Gian Vittorio Caprara is Professor Emeritus at Sapienza University of Rome where he served as chair of the Department of Psychology and dean of the Psychology Faculty. He has been president of the European Association of Personality and is a member of the Academia Europaea. He is author and coauthor of over 500 scientific publications, including several volumes, among which: Personality: Determinants, Dynamics and Potentials (with D. Cervone, 2000); Personalizing Politics and Realizing Democracy (with M. Vecchione, 2017). His research has addressed several topics across personality psychology, social psychology and political psychology.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi received his PhD in psychology from the University of Chicago, where he taught for 30 years and served as chair of the Department of Psychology. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Claremont Graduate University, where he founded and codirected the Quality of Life Research Center (QLRC). He is the author of Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play (1975), Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990), and Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (1996). A wide range of his work was reprinted in the 2014 three‐volume set, The Collected Works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Ed Diener is a Professor at the University of Utah and the University of Virginia, a distinguished emeritus professor at the University of Illinois, and senior scientist for the Gallup Organization. He is one of the most eminent research psychologists in the world. With over 400 publications and a citation count over 230,000, he is one of the most highly cited scientists in the world. He has been the president of three scientific societies and the editor of three scientific journals, including being a cofounder of the Journal of Happiness Studies. He was the founding president of the International Positive Psychology Association. He has received major awards in psychology including the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Awards from the American Psychological Association.
Scott I. Donaldson is a postdoctoral scholar in evaluation, statistics, and measurement at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, Moores Cancer Center. Scott received his PhD in psychology with a concentration in evaluation and applied research methods and a co‐concentration in positive organizational psychology from Claremont Graduate University. He received his BA in psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his MS in organizational psychology from the University of Southern California. His research focuses on the design and evaluation of behavioral health interventions at work.
Stewart I. Donaldson is Dstinguished University Professor and executive director of the Claremont Evaluation Center at Claremont Graduate University. He is a cofounder of the first PhD and research‐focused master’s programs in positive psychology at Claremont Graduate University. He currently teaches, mentors, and employs numerous students specializing in positive organizational psychology, positive health and sports psychology, and evaluation science. He serves on the Council of Advisors for the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) and was chair of IPPA’s World Congress of Positive Psychology in Los Angeles (2013). He has published numerous articles, chapters, and books on the science of positive psychology, including his latest book Positive Psychological Science: Improving Everyday Life, Well‐Being, Work, Education, and Societies Across the Globe (2020).
Sandro Formica teaches Managing Self, Others and Positive Organizations in Hospitality at Florida International University and The Economics of Happiness in selected European universities. His book, “Personal Empowerment: Empower the Leader within You,” is highly experiential and contains over 200 self‐awareness practices and exercises. He is the academic director of the Chief Happiness Officer in the Hospitality and Services Industries certificate program, granted by WOHASU (World Happiness Summit) and Florida International University. As an academic, he published in international peer‐reviewed journals on human motivational factors and behavioral decision‐making, executive education needs, United States versus Europe training systems, and predictability of human preferences in future global business.
Burkhard Gniewosz received his diploma in psychology from the University of Jena, Germany, in 2002. He is currently Professor of Quantitative Research Methods in educational science at the Paris‐Lodron‐University in Salzburg, Austria. His major field of research concerns socialization processes during adolescence. He mostly focuses on contextual (family and school) influences on adolescents’ political and academic development. In recent years, his research interest centered on students’ motivation within a developmental context.
Saida Heshmati is an Assistant Professor of psychology at Claremont Graduate University. She is a positive developmental psychologist interested in how optimal development unfolds over time in diverse samples, especially in at‐risk adults. Using her expertise in positive relationships and love, human development, and state‐of‐the‐art analytical methods, she examines authentic or embedded assessments of large datasets related to individual and group characteristics that influence everyday well‐being and positive development. Her work has brought together a suite of measurement tools such as experience sampling methods, observational analysis, cognitive psychometric modeling, and wearable physiology monitors in the service of understanding how individuals’ sense of well‐being – and love as one component of well‐being – unfolds moment‐to‐moment in their everyday lives.
Jessica Kansky is a sixth‐year graduate student in clinical psychology at the University of Virginia and graduated summa cum laude with a BA in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She will be completing her doctoral internship at the Charleston Consortium this year. Her research focuses on psychosocial predictors and outcomes of romantic experiences from adolescence through adulthood. Her interest is in the role of romantic relationships in optimal interpersonal and individual development and well‐being and she has recently published several reviews of romantic development across the lifespan. She has received numerous accolades for her teaching, receiving the University’s only Distinguished Teaching Award for Social Sciences in 2019 and the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology Outstanding Student Teacher Award in 2020.
Shari Young Kuchenbecker is Associate Director and cofounder of the Western Positive Psychology Association (WPPA), Claremont, California. Her BA is from Stanford and PhD is from UCLA. She chose to tenure‐retire at the age of 32 to raise three kind efficacious children – one DVM and two PhDs. She continues to write, teach/do research at SoCal universities, presenting at conferences with colleagues and students, many now PhDs, EdDs, MAs, and parents. Her Stanford role model and lifelong mentor was Dorothea Ross. Albert Bandura, her academic grandfather, and she began regular “Salons” across the last two decades. Collaborating with Phil Zimbardo, Al’s and Phil’s positive educational role models, theories, research legacies, and their social activism inspired the chapter included here.
Marija Pejičić is a PhD student and teaching assistant in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, at the University of Niš. Her teaching and research areas focus mainly in the area of interpersonal relations, specifically, communication and emotional experience.
Vesna Petrović is a Professor of Psychology at the Union University of Belgrade, where she has served as head of the master’s program in psychotherapy. She is an integrative psychotherapist, founder and director of the Serbian Association for Integrative Psychotherapy, and national representative of Serbia in the European Association for Psychotherapy. Her research has addressed issues in mental health, positive psychology, trauma psychology, integrative psychotherapy, and systemic family psychotherapy.
Wendy‐Ann Smith is a registered psychologist in her native country Australia and her current home France. She is the co‐editor of Positive Psychology Coaching in the Workplace (in press) and author in the domains of positive and coaching psychology, specifically in the domains of positive leadership, strengths and emotions coaching, and coaching for high quality relationships. She is a reviewer for the European Journal of