Dont Worry, Be Happy

Today launches a new web portal called happier.com, that purports to be a personal trainer for your happiness. I have been beta-testing the site for some time (full disclosure : I got a free 30 day account to beta test it) and though I haven't really tested it exhaustively , the site looks promising. you can choose what goals you set for yourself (like finding and using your signature strengths in daily life) and there are exercises, journals, tests and questionnaire to keep track of your progress. I had taken the VIA signature strength test earlier too( its freely available elsewhere too) and the results were more or less the same. Seems the strengths do not change much. My top strength is courage and valor and I never knew how to usefully apply that in daily life. At hapier.com there are suggestions on how to use every strength in daily life. what I didn't like was the speed of videos and the length of videos (they are very short length videos).

Below the fold is press information about the happier.com release and more information can be gleaned from here:

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Bozo Sapiens: a book review

Bozo Sapiens :why to err is human, is a book that tries to document the frailties of our decision making process and the underlying psychological mechanisms behind them.

Written with a lay audience in mind,it is written in an easy to read manner and is fun to read. As per the site, it is in the tradition of books like Blink and Stumbling on happiness and plans to cater to the same market segment of people who are interested in psychology and how it affects day-to-day lives. while most of the psychology studies were already familiar to me, they would be novel for a lay audience and would definitely interest and entertain and also inform and guide. I,myself, cam across a few new and worthwhile studies and feel enriched having been made aware of them. As is prone to writing for a popular audience, the Kaplans often gloss over or do not highlight all the subtleties involved, but it must go to their credit that they are able to explain the studies lucidly and clearly,without significantly diluting on the scientese involved. the only peeve I have is that the sections and studies covered in them somehow felt unconnected and not flowing in a smooth manner from one to the other.

The organization of the chapters is decent- one chapter focusing on perceptual errors, another on action-based errors while yet another on errors based on group mentality. The section on perception seemed to me better and the section on groups perhaps the weakest. Despite its title it is not a bleak view of humanity and knowing our heuristics, biases and design features/bugs will only help us act better. It is an easy read and perhaps would be savored by those who do have a general interest in psychology; for the experts there are some nuggets spread here-and-there and that may make it worthwhile skimming through the book.

Disclaimer: I received a free e-copy of the book for review.

PS: would my readers like to see more book reviews featured on the mouse trap ? some books that I would love to review and highlight include books by Nettle : happiness, personality; gazzaniga: mind's past riddley: genome, nature via nurture etc etc. Do let me kno wvia commnets/ skribit suggestions using left sidebar.

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