Work hard in school, graduate from a top college, establish a
high-paying professional career, enjoy the long-lasting reward of
happiness. This is the American Dream--and yet basic questions at the
heart of this competitive journey remain unanswered. Does competitive
success, even rarified entry into the Ivy League and the top one percent
of earners in America, deliver on its promise? Does realizing the
American Dream deliver a good life? In Redefining Success in America,
psychologist and human development scholar Michael Kaufman develops a
fundamentally new understanding of how elite undergraduate educations
and careers play out in lives, and of what shapes happiness among the
prizewinners in America. In so doing, he exposes the myth at the heart
of the American Dream.
Returning to the legendary Harvard Student Study of undergraduates from
the 1960s and interviewing participants almost fifty years later,
Kaufman shows that formative experiences in family, school, and
community largely shape a future adult's worldview and well-being by
late adolescence, and that fundamental change in adulthood, when it
occurs, is shaped by adult family experiences, not by ever-greater
competitive success. Published research on general samples shows that
these patterns, and the book's findings generally, are broadly
applicable to demographically varied populations in the United States.
Leveraging biography-length clinical interviews and quantitative
evidence unmatched even by earlier landmark studies of human
development, Redefining Success in America redefines the conversation
about the nature and origins of happiness, and about how adults develop.
This longitudinal study pioneers a new paradigm in happiness research,
developmental science, and personality psychology that will appeal to
scholars and students in the social sciences, psychotherapy
professionals, and serious readers navigating the competitive journey.
