Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies

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Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
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CHAPTER ?
Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
Peter H. Huang1
Abstract
We analyze how positive institutions in the form of organizations, laws, and policies
can help foster human flourishing and thriving. We provide five examples of positive
institutions to illustrate the important role that institutions can play in facilitating
positive psychological outcomes by positively changing individual preferences and
values. First, we analyze how to apply positive psychology to redesign law firm
cultures to enable law firms’ attorneys, clients, and communities to flourish and
thrive. Second, we investigate how to apply positive psychology to redesign law
schools to empower law students, law professors, and other law school constituencies
to flourish and thrive. Third, we demonstrate how to apply positive psychology to
foster innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship in individuals, organizations, and
societies. Fourth, we identify some complexities, due to people’s cognitive and
emotional tendencies, of utilizing subjective well-being measures in a wide range of
domains to evaluate the impacts of laws and policies. Finally, we develop
implications from positive psychology about how and what governments and others
can do to support individuals, communities, and societies to flourish and thrive. Our
overarching goal is to provoke thoughtful discussion about positive psychology’s role
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1 I dedicate this revision of the chapter from the second edition of this handbook to Jeremy
Blumenthal, a former student, co-author, fellow academic traveler, and friend, who passed
away far too soon in December 2014. Jeremy was very excited about and looking forward to
having fun at working on this revision. We jointly developed the concept of and coined the
phrase “positive parentalism” upon which the idea of positive parentonomics is based.

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in developing institutions in the form of organizations, laws, and policies that help
individuals, communities, and societies to flourish and thrive.
Keywords: Positive Institutions, Positive Law Firms, Positive Law Schools,
Innovation, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Social Architecture, Policy Subjective Well-
Being Measures, Positive Parentonomics, Mindfulness, Thinking Architecture,
Learning Architecture, Thinking Games
We analyze the third of the three pillars of positive psychology: positive emotions,
traits, and institutions (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Examples of positive
institutions include democracy, strong families, free inquiry, and free press (Seligman,
2002); schools, businesses, communities, and societies (Peterson, 2006); and work
and culture (Compton, 2012; Snyder & Lopez, 2007). We share their assumption that
“positive institutions facilitate the development and display of positive traits, which in
turn facilitate positive subjective experiences” (Peterson, 2006, p. 20) and therefore
focus on how institutions in the form of organizations, law, and policies have the
potential to foster people having a good life.
We present five particular examples of positive institutions. First, we
demonstrate how positive psychology suggests blueprints for law firm leaders to build
positive, thriving places where attorneys feel engaged, driven by purpose, and
fulfilled; clients feel well taken-care-of and valued; and communities flourish due to
law firms’ contributions (Brafford, 2014; Huang & Rosen, 2015; Huang & Swedloff,
2008). Second, we examine how to apply positive psychology to redesign law schools
to empower law students, law professors, and other law school constituencies to
flourish and thrive (Huang & Rosen, 2015; Levit & Linder, 2010). Third, we consider
how to apply positive psychology to foster innovation, creativity, and

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entrepreneurship (Thomas, 2015, 2016). Fourth, we analyze some of the complexities
in utilizing subjective well-being measures to inform law-making and assist policy
evaluation in a number of diverse legal doctrinal settings (Huang, 2010, 2016).
Finally, we ask how and what positive psychology can teach government
policymakers about designing sustainable regulatory policy (Huang, 2015a, 2015b).
These specific examples are important in their own right and they also illustrate the
crucial role that institutions in the form of organizations, laws, and policies can play
in facilitating positive psychological outcomes and positively modifying individual
preferences (Bohnet, 2006).
How to Build Positive Law Firms
Legal institutions, such as administrative agencies, courts, and legislatures,
play ubiquitous roles in our lives. They also share two common features: they shape
policy and involve lawyers. Lawyers consistently rate poorly in surveys as to whom
people trust. Lawyers have a negative image in popular culture: films increasingly
portray lawyers negatively (Asimow, 2000; Papke et al., 2012a; Post, 1987) and
lawyer jokes abound (Galanter, 2005).
Many empirical studies find evidence that many lawyers have poor emotional,
mental, and physical health, suffering from alcoholism, anxiety, depression, divorce,
drug abuse, suicide, and unhappiness (Brafford, 2014; Heinz, Nelson, Sandefur, &
Laumann, 2005; Krieger & Sheldon, 2015; Schlitz, 1999; Seligman, Verkuil, & Kang,
2001; but see Hull, 1999, for the opposing view). Lawyers at (large) law firms are
among the unhappiest (Dinovitzer et al., 2004; Schlitz, 1999; but see Hull, 1999, for
opposing perspective). Multiple causes explain unhappiness at (large) law firms,
including long hours, organizational hierarchy, and competitive professional culture
(Schlitz, 1999). Thus, a lawyer who wants to be happier and healthier should avoid

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law firms that are or act like large law firms, including seeking alternatives to private
practice (Schlitz, 1999). But, an important question remains: how can (large) law
firms build environments in which lawyers are happier and healthier? Unhappy and
unhealthy lawyers are unproductive or even counterproductive lawyers.
Three fundamental psychological explanations for lawyer unhappiness are
lawyer pessimism, junior associates’ low decision latitude, and the zero-sum nature of
adversarial systems (Seligman et al., 2001). Positive psychology offers coping
strategies to reduce each of these sources of unhappiness (Seligman et al., 2001).
First, flexible optimism (Seligman, Reivich, Jaycox, & Gillham, 1995) and learned
optimism (Seligman, 1998) are well-documented antidotes for pessimism. Second,
lawyers should have more personal control over their workday (Langer & Rodin,
1976; Seligman, 1992). Law firms can accomplish this by delegating more
responsibilities, having partners mentor junior associates, offering more substantive
training, permitting associates to have contact with clients earlier in associates’
careers, and providing junior associates with voices in law firm management. Law
firms can and should learn their associates’ signature strengths to tailor work
environments accordingly (Buckingham & Clifton, 2001; Peterson & Seligman,
2004). Third, law firms can strive to make litigation more cooperative and less
adversarial (Croson & Mnookin, 1997; Gilson & Mnookin, 1994). Lyubomirsky
(2007) provides a number of happiness interventions that people, including lawyers,
can practice to achieve sustainable increases of their happiness levels.
Positive organizational scholarship has explored among other themes, these
four: (1) adopting a positive lens that reframes an obstacle as a strength-building
experience, (2) analyzing positive deviance in the form of extraordinarily positive
performance, (3) accentuating positive emotions and other phenomena over negative

