Psychologists’ Search for the Good Life

Abstract

Psychologists working in three settings (academia, university counseling centers, and community mental health) completed three measures of the “good life” as part of a study examining psychologists’ personal and professional values and beliefs. Psychologists generally endorsed accepting something from allways of life, appreciating and preserving the best of humanity, showing sympathetic concern for others, and enjoying the easily obtainable pleasures as preferred ways to live. They also supported feeling or expressing love, having or being part of a family, having good physical and/or mental health, and having significant friendships as the most desired characteristics of life. Psychologists were generally divided into moral absolutists and moral situationists with regard to their views about the moral dimensions of the good life.