A New and Improved Whole Life Satisfaction Account of Happiness


 Ahuvia, A., Biswas-Diener, R., Frey, B. S., Haybron, D. M., Helliwell, J. F., McMahon, D. M., Ricard, M., 

& Thin, N. (2011). Felicitators. International Journal of Wellbeing, 1 (2), 193-194. doi:10.5502/ijw.v1i2.1 

 

John F. Helliwell 

University of British Columbia 

john.helliwell@ubc.ca 
 

Copyright belongs to the author(s) 

www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 

193 

EDITORIAL  

 

Felicitators 
 

Introduction 

 

 

This symposium is the result of our efforts to collect and present what we know about the 

creation and distribution of happiness. Our aim is to help shift the focus of wellbeing research 

from the ‘I’ to the ‘we’ by celebrating people and places, ideas and institutions, that have made 

and can make the world a happier place. We call them ‘Felicitators’ – producers of happiness. 

This has echoes of Bentham’s felicific calculus, and reminds us that GNH, the Gross National 

Happiness concept, is rendered in Brazil as FIB, Felicidad Interna Bruta. 

Our unusual partnership is thanks to Jean Timsit, who two years ago invited a range of 

happiness researchers to pool their diverse skills and interests to expand and enrich what is 

known and can be used to improve lives. We are enormously grateful for his initiative and 

continued support. In January 2010, in the course of project discussions in Tulum (Mexico), we 

fell upon two ideas at once. The first was to use particular stories and examples as a way of 

assembling and explaining important results. The second was to encourage the spread of 

wellbeing by celebrating felicitators, and especially those whose ideas and actions have broad 

or universal applicability. We think that our eight papers, created collaboratively and gathered 

together in this symposium, are ideally placed in the International Journal of Wellbeing, whose 

mission, like ours, is to develop and freely exchange ideas that deserve and need to cross 

geographic and disciplinary borders.  

We will not attempt to stitch our papers too tightly together, or to claim any sort of 

completeness. We opted for examples, and examples are what you get. What, you might ask, 

following the alphabetical order of our names, could Dr Seuss, Maria Montessori, Bruder Klaus, 

Central Park, Singapore prisons, Moses, the Dalai Lama and music have in common? Read on 

and see. You may, like us, be surprised to see how many common themes there are, and how 

very specific examples can open up very large discussions.  

 
Authors 

Aaron Ahuvia 

University of Michigan 

 

Robert Biswas-Diener 

Portland State University 

 

Bruno S. Frey 

University of Zurich and University of Warwick 

 

Daniel M. Haybron 

Saint Louis University 

 

 



Felicitators: Introduction 

 Ahuvia, Biswas-Diener, Frey, Haybron, Helliwell, McMahon, Ricard, & Thin 

 

www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 194 

John F. Helliwell 

Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and University of British Columbia 

john.helliwell@ubc.ca 

 

Darrin M. McMahon 

Florida State University 

 

Matthieu Ricard 

Shechen Monastery and Mind and Life Institute 

 

Neil Thin 

University of Edinburgh