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problems and threats, and (4) studying the best of the human condition for the sake of
itself (Cameron & Spitzer, 2012). Positive organizations can be defined by these three
attributes: human impact, moral goodness, and social betterment (Cameron, 2003).
Positive employee states include: engagement, enthusiasm, flow, growing competence
and mastery, hopefulness, job involvement, job satisfaction, meaning, optimism,
organizational commitment, perceived organizational support, resiliency, self-
efficacy, thriving, and vigor (Brafford, 2014). Brafford (2014) offers a thoughtful
blueprint for how to build a positive law firm, namely: be purpose-driven, foster
meaning, integrate self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) into legal practice,
adopt a strengths-oriented orientation in managing people, foster emotional and
physical wellness, strive for optimal amounts of positive emotions, become energized
by high quality connections, cultivate psychological safety, build resilience, exceed or
at least satisfy organizational justice standards, recruit and retain ethical, values-
based leadership, and have success metrics that are broader than mere profitability.
Brafford (2014) makes a compelling business case for why positive law firms may
enjoy competitive advantages, including 1) higher profitability, 2) desirable, extra-
financial business outcomes, and 3) successfully recruiting and retaining Millennial
generation lawyers. Brafford (2014) details how implementing her blueprint for
building positive law firms will require law firms to learn about effective
organizational change practices, learn about resilience and other training, revamp
performance review processes, experiment with compensation practices, adopt
positive diversity practices, create a civility metric, study lawyer explanatory styles,
test client benefit intervention, and offer positive retirement planning. Finally,
Brafford (2014) proposes to create a law firm well-being index to counter-balance and
supplement the currently closely watched and dominant profits-per-partner metric,

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which the magazine The American Lawyer began publishing annually starting in
1985 (Harper, 2013; Kleman, 2014). Brafford (2014) proposes the creation of a law
firm well-being index, which includes metrics related that are to the well-being of a
law firm’s lawyers, staff, clients, the law firm itself, and communities. The creation
and also (widespread) adoption of such a law firm well-being index would facilitate
comparison across law firms by lawyers, staff, and clients and encourage all law firms
to pay attention to increasing their well-being index scores by raising their levels of
performance on the well-being metrics of all law firm stakeholders.
How to Create Positive Law Schools
Legal education is currently in a state of severe crisis and at a metaphorical
crossroads (Lewinbuk, 2015, pp. 5-7; Tamanaha, 2012). Many in the media, public,
and shrinking pool of potential law school applicants feel that the monetary and
opportunity costs of a legal education outweigh the perceived financial and pecuniary
benefits. In other words, law schools are or have become overpriced for the dubious
job prospects they deliver to the (too) many graduates at law schools that are not
highly ranked. There has been markedly less demand for the human capital
investments that a legal education supplies. Many observers perceive that the
monetary (present discounted) value of a law degree today is lower than ever in light
of the currently depressed state of job markets for lawyers. Whether the current poor
economic state of affairs for law school graduates is temporary or permanent is
unclear and the subject of much debate, contention, and consternation.
There are structural changes and novel challenges from increased global
competition in legal services, clients demanding more value added by lawyers, clients
fed up with the system of billable hours, and technological innovations displacing
legal jobs. Some observers have debated whether this is a set of temporary or

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permanent market disturbances and shifts. Many legal administrators are anxious,
frantic, and panicked over sharply declining law school applications, decreased law
school graduates’ job prospects, and sinking, if not plummeting, morale among law
students and law professors. Many law school constituents, including law school
students, faculty, staff, and alumni are disengaged, dispirited, depressed, and angry at
law school administrators and bureaucrats. At many law schools, there is an
overwhelming sense of negativity and toxicity permeating the building. Some law
schools now have institutional cultures among law faculty that are pathologically
dysfunctional and likely to remain so at least in the short run, if not also long run.
The leadership at some law schools is myopic, incompetent, and mistakenly
focused on imposing top-down changes to incentivize raising law school applications,
increasing lawyer job prospects, and artificially propping up short-term morale among
law students and law professors. Law professors, being trained as lawyers, can be
very critical of each other’s arguments, positions, and viewpoints during committee
and faculty meetings. Law professors, being trained as lawyers, are adept at making
procedural and substantive objections, spotting discriminatory law school
employment practices, and threatening litigation against their law schools and law
school deans. Law professors, being trained as lawyers, often find faults in any
proposed law school policy changes without being able to create workable solutions
that are not overly formalistic or legalistic. Law professors, being trained as lawyers,
sometimes have a litigation mindset and zero-sum, winner-take-all mentality towards
law school politics and law school life.
Some in the legal academy worry that law schools are becoming dinosaurs that
are doomed for quick extinction and unplanned obsolescence. A number of law
faculty worry for their job futures and fear the seemingly inevitable prospect of an

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epidemic of lower ranked law schools permanently closing. Other U.S. law professors
believe that American legal education as it currently exists will soon become
unprofitable and unsustainable. Lawyers, including law professors, often lament
having chosen to attend law school instead of another professional school and thus
recommend in private to members of their family and friends that they should not
pursue a law degree. Lawyers, including law professors, often see other professional
schools as being happier and more well-adjusted places that offer more enjoyable
experiences and better job prospects than law schools do.
Even before today’s legal education crisis, some law school administrators
undertook deceitful practices, if not outright fraud, to receive a (usually only slightly)
higher spot in the highly competitive and very influential law school rankings that the
magazine U.S. News & World Report annually publishes (Huang, 2012a). Depictions
in popular culture of law schools have always been quite negative. Many movies and
television shows emphasized a sadistic form of Socratic interrogation in which law
professors relentlessly and uncaringly grilled law students into tears and/or vomiting
(Papke et al,, 2012b). Law schools in fiction and unfortunately often in reality are not
usually happy institutions. Many law school students and alumni report that law
school was an unpleasant experience involving numerous periods of intense anguish,
anxiety, chronic stress, depression, despair, discomfort, embarrassment, exhaustion,
humiliation, hyper-competition, rivalry, self-doubt, sleeplessness, and unhealthiness,
emotional, physical and mental. Non-lawyers are typically unsympathetic to how bad
law students’ and lawyers’ lives are because of the common perception that law
students are quickly on their way to becoming arrogant, elitist, nasty, rich, powerful,
and self-absorbed lawyers with lifetime country club memberships paid for by their
(large) law firms.

