Ashley “Kristen” Dupre, the prostitute at the center of the maelstrom surrounding Eliot Spitzer, is offered $1 million to star on a reality show. Should you care?

A number of small studies claim that art therapy reduces depression through helping people with mood disorders resolve emotional problems and release repressed feelings. But maybe that is not really why art making helps to alter mood. The answer may literally be in your hands.

Our human instincts, including all of the instinctive means by which we learn, came about in the context of a hunting-and-gathering way of life. And so it is natural that in this series on children's instinctive ways of educating themselves I should ask: How do hunter-gatherer children learn what they need to know to become effective adults within their culture?

Up until ten years ago, the prevailing thought was that our brains were basically the same potential the day we were born until the day we died. However, with the advance of brain scans and increased capability to measure neuron function down to a single cell, I have had to concede that not only can the brain get “smarter and better balanced,” but this process lasts a lifetime. And to put the new findings into greater relevance, the smarter you get, the happier you get.

These days when people come to my office, I'm not interested solely in rooting out their painful personal and familial issues. Building on their strengths, positives, and moral, ethical, and spiritual beliefs is much more helpful, I've found, in overcoming psychological and interpersonal problems.

We live in a society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This idea is commonplace in discussions of economic inequality. Recent research, from a variety of different disciplines, is showing how this idea also applies to the development of genius in subtle but shocking ways.

Have you ever stopped to think about how much children learn in their first few years of life, before they start school, before anyone tries in any systematic way to teach them anything? Next time you are in viewing range of a child under the age of about five years old, sit back and watch for awhile. You're in for a treat.

We like to see people beat the odds.  But how do you choose which dreams to chase?  When is chasing the "impossible dream" foolhardy vs. visionary?  

I had a rather interesting experience this week appearing on the CNBC show, The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch. The theme was that being happy will bring you cash.

After watching the longest Major League All-star game in history, the feeling I was left with was sorrow for the plight of Alex Rodriguez, the MVP third baseman for the New York Yankees, who happens to be the highest paid man in baseball.

As adults we do have certain responsibilities toward our children and the world’s children. It is our responsibility to create safe, health-promoting, respectful environments in which children can develop. It is our responsibility to be sure that children have proper foods, fresh air, non-toxic places to play, and lots of opportunities to interact freely with other people across the whole spectrum of ages. It is our responsibility to be models of human decency. But one thing we do not have to worry about is how to educate children. ...

Will Smith remains as the hero of Fourth of July movie debuts with his most recent film, Hancock. However, in an interesting twist, the superhero Hancock, that Smith portrays, is actually an anti-hero. 

Japanese game shows have been satirized by a variety of long-running American television shows such as "The Simpsons" and "Saturday Night Live." Americans found these parodies to be amusing despite little knowledge of actual Japanese game shows. Finally, ABC decided to take advantage of this form of popular culture by airing "I Survived a Japanese Game Show." So, what took so long?

Resilience is someting that most people need to make it through the rougher times of life.

Everywhere we turn these days we find pundits and politicians arguing for more restrictive schooling. Of course they don’t use the word “restrictive,” but that’s what it amounts to. They want more standardized tests, more homework, more supervision, longer school days, longer school years, more sanctions against children’s taking a day or two off for a family vacation. This is one realm in which politicians from both of the major parties, at every level of government, seem to agree.

Dance therapy has recently been recognized in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, autism, and posttraumatic stress. And dance—whether you can move and groove with the best or not-- offers more than just good medicine; it unites the heart and soul of humanity on a global level. Enjoy a compelling film, a testament to the power of dance, that was 14 months in the making, spans 42 countries, and includes an international cast of thousands.

Mainstream American culture has a real thing for happiness. We believe happiness to be the most important goal of human life. We also believe that people (at least those who are strong, self-reliant, hard-working, and virtuous enough) can achieve happiness if they pursue it. Unfortunately, our beliefs in the importance and achievability of happiness result in dysfunctional beliefs about the meaning of unhappiness.

Not every volunteer experiences a helper's high, but many could if they were better managed.  A new professional group, volunteer managers, has emerged over the last decade as more and more institutions rely heavily on large numbers of volunteer helpers. Many managers have training in counseling, and they are asking the right questions.  

Independence. What a wonderful word. In 1776, the colonies declared their independence from the British Empire. As time progressed, the United States would become a world power.  

Findings that happiness can change for individuals need not mean that the happiness levels of given societies can change. Perhaps individual-level changes are idiosyncratic, meaning that the relative gains and losses of different individuals within a given nation cancel each other out, resulting in no discernible shifts for a society in the aggregate. Research to date has supported this view--that the average life satisfaction of people in a given nation is fixed--but now this conclusion has been challenged.