Dr. Steve Wright wants to help people be happier. He hopes some of the articles on this web site might contribute to that, by sharing some ideas with the general public backed up by recent studies by research psychologists and other scientists. Dr. Wright wants to give you the simplicity on the other side of complexity (after the scientific research has been carried out to test the ideas).
One area of Dr. Wright’s research interests includes happiness, life satisfaction and fulfillment, personal meaning, sense of community, and related topics. In his research on “sense of community,” he showed that people have a sense of purpose based on their contribution to their community, and also that they share in the larger “purpose” they see their group having in relation to the larger world. This extends the current theory of sense of community. At Cornell University he worked with Urie Bronfenbrenner on research into joint activities with others who were significant in their lives, and did related independent research on people who were important models in students’ lives.
Dr. Wright is one of a growing number of psychologists who want to support “positive psychology,” an effort to expand psychology beyond it’s primary focus on correcting problems (based on a “disease” model), and look at how people flourish, how they broaden and build upon the positive foundations of personal strengths, resilience, optimism, and healthy physical, intellectual, and social development (based on a “health” model). In 2004 he participated in a professional development course led by Martin Seligman, founder of the modern positive psychology movement.
Currently Dr. Wright is a visiting scientist at Georgetown University’s Brain and Language Lab.