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Psychological studies have found that although most entering law students are
slightly above the population average in subjective well-being, within the first
semester of law school, students report statistically significant drops in well-being and
mental health, from which they never fully recover throughout law school and even
after (Sheldon & Krieger, 2004, 2007). Some law students report within the first few
weeks of law school that they eat less well and more mindlessly; exercise less or not
at all; see much less of their significant others, families, and friends; sleep less and
less well; and worry more if not always about how they are doing in law school due to
lack of feedback and fear of being embarrassed in their classes. Anxiety and chronic
stress can interfere with a law student’s memory, deep processing of information, and
recall under pressure. If legal education is causing law students to experience
unnecessary anxiety and chronic stress, then it is imperative that legal educators
figure out how and why to mitigate these deleterious physiological and psychological
effects.
Although there are numerous psychological (self-report) studies finding that
law students are suffering from marked increases in anxiety and chronic stress, higher
measured levels of the stress hormone cortisol collected from saliva samples would
provide additional corroborating physiological evidence. Structural and functional
MRI scans of law students’ brains would provide neuroscientific evidence about how
pursuing an American legal education changes law students’ brains and whether it
does so for the worse. A research team of three law professors and one
psychologist/neuroscientist (Huang et al., 2016) plans a longitudinal, multi-year study
of law students that will incude the collection of spit samples to test for cortisol levels
and the neuroimaging of law students in August, December, and May of the first year
of law school to test for structural brain changes. This team also plans to conduct

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brain scans while law students make decisions in ethical dilemmas and play economic
trust games (Huang, 2009) to determine if legal training encourages unethical
behavior (Huang, 2013) and impairs the quality of decision-making. Finally, the team
plans to investigate whether such positive psychology interventions as mindfulness or
compassion meditation can change law students’ brain structure and charitable
donation behavior, as is the case for a study involving non-law students (Ashar et al.,
2016).
Some law students report adopting such bad coping habits or strategies as
excessively drinking alcohol, binge eating, self-medicating using over-the-counter or
prescription drugs and medication, and taking needless risks to relieve the pressure of
law school. This is a sad and tragic state of affairs in terms of the plethora of
emotional, mental, and physical harms that some law students experience while
earning a law degree. Moreover, these genuine and significant human costs are
unnecessary to legal education. Legal educators can and have a duty to do better.
Some law professors believe that law schools must adapt and change to survive and to
better fulfill their mission of educating future lawyers. For example, the Balance in
Legal Education section of the Association of American Law Schools is a group of
American law school professors that “seeks to investigate, discover, and inspire those
practices that support the well-being of law students, lawyers, and judges. The Section
encourages research into the conditions that allow students and practitioners to thrive,
both personally and professionally, and informs the membership of the Association of
American Law Schools about the results of that research. Among other things, Section
activities explore the importance of health, compassion, integrity, and ethics to the
effective study and practice of law. The Section promotes continual re-examination of
pedagogical practices, program content, and institutional priorities to promote the

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long-term best interests of law students and the constituencies they will serve.”
(Section on Balance in Legal Education Website, 2016).
Law schools can mitigate law student and future lawyer unhappiness by not
fostering learned helplessness (Kurson, 2000; Levit & Linder, 2010; Seligman et al.,
2001); by helping law students make better academic and career decisions based upon
a more realistic picture of the boredom, drudgery, and numerous time demands of
some lawyer’s professional lives (Rodin, 1976); helping law students develop grit,
passion, and resilience (Duckworth, 2016); and by helping law students learn their
signature strengths (Seligman et al., 2001). Law professors can teach law students
about effective, healthy, proven, and positive ways to cope with and mitigate chronic
stress (Austin, 2014) and the dangers of using ineffective, unhealthy, unproven, and
negative coping strategies to respond chronic stress (Austin, 2015). One effective way
to ameliorate and reduce chronic stress is to practice various forms of mindfulness
(Lewinbuk, 2015, pp. 13-24). Riskin (2015a, 2015b, 2013, 2012, 2010, 2002) has
been a leader and pioneer in advocating that law students, lawyers, judges, and other
conflict resolution professionals develop a practice and default habit of mindfulness to
be able to become more personally calmer and more professionally effective.
Law schools can also teach law students about different attribution styles
(Rosen, 2011). An optimistic attribution style views positive events as permanent,
pervasive, and personal; while a pessimistic attribution style views negative events as
temporary and specific. An optimistic attribution style views negative events as
temporary, specific, and hopeful; while a pessimistic attribution style views negative
events as permanent, pervasive, and personal. In other words, a pessimistic attribution
style makes internal, global, and stable attributions for negative events or failure, and
makes the converse attributions for positive events or success. Much of law school

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teaches law students to adopt pessimistic attribution styles because of an emphasis
and focus in law school of teaching law students to learn to think about, in order to
prepare for, what might go wrong for clients generally and particularly in litigation or
business transactions. A famous study of 387 law students found those law students
having pessimistic attribution styles outperformed on the measures of grade point
averages and law journal success law students having optimistic attribution styles
(Satterfield, Monahan, & Seligman, 1997). A common and popular media
interpretation (Holtz, 2007) of this one study was to draw a conclusion that “although
depression is a terrible disease, society is better off with lawyers who are somewhat
depressed because depression and effective legal thinking go hand in hand” (Felder,
2014, p. 68). A more nuanced interpretation of this one study is that students with a
defensive pessimistic attribution style had an effective mechanism to cope with law
school’s chronic stress. A defensive pessimist recognizes all of the negative
possibilities (permanent, pervasive, personal attribution) in a situation; engages in
planning, to develop strategies to deal with each possible negative outcome; and in so
doing, becomes able to sort outcomes into being more or less realistic. The
implications for law students are that while people may have default preferences for
optimistic, pessimistic, and defensive pessimistic attribution styles, all three
attribution styles can be learned by law students and taught by law professors.
A father, who is a law professor, and his daughter, who received a masters in
applied positive psychology, co-authored a tour-de-force article about how and what
legal educators can learn from positive psychology to stem the tide of law student
depression (Peterson & Peterson, 2009). Many of the same insights from positive
organizational scholarship to build positive law firms also apply to create positive law
schools. A law school well-being index would be a welcome counter-balance to and

