Dr Kennon Sheldon is a professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri, USA. He received his B.S. in psychology from Duke University in 1981 and his Ph.D. in social/personality psychology from the University of California, Davis in 1992. He is known for his research on well-being, motivation, and goals. His prominent research questions include “Can happiness go up, and then stay up?”, “Can people be helped to pick life-goals that better express their developmental potentials?” and “how can the concept of personal agency be reconciled with the concept of a deterministic universe?”

He is the prolific author of more than 200 academic articles and book chapters. He is also the author of Optimal Human Being: An Integrated Multi-level Perspective, and Self-determination Theory in the Clinic: Motivating physical and mental health, and he has written and edited several other academic books such as Stability of Happiness: Theories and Evidence on Whether Happiness can Change. He has been the recipient of several prestigious prizes and awards in psychology, and was named one of the 20 most cited social psychologists in 2010.

He has been interested in spiritual enlightenment since 1981. Then, he read various religious, meditative, and transpersonal theories and practices for transforming consciousness and achieving personal fulfillment. The quest for reaching the state of enlightenment motivated his research and academic pursuit. Through his research, he wishes to add substantially to the body of knowledge to the field of psychology, as well as to bring the science of happiness to the general public. In his leisure time, he enjoys travelling with his wife Melanie Sheldon and playing in his rock band named “The Hellbenders”, which makes him happy.