Raj Raghunathan
Raj Raghunathan
| Raj Raghunathan | |
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| Fields |
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| Institutions |
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| Notable awards | National Science Foundation Career Grant Award |
| Website happysmarts | |
Raj Raghunathan (Rajagopal Raghunathan) is a professor at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, [1] researcher and author of the book "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy", [2] [3] that reveals the traits of people that can get in the way of happiness and explores the habits that lead to happiness. [4] [5]
Raghunathan is an associate editor at the Journal of Consumer Psychology, guest Associate Editor at the Journal of Marketing Research, and on the editorial boards of Journal of Marketing and Journal of Consumer Research. [6]
His Coursera version of his MBA course on happiness, called "A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment" (MOOC) was featured as a Top 10 course by Coursera for several weeks. [7]
His work has appeared in marketing journals, including The Journal of Marketing, The Journal of Consumer Research, The Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and been cited in mass media outlets, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Austin American Statesman, The Houston Chronicle, and Self magazine. [8]
| Raj Raghunathan | |
|---|---|
| Fields |
|
| Institutions |
|
| Notable awards | National Science Foundation Career Grant Award |
| Website happysmarts | |
Career
Raj Raghunathan earned his PhD from the Stern School of Business, New York University, and is professor of marketing at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. Raj's work juxtaposes theories from psychology, behavioral sciences, decision theory and marketing to explain connections between affect and consumption behavior.
Raj was recognized as a Marketing Science Young Scholar in 2006, and was awarded the National Science Foundation Career Grant Award in 2007, for the period 2007 – 2013.
The course
As a professor of marketing at the University he has taught more than 100,000 students a course called 'A life of happiness and fulfillment", also referred to as ALOHAF for short.
He noticed that after a reunion with his PhD class, the more visible their achievements – work promotions, pay rises, fancy holidays and bigger homes – the more unfulfilled and distracted they seemed overall.
To find an answer to this problem, Raghunathan started extensively researching happiness not just of students and business people, but also stay-at-home-parents, lawyers, and artists, among others.
Revealing why certain psychological traits – the desire to control, to feel important, needed and wanted – are the ones that can get in the way of one's wellbeing, he identified five key areas that can have a serious effect on one's wellbeing, all of which are within our control.
After teaching his ideas in his award-winning MBA class on happiness offered both at the Indian School of Business (ISB) [1] and at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin, he signed a partnership agreement with a US-based online education provider, Coursera to develop a massive open online course on happiness for learners across the globe. The certificate six-week-long course 'A Life of Happiness and Fulfilment', drew content from a variety of fields, including psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral decision theory to offer a practical recipe for leading a life of happiness and fulfillment. [1]
The book
The book 'If you are so smart, why aren't you happy?' based on Raj's research and numerous happiness studies cited in the book's appendix was published in 2015 by Penguin Random House. [1] In the book Raghunathan outlines the multiple ways in which seemingly intelligent, successful people unknowingly sabotage their chances at happiness. [1] [1] Like in his course, in his book Raghunathan details 7 deadly happiness 'sins' and the 7 habits that increase happiness. [1]
According to Raghunathan, having the wrong mindset prevents people from achieving well-being.
Calling it the "scarcity" mindset versus the "abundance" mindset, where in the "scarcity"mindset, a person is doing a lot of social comparisons, while the alternative, abundance, appears when a person cares less about competing with his peers and more about self cultivation. [1] [1]