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supplement for the current, dominant, and powerful U.S. News & World Report law
school rankings. The creation and (widespread) adoption of a law school well-being
index that includes metrics on the well-being of all law school constituencies would
facilitate students making better informed and more nuanced choices among law
schools and encourage law schools to care about and improve the well-being of all
law school constituencies.
Creating a positive law school does not require big, expensive, revolutionary,
slow, and structural changes. Some of former Harvard law school dean (and current
Supreme Court Justice) Elena Kagan’s first acts as dean were tiny, inexpensive,
incremental, quick, and symbolic changes. She added onto the lawn outside the
student center a beach volleyball court that doubles in the winter as a skating rink,
provided free coffee in classrooms, and stocked women's bathrooms with free
tampons (Woolhouse, 2009). A different so-called Ivy league law school chose
instead to provide free bagels in its faculty lounge only on Tuesday and Thursday,
instead of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or every weekday, or every day in order
to save some money. Such a poor choice is an exemplar of penny-wise and pound-
foolish leadership.
Another way to create a positive law school is to provide a cafeteria that offers
every weekday healthy, gourmet breakfasts and lunches (including vegan, vegetarian,
and gluten-free options), where professors, staff, and students can share meals and
interact in a collegial, informal, non-hierarchical environment. Such a cafeteria was a
highpoint of the experience of being a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, New Jersey. The Institute for Advanced Study also provided members and
visitors with free coffee, cookies, pastries, and tea every weekday at 3 o’clock in the
afternoon. People would feel physically and emotionally nourished by having the

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option to experience such interactive, gathering places to recharge, refresh, and
replenish themselves during busy and hectic days. Another way to create a positive
law school is to provide dedicated space(s) for professors, staff, and students to
practice calming and soothing mindfulness meditation or compassion meditation.
Another way to create a positive law school is to provide a gym in the law school,
showers in the law school, and the option of treadmill desks in faculty offices.
Another way to create a positive law school is to provide free yoga classes, guided
mindfulness sessions, and qigong or tai chi sessions. All of these ideas are not
extravagant, fanciful, outrageous, or pie-in-the-sky things. Google, many other high-
technology companies, and even some large law firms provide many of these or
similar workplace perks to attract and retain the best and the brightest.
Innovation, Creativity, & Entrepreneurship
Whether economic growth leads to increased happiness depends on what is the
measure of happiness and other variables (Easterlin, 1974; Stevenson & Wolfers,
2008). Of course, any form of (technological) progress will have its winners and
losers. Nonetheless, across 60 countries, 68% of working-age adults, on average, view
entrepreneurs as having high status in their economies and 61% think that
entrepreneurs get positive media coverage (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2016, p.
6). Many Americans support laws and policies to foster innovation, creativity, and
entrepreneurship based upon the belief that research and development, technological
progress, and inventions are crucial to competing in a global economy, continued job
creation, and maintaining, if not, raising the American standard of living. The public
and even so-called experts disagree over what are the causes of and correlates with
innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship.

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There is psychological evidence that being in a happy mood is correlated with
creative thinking (Rowe et al., 2007). There is also evidence utilizing the Federal
Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finance that entrepreneurs were more
optimistic, more risk-loving, and worked more than non-entrepreneurs (Puri &
Robinson, 2006). More generally, more optimistic people were more likely to
remarry, expect longer age-adjusted work careers, invest more in individual stocks,
pay off their credit card balances on time, save more, and work harder (Puri &
Robinson, 2004, 2007). Although moderate optimists engaged in reasonable financial
behavior, extreme optimists had financial habits and behaviors that are not usually
considered to be prudent, namely saved less money, were less likely to pay off their
credit card balances on a regular basis, were more likely to smoke, and worked
significantly fewer hours (Puri & Robinson, 2007).
A study of 142 entrepreneurs found them to be optimistic, yet realistic (Liang
& Dunn, 2008). A follow-up study by the same authors found that entrepreneurs who
are happy when starting their business venture also believed their spouse will be
happier and continue supporting them should they decide to start another business
venture, while pessimistic entrepreneurs believed their spouse would not be happier
during the creation of a new business venture and would not be supportive of them
should they decide to start another business venture (Liang & Dunn, 2010). Analysis
of a sample of American and Slovenian entrepreneurs found that greater optimism led
to greater pre-entrepreneurial curiosity, which in turn, led to greater entrepreneurial
curiosity (Jeraj, 2014).
Analysis of an unusually large survey dataset (180,814 responses) found that
entrepreneurs have more favorable beliefs about nationwide conditions and these
entrepreneurs’ beliefs are relatively good predictors of the future (Bengtsson &

