Illustrations by Ernie Eldredge  Here’s a brain-teaser to get
started: If you have half as much fun reading this story as
we’ve had writing it, does that make us twice as happy—or you 50
percent less content? Is there a difference? And just what do we
mean by “happy” anyway?  10aThese are the kinds of questions
that drive the fledgling science known as positive psychology.
Two hundred and thirty years after Thomas Jefferson first
declared that Americans had a right to the “pursuit of
happiness,” a new breed of psychologist is trying to figure out
why it’s so hard to catch. They see themselves as emotional
naturalists, stalking the elusive butterfly of happiness in
hopes of pinning it down to the examining table of science.  In
doing so they have struck a popular chord. The field’s founding
father, Martin Seligman, a psychology professor at the
University of Pennsylvania, has written several bestsellers.
Last spring, Harvard’s class on positive psychology became the
most popular course on campus. Magazines acr