In this occasional series, we ask instructors to discuss how they engage students in the great questions of our time.
Rachelle Cohen
Senior Lecturer
Department of Psychology
Intro to Positive Psychology
Q. How did you get interested in teaching this subject?
A. I became interesting in this topic as a former pessimist. Through psychology, I have been able to become a more optimistic person, and I feel like my life is happier and fuller as a result of this. I want to share that with my students and help them lead happy and productive lives.
Q. What are some goals you set for students in this class?
A. Some of the goals are to understand that our brains are just not good at recognizing what makes us happy over the long haul. We need scientific inquiry to help us understand how to have high well-being over our lives, rather than rely on what society tells us will make us happy.
Other goals include being aware of one’s strengths and having an idea of how one might go about using them in our everyday lives and learning about many of the topics of positive psychology related to mental and physical health, productivity, and better relationships.
Q. Which aspects of your class do you think your students find most interesting?
A. Students love to discuss the many different methods scientists have implemented in order to increase well-being. For instance, we discuss the power of gratitude, acts of kindness and mindfulness, just to name a few topics. During in-person classes, we do a lot of actual practice of some of these techniques in class to see what they are like.
Q. What can students expect to get out of this class?
A. Students can expect to be aware of the role of science in studying positive emotion and strengths. They can expect to engage in a “mini experiment” of introducing an empirically supported method of increasing well-being into their lives and seeing what that is like.
Q. What type of projects and assignments are your students asked to complete?
A. Typical assignments include taking empirically designed quizzes to gain insight and relating them to a person’s well-being. For instance, the students take a strengths inventory and discuss it in depth. They also implement a behavior change and chart it over time. We also listen to expert talks so the students understand the breadth of topics related to positive psychology.
—Interview by Victoria Pitter. Photo by Melanie Fan.