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Ekeblom, 2014). Based upon these two findings, the study authors concluded that
entrepreneurs are less biased towards optimism than non-entrepreneurs are biased
towards pessimism. The study authors also found that entrepreneurs are more
educated and their beliefs about the future are more similar to educated peoples’
beliefs. The study authors concluded that while entrepreneurial optimism is an
important real-world phenomenon, such optimism might not be a behavioral bias
resulting in irrational decision-making. Unfortunately, there is also psychological
evidence that many entrepreneurs experience more than employees do these strong
emotions and psychological states: anxiety, depression, despair, hopelessness,
hypomania, loss of motivation, stress, suicidal thinking, and worthlessness (Bruder,
2013; Gartner, 2011).
A recent study found that 70% of U.S. employees are not engaged at work and
18% are actively disengaged at their work and in fact are trying to sabotage their
employer (Gallup, 2014). These statistics are disturbing, quite sad, and reflect how too
many people feel that their workplace is fake, disempowering, depressing, stifling,
and treats them like a fungible, insignificant, small cog in an impersonal, large,
soulless machine (Thomas, 2016). How can a company or more generally an
organization foster foster innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship when so many
people are checked out from, if not, actively sabotaging their organization? One way
to do so is to organically change the culture of an organization, which is of course
much easier said than done. Thomas (2016) discusses how to naturally create a
vibrant culture in an organization.
By culture, Thomas (2016) means a set of agreements. Economic theories of
corporate culture have defined a culture to be a particular set of (probability) beliefs,
expectations, norms, preferences, and values that members of a corporation share as a

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focal point (Kreps, 1990). In other words, a company’s or more generally an
organization’s culture tells its people what is the “right” thing to do when people
inevitably face unforeseen contingencies or have to choose among multiple possible
equilibrium actions. Thomas (2016) defines a vibrant culture as being an intentionally
created, shared set of beliefs and values that are deep (being part of the core identify
of an organization) and wide (touching all areas of an organization), leading to
invested employees who have intrinsic motivation.
Thomas (2016) introduces the phrase “social architecture” to capture the idea
of intentional and organic design and creation of an organizational culture that will be
alive, thriving, and vibrant. Thomas (2016) draws upon the ideas of architect Frank
Lloyd Wright (Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, 2016) in formulating the steps in
social architecture, starting with an organization’s essence. Thomas (2015) describes
an organization’s essence as the space from which an organization operates. An
organization’s essence is the seed from which spring an organization’s behaviors,
outcomes, procedures, and strategies (Thomas, 2015). To slightly paraphrase former
Chief Justice William Rehnquist (1975, p. 737), an organization’s culture can grow to
become a mighty oak tree that sprang from the acorn of its essence. Thomas (2015,
2016) defines an organization’s essence to be the intrinsic nature or indispensable
quality that determines an organization’s character. Thomas (2015, 2016) explains
how and why social architecture starts with uncovering an organization’s essence. The
next step is to design the materials of social architecture, namely the space within the
self, meaning examining and transforming ourselves by engaging in self-reflection
(Thomas, 2015, 2016). The next step is to design the structure of social architecture,
namely the space where others are able to connect with their deepest dreams and
highest aspirations (Thomas, 2015, 2016). The next step is to design the placement of

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social architecture, namely the physical space and context where an organization is
able to attain its highest expression because the surrounding space supports an
organization’s innovation and vitality (Thomas, 2015, 2016). The next step is to
design the sustainability of social architecture, namely the space of support beneath an
organization that provides organizational resilience to withstand the winds of change
and other unforeseen contingencies and unknown external environmental forces
(Thomas, 2015, 2016). Upon progressing through all of these steps, social architecture
organically culminates in an organization that has an alive, engaged, innovative,
vibrant, and thriving culture (Thomas, 2015, 2016).
The phrase social architecture suggests a similarity with two central ideas
from behavioral economics, namely choice architecture (designing how to present or
frame choices) and information architecture (designing how to present or frame
information) (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). All three ideas share the word “architecture”
and involve the notion of intentional design rather than unintentional happenstance. A
fundamental difference between social architecture, on the one hand, and choice
architecture and information architecture, on the other hand, is that while social
architecture entails connotations of organic growth and ecological understanding,
choice architecture and information architecture entail connotations of mechanistic
logic (Thomas, 2015) and images of a government bureaucrat pushing levers or
pulling strings to incentivize and steer people’s decisions to outcomes which differ
from what would otherwise occur. Social architecture helps people to engage in self-
reflection and internal transformation, while choice architecture and information
architecture do not and in fact are premised upon people lacking self-awareness and
being externally nudged around by some possibly mythical enlightened and well-
informed government officials. Social architecture to design an organization’s culture

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
19
is about creating a set of environmental conditions under which an organization
naturally flourishes and organically thrives (Thomas, 2015). Social architecture
organically grows bottom-up instead of being imposed top-down, meaning that social
architecture has to grow from the seeds of an organization’s essence and have strong
roots to remain true to its essence (Thomas, 2015). Trying to impose an organizational
culture from above is almost surely going to lead to push back and resistance.
Members of an organization have to buy into an organizational culture for it to take
root and organically grow.
Subjective Well-Being Measures of Policy
Subjective well-being measures are typically answers to questions asking
survey respondents to self-report their subjective well-being on a numerical scale
ranging from a low number such as 0 or 1 to a higher number such as 4, 7, or 10. Such
measures are utilized in the Gallup World Poll (Gallup Organization, 2016),
Eurobarometer (Inglehart & Klingemann, 2000), General Social Survey (Davis,
Smith, & Marsden, 2001), World Values Survey (World Values Survey, 2016),
Experience Sampling Method (Andersson & Tour, 2005; Hektner, Schmidt, &
Csikszentmihalyi, 2007; Stone & Shiffman, 1994), Daily Reconstruction Method
(Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004a), national well-being
accounts (Diener, Kesebir, & Lucas, 2008; Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, &
Stone, 2004b) and brief indices (Diener, 2000, 2006; Diener & Seligman, 2004).
Bhutan introduced a gross national happiness index to replace gross national product
for measuring progress (Belic, 2011). Instead of designing public policy to achieve
higher levels of subjective well-being measures, there may be more emotional appeal
to and political support for designing public policy to minimize levels of subjective
ill-being measures. An example of a subjective ill-being index is the U-index

