This area of research has focused on determining the relations among wealth, experiential consumption, and subjective well-being.
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Concerning consumption, we have determined that people are happier from buying life experiences rather than tangible material goods because experiences foster people's feelings of relatedness (among many other mediators).
Concerning consumers, experientialists report increased well-being as well as greater psychological need satisfaction compared to materialists.
This area of research has focused on exploring the important predictors of subjective well-being, such as personality.
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Our research also explores Positive Activity Interventions with the aim of understanding how to prolong hedonic adaptation and create lasting happiness.
We are also beginning to explore and expand the measurement of happiness through the use of peer-reports, implicit associations, sentiment analysis (including on Facebook and Twitter), and facial coding.