Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Imagination Make for a Fuller, Better Life by Shigehiro Oishi, PhD (2/4/25)

From one of our foremost psychologists, a trailblazing book that turns the idea of a good life on its head and urges us to embrace the transformative power of variety and experience.For many people, a good life is a stable life, a comfortable life that follows a well-trodden path. This is the case for Shigehiro Oishi's father, who has lived in a small mountain town in Japan for his entire life, putting his family's needs above his own, like his father and grandfather before him. But is a happy life, or even a meaningful life, also a good life? In Life in Three Dimensions, Shige Oishi enters into a debate that has animated psychology since 1984, when Ed Diener (Oishi's mentor) published a paper that launched happiness studies. A rival followed in 1989 with a model of a good life that focused on purpose and meaning instead. In recent years, Shige Oishi's award-winning work has proposed a third dimension to a good life: psychological richness, a concept that prioritizes curiosity, explora