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
20
measuring the fraction of time that people spend in an unpleasant emotional state
(Blanchflower, 2009; Kahneman & Krueger, 2006; Kreuger et al., 2009).
Subjective well-being measures offer nonmonetary metrics for evaluating
policy in risk regulation (Huang, 2008a) or financial and securities regulation (Huang,
2008b). Such measures can also take into account investor confidence, financial
euphoria, and market moods. Subjective well-being measures can shed insight into
contexts as diverse as business (Huang, 2011), business ethics and social
responsibility (Giacalone, Jurkiewicz, & Dunn, 2005), cigarette taxation (Gruber &
Mullainathan, 2004), civil procedure (Huang, 2008d), development economics
(Graham, 2005; Graham & Pettinato, 2002), disadvantaged subpopulations (Delle
Fave & Massimini, 2005), education (Martin, 2005; Noddings, 2003), employment
discrimination litigation (Huang & Moss, 2009), environmental protection
(Kahneman & Sugden, 2005), health (Graham, 2008), income inequality (Alesina, Di
Tella, & MacCulloch, 2004); Graham & Felton, 2006), labor market regulation
(Alesina, Glaeser, & Sacerdote, 2006), legal policy (Huang, 2010), macroeconomics
(Clark & Oswald, 1994; Di Tella, MacCulloch, & Oswald, 2003; Di Tella &
MacCulloch, 2006; Eggers et al., 2006; Oswald, 1997; Stutzer & Lalive, 2004),
marriage (Frey & Stutzer, 2005), obesity (Graham & Felton, 2005), organizational
behavior (Baker, Greenberg, & Hemingway, 2006; Cameron, Dutton, and Quinn,
2003), political economy (Graham & Sukhtankar, 2004), poverty (Rojas, 2008),
public housing (Kling, Liebman, & Katz, 2007), taxation (Bagaric & McConvill,
2005; Griffith, 2004; Kornhauser, 2004; Layard, 2005; Ring, 2004), terrorism (Frey,
Luechinger, & Stutzer, 2007), torts (Swedloff & Huang, 2010) and urban planning
(Frey & Stutzer, 2008). In all these diverse settings, changes in policy are typically
associated with changes in some types of subjective well-being measures. Empirical

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
21
findings that positive affect is positively correlated with physical health (Pressman &
Cohen, 2005) and success (Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005) offer additional
rationales for policies to foster positive affect.
Complicated issues about policy evaluation based upon subjective well-being
measures arise because people’s judgments of their subjective well-being vary over
time (Sanna & Chang, 2006l Swedloff, 2014, pp. 784-806). People experience
subjective well-being not only ephemerally in the moment, but also later on in
savoring and memory (Elster & Loewenstein, 1992). Although future subjective well-
being and past subjective well-being affect our current subjective well-being, they do
so asymmetrically. Recent psychological studies find people feel more intense
subjective well-being upon contemplating some future events than upon recalling past
ones (Van Boven & Ashworth, 2007). Complexities multiply if our levels of current
subjective well-being depend upon not only our own anticipated subjective well-being
and remembered subjective well-being, but also our anticipations and remembrances
of others’ subjective well-being. These multiple varieties of subjective well-being can,
in turn, depend on our current subjective well-being. Such dependencies are filtered
through systematically inaccurate affective forecasting (Gilbert, 2006) and imperfect
memory (Sutton, 1992). Incorrect predictions and recollections help motivate us to
pursue and strive for goals (Lench, Safer, & Levine, 2006). Such inaccuracies may
also produce more financial economic activity than corresponding accuracies (Huang,
2005a, pp. 102–109). Irrational exuberance and unjustified anxiety raise normative
questions about whether institutions and policies promoting accuracy about subjective
well-being are socially desirable (Huang, 2005b). Another issue is whether to design
policy to maximize aggregate subjective well-being or to assist people in advancing
their individual and collective ideas of what is the good life (Frey & Stutzer, 2000).

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
22
Based upon the above studies about differences among predicted, experienced,
and remembered happiness, 2002 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Daniel Kahneman,
posed a though-provoking riddle about which of these two selves should count:
experiencing selves or remembering selves (Kahneman, 2011, pp. 377-407). As
mentioned already, people’s memories of their emotions are typically rosier than their
experiences of their emotions. In addition, people are motivated by anticipations of
their emotions, which tend to coincide with inaccurate and incomplete memories of
their emotions. Laws and policies should care more about people’s experiencing
selves than people’s remembering selves if and when people’s experiences result in
chronic health or stress consequences that either (1) societies care about more than
people do because of positive or negative externalities, public bads, or public goods;
or (2) people also care about, but are unaware of, do not remember, or are unable to
act upon due to self-control problems (Huang, 2014). Important chronic health or
stress effects arise from such common experiences as dense and long commutes,
unhealthy eating, lack of regular physical exercise, sedentary behavior, and lack of, or
poor, financial or retirement planning (Huang, 2014).
Positive Parentonomics
A long-standing, traditional concern about institutions is the possibility that
institutions will manipulate or improperly influence individuals’ choices or decisions.
Indeed, a substantial body of economic and legal scholarship has been developed
about the propriety of “paternalism,” that is, intervention by either the government or
private parties into individual decision-making and/or behavior in order to improve an
individual’s welfare (e.g., Camerer, 2006; Jolls, Sunstein, & Thaler, 1998; Thaler &

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
23
Sunstein, 2008).2 This body of work applies psychological findings documenting the
prevalence of cognitive biases and heuristics to suggest that paternalism may
sometimes be appropriate to protect people from their own financially costly and self-
injurious decision-making errors. Other analyses focus on emotional, rather than
cognitive, influences on people’s decision-making (Blumenthal, 2005, 2007; Huang,
2006).
There is little discussion of paternalism in the context of positive psychology.
To the extent that positive psychology is seen as prescriptive, not only descriptive
(see, for example, Seligman & Pawelski, 2003), there may be a role in developing
institutions that can intervene to enable individuals, organizations, communities, and
societies to flourish and thrive. A positive paternalism of institutions might
supplement traditional paternalism, by helping to elevate individuals’ and society’s
subjective well-being levels from some existing baseline (Blumenthal & Huang,
2009).
Although Blumenthal & Huang (2009) took no position as to the normative
propriety of such interventions, they did suggest that both the positive and normative
aspects of such possibilities be discussed and be analyzed empirically. Public
reluctance to accept paternalistic intervention is a formidable hurdle to overcome, and
there are a variety of other social costs in developing paternalistic “interventions”
(Blumenthal, 2007; Glaeser, 2006). However, private or governmental interventions
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2 “Paternalism” has long had strongly negative connotations, in large part due to the
perception that such intervention infringes on individual autonomy, on the right to make one’s
own choices (even if they are in error), and on individuals’ preferences for the freedom to
make such choices. Empirical research, however, may cast doubt on all of these rationales
(Blumenthal, 2007).

