprins
Preface
1 The Study of Success and HappinessPart 1 Patterns in Lives
2 Brightness and Darkness
3 The Varieties of Experience
Part 2 Observations and Longitudinal Models
4 The Qualitative Assessment of Well-Being: An Innovation in Happiness Research
5 The Stability Model
6 Stability Tested Quantitatively
7 The Change Model
8 Beyond Success: The Relationship between Career and Happiness
Part 3 Comparison and Summary
9 A Conventional Measure of Happiness: A Reexamination
10 A Paradigm for Understanding Adult Life
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
Recenzii
“Redefining Success in America: A New Theory of Happiness and Human Development sets out to explore one of the enduring beliefs in developed societies: that an elite education and career success lead to a happy life. The book’s conclusion, which may surprise some readers, is that finding love, setting up a home, and raising children are more important for happiness than educational attainment and professional achievements. . . . The author marshals a range of data from different interviewees to develop his key argument. . . . I enjoyed reading this book, and it will aid researchers wishing to develop their own qualitative projects into happiness and well-being.”
“Is the prospect of economic security enough to guarantee a happy life? In Redefining Success in America, Kaufman challenges this mythical belief of a happily-ever-after. . . . Critiquing the use of the cross-sectional, self-report survey method commonly used in happiness research, Kaufman uses in-depth, longitudinal interview data to explore the meaning of ‘happiness’ and to develop a paradigm that is ‘holistic, specific, and context-sensitive.’ . . . Redefining Success in America will be most intriguing and thought-provoking to readers interested in understanding the role that the sensemaking of subjective experiences plays in people’s happiness.”
"Kaufman’s book is timely, given the current nationwide college cheating scandal, and many American parents’ apparent obsession with elite colleges. Is it true that graduating from a highly selective, name-brand college guarantees a happy and successful life? Kaufman explores this question using data from a relatively small sample of (presumably all white) men who attended Harvard in the early 1960s, delving into their college life experiences via archival interview transcripts, then tracking down and interviewing those same men decades later when they were nearly sixty years old. Creating a qualitatively rich measure of happiness—the 'Scale of Intrapsychic Brightness and Darkness' (bright: secure, invested in others, possessing a sense of play and spirituality, hopeful; dark: on guard and self-protective, secluded, struggling, pessimistic)—Kaufman explores long-term stability and change in happiness and predictors of happiness, including early family experiences, career success, and important adult relationships. Illustrated with detailed case examples and supplemented by more quantitative survey results from a larger group of Harvard men, results indicate four-year immersion in arguably the most elite of undergraduate colleges is, in fact, no guarantee of 'success in America.' . . . Highly recommended."
"The fifty-fifth reunion . . . heard a presentation on a new book, Redefining Success in America, by Michael B. Kaufman, MBA ’94, now a psychologist. He exhumed records from the legendary Harvard Student Study, based on members of the classes of 1960 and 1961—including Stanley King’s in-depth interviews with 49 young men—and, during the past fifteen years, followed up with many of them. His resulting theory of happiness and human development looks beyond the pursuit of status and wealth to the factors that determine a fulfilling life: mutually beneficial relationships; awareness and pursuit of one’s own goals; and capacity to deal with serious setbacks. The class members’ lived experience perhaps suggested as much, but Kaufman’s talk was the first formal outreach by researchers to share the findings with the subjects who made it possible."
“A must-read for anyone who wants to deeply understand psychological well-being.”
“Extraordinary, almost unbelievable, that Kaufman has been able to track down and study in depth subjects who were first investigated decades ago. Using his rare, longitudinal data, he develops a sophisticated understanding of happiness and life satisfaction. He shows why it is that financial success is not as central as it is often thought to be. Our culture, he argues convincingly, has sold to the younger generation a false promise that attending a prestigious college and attaining wealth is ‘a ticket to the good life.’ Redefining Success in America does just what the title promises; it provides an original and creative answer to the question: ‘What provides fulfillment?’”
“A superb book, unique for its use of grounded theory in the study of life-span patterns and in its formulation of a new life-span theory of happiness. In these ways, Redefining Success in America makes fundamental contributions. The equal emphasis on stability and change is very rare and admirable in developmental science. . . . As a life-course sociologist, I enjoyed this book greatly.”