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
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to promote positive outcomes might be more palatable to the public than remedial
paternalistic interventions to correct for people’s cognitive biases (as the loss aversion
literature might suggest). Public approbation of any interventions by government or
private parties is ultimately an empirical question, as is, of course, such programs’
effectiveness.
Consider, for instance, governmental response to the problem of poor physical
health, including obesity or coronary heart disease. A remedial paternalistic
intervention might prevent fatty and other unhealthy food from being sold in
restaurants, cafeterias, or even supermarkets, to remove the option to purchase and
consume such unhealthy food. In contrast, government mandating of an exercise
program—perhaps even just for those at risk for heart disease—might be seen as less
intrusive than a “remedial” approach. Avoiding juveniles’ obesity and other health
problems is of substantial current interest, and one approach has been the
encouragement of requiring minimum levels of physical activity in schools, with
potential accountability for schools that fail to provide appropriate physical education
programs (e.g., Pate et al., 2006).
Similarly, consider the burgeoning research on “affective forecasting,” the
prediction of future emotional states (Wilson & Gilbert, 2003). People are
surprisingly poor at accurately predicting the intensity and duration of their future
emotions (Wilson & Gilbert, 2003). One application of this research has discussed its
potential relevance to paternalism issues, but focused on remedial interventions
(Blumenthal, 2007; see also Guthrie, 2003). Other examples of remedial interventions
are to identify contexts where individuals are poor at recognizing what matters for
their subjective well-being—and providing people better information about what will
in fact matter for their subjective well-being (Frey & Stutzer, 2006; Loewenstein &

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
25
Ubel, 2008). A positive psychology approach to government regulation would help
individuals identify and develop their signature strengths so that people would find
their work more fulfilling and view it as a calling instead of a career or job (Huang,
2008c; Wrzesniewski et al., 1997). If a metaphor for light paternalism is therapy
designed to combat and correct for cognitive and emotional disturbances that detract
from people’s subjective well-being (Loewenstein & Haisley, 2008), then a metaphor
for positive paternalism is positive therapy.
Affective neuroscientific data provide evidence of a disjunction between two
brain systems—wanting and liking (Nettle, 2005)—a gap that supplies a scientific
language for normative and positive theories of paternalism (Camerer, 2006). Huang
(2006) proposes that environments in which it is challenging to learn to want what
you will like, such as those involving viscerally addictive experiences or substances,
decisions having irreversible or very costly to reverse consequences, and infrequently
repeated situations, may justify some type of paternalism. Examples include possible
choices about career, children, death, family, health, living wills, marriage, and
retirement.
For example, some people repeatedly fail to learn to distinguish between
passionate love, which is “the love you fall into,” and companionate love, which
“grows slowly over the years.” But the trajectories over time of these distinct kinds of
love diverge in both the short and long run (Haidt, 2006). In particular, their short-
term divergence creates a pair of danger points, where many people make serious
decision errors. The first possible mistake is premature marriage during passionate
love. The second mistake is premature breaking up when passionate love fades,
“because if the lovers had stuck it out, if they had given compassionate love a chance
to grow, they might have found true love” (Haidt, 2006, pp. 126–127). Although

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
26
many American states currently have laws that impose a waiting period before
entering into or dissolving a marriage, this research has implications for other
contexts as well. More generally, a large body of current American family law fails to
consider the health and well-being of families and requires a reorientation informed
by positive psychology research to become more supportive of families (Huntington,
2014).
Positive parentonomics, extends positive parentalism, which was an original
regulatory proposal advocating that policymakers develop institutions to help enable
people, communities, and societies to flourish and thrive (Blumenthal & Huang,
2009). Soft paternalism focuses on cognitive biases to modify choice contexts to
mitigate decision-making errors by accounting for or even using cognitive biases.
Positive parentalism focuses on helping people to learn, develop, and utilize their
character strengths and virtues (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Instead of the gendered
and negative connotations that come with all forms of paternalism and “father knows
best,” positive parentalism invokes gender-neutral and positive notions of parenting
associated with care, assistance, facilitation, and enabling people to make better
financial, health, and safety decisions for themselves.
Positive parentonomics integrates positive psychology with the idea of
parentonomics, which is the application of incentives, negotiations, outsourcing, and
other ideas from neoclassical economics, behavioral economics, and game theory to
solve the important economic management problem known as parenting (Gans, 2009;
Mahony, 1996). Positive parentonomics advances a theory of optimal government
policy and law based on an optimistic view of humanity (Keltner, 2009). Positive
parentonomics and positive psychology itself, share features with an ancient
perspective, known as virtue theory, variously applied in practice as virtue ethics,

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
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virtue politics, or virtue jurisprudence. Virtue theory is a normative philosophy that
encourages the cultivation of virtue as a life goal (Solum, 2003). Instead of
emphasizing consequences, as utilitarian doctrines do, or rights, duties, and rules, as
deontological doctrines do, virtue theory focuses on people’s character and human
excellence. People engage in right action not because it will yield positive
consequences or increased welfare, and not because there is some principle mandating
or permitting them to do so. People engage in right action because it is the sort of
action that a virtuous person would characteristically or habitually perform. From the
perspectives of positive psychology and virtue theory, the aim of laws and policies
should be to encourage people to become virtuous (Solum, 2003, p. 181), act
virtuously, or, at the very least, to establish institutions that allow people to acquire
virtue on their own. A primary goal of law and policy should be to foster or encourage
positive behavior, rather than limit or punish negative behavior.
Positive parentonomics also draws upon research about how the East Asian
(primarily, though not exclusively Chinese) virtue model of learning envisions that
people desire to perfect themselves morally and socially, while the Western mind
model of learning strives to have individuals cultivate their minds to understand and
master the external world (Li, 2012). These two fundamentally different beliefs about
learning manifest themselves in the psychology of the learning process and influence
views about education and parenting. Positive parentonomics also draws upon and is
related to tiger parenting and various responses to it (Huang, 2012a, 2012b). Positive
parentonomics builds on the idea that mainstream American legal education and tiger
parenting are similar and both can be improved by fostering life-long learning about
character strengths, emotions, and ethics (Huang, 2012a; Huang & Felder, 2013).

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
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Positive parentonomics advocates that governments create a learning society
(Stiglitz & Greenwald, 2014, pp. 457-82) in addition to a learning economy (Stiglitz
& Greenwald, 2014, pp. 47-87) by encouraging people to adopt growth mindsets
(Dweck, 2007) about decision-making as a skill (Dhami et al., 2012). Learning how to
choose wisely is an important life skill that most schools simply and systematically do
not teach; instead, most schools teach students to obediently and robotically follow
other people’s instructions (Wager, 2001). Improving how American people make
personal and professional decisions addresses many of the current and future
challenges to U.S. democracy by improving U.S. competitiveness, education, health,
healthcare, innovation, jobs, living standards, productivity, profits, and wellness
(Stiglitz & Greenwald, 2014, pp. 466-67).
This pair of questions: 1) how do people make decisions and 2) how can
people’s decisions and (probability) judgments be improved define the field of
Behavioral Decision Research. In fact, using behavioral insights from studies of
people make decisions is referred to sometimes as BDR 1.0 and using behavioral
insights to help people make better decisions is referred to sometimes as BDR 2.0.
There are two main ways to help people make better decisions: 1) modify the
decision-maker and 2) modify the decision environment (Soll et al., 2015, p. 926).
Both ways of helping people make better decisions address the problem of people not
being in a state of decision readiness (Soll et al., 2015, p. 929). These three factors
determine whether a person is decision ready: 1) distraction and fatigue, 2) intense
emotional or visceral influences, and 3) individual differences or heterogeneity in
decision-related skills (Soll et al., 2015, p. 927). Some ways of helping people make
better decisions increase people’s decision readiness or change the decision
environment so that decision readiness is less crucial (Soll et al., 2015, p. 930).

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
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Huang (2015a, 2015b) proposes that governments can and should design laws
and policies that enable people to flourish and thrive by facilitating people learning to
make better decisions via mindfulness (Karelaia & Reb, (2015), thinking architecture
(Benartzi with Lewin, 2015; Benartzi & Lehrer, 2015), behavioral apps, which are
apps informed by behavioral research (see, for example, Levi & Benartzi, 2014), and
serious games teaching cognitive debiasing (Morewedge, 2015; Morewedge et al.,
2015). Shlomo Benartzi and John Payne introduce and define the phrase “learning
architecture” to be “a structured process that allows us to break down a complex
problem, such as what to do in retirement, into a series of manageable thinking steps,
so as to improve outcomes” (Benartzi & Levin, 2015, p. 5). Thinking architecture
differs from the familiar idea of traditional checklists because each of the steps in
thinking architecture “is designed to deal with a particular behavioral challenge or
mental blind spot … to fortify the weakest parts of the mind” (Benartzi & Levin,
2015, pp. 197-98).
Finally, positive parentonomics advocates the design of learning architecture
to allow people to better learn how to think about and make decisions (Huang,
2015b). The phrase “learning architecture” refers to conscious and intentional design
of spaces in which learners are intrinsically motivated to learn because learning is a
fun, joyful, and playful activity. One way to successfully implement learning
architecture is through designing serious games, so named because they are designed
to educate players (Connolly et al., 2014), and virtual-reality simulations. People are
motivated to and like to play well-designed games. There is evidence that children can
improve their problem-solving abilities by playing video games (Suziedelyte, 2015).
Neuroscientist/psychologist Richard Davidson is co-developing and testing prototypes
of two categories of games “to help eighth graders develop beneficial social and

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
30
emotional skills — empathy, cooperation, mental focus, and self-regulation” (Sakai,
2012), with the first game focusing on “improving attention and mental focus, likely
through breath awareness” (Sakai, 2012) and the second game focusing “on social
behaviors such as kindness, compassion, and altruism” (Bavelier & Davidson, 2013;
Greitemeyer et al., 2010).
Playing video games may even help improve people’s financial confidence,
decision-making, knowledge, self-efficacy, and initiating financial actions (Maynard
et al., 2013). In the video game Bite Club, players take on the role of vampires who
manage a bar for other vampires and save money for their own retirement. The tagline
for the game is: “when you are immortal, retirement is eternal.” A randomized control
trial study found that Bite Club players learned as much financial knowledge as other
people who read an informational pamphlet (Maynard et al., 2013; Ulen, 2013, p.
1371).
A reporter ended an interview of behavioral economist Richard Thaler for an
article in the Wall Street Journal by asking for Thaler’s thoughts about the idea of
empowering people to choose wisely by democratizing mindfulness and thinking
tools (Huang, 2015b). Thaler answered that he was “all for empowerment and
education, but the evidence is that it doesn’t work. That’s why I say make it easy”
(Powell, 2015). A reason to make things easy is that easy is not demotivating. On the
other hand, playing a fun computer video game can be challenging because it is not
(too) easy and hence also become self-motivating. People can and are also motivated
to practice and reinforce on their own playing a fun computer video game after being
instructed even just once about how to play the game. Motivation is a key to
successful education and learning. Adrenaline, dopamine, brain reward centers,
engagement, fun, and stimulating competitive instincts are important pathways to

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
31
having people become motivated to learn (Shefrin, 2013). Apps in particular and
computer technology in general can make a lot of mundane tracking of spending and
other financial tasks involving drudgery become framed instead as becoming
engaging and enjoyable play. More generally making saving fun and exciting as
opposed to boring and painful is a good idea. Hence the visceral appeal of prize-
linked or lottery-linked savings (Cookson, 2016).
Conclusion
Institutions in the form of various organizations, laws, and policies can play
and take on a number of roles, including creating incentives, coordinating individual
behavior, guiding self-selection, providing information, facilitating causal
explanations, and influencing people’s preferences (Bohnet, 2006). Reviewing past
and current research about how to apply positive psychology to building positive
(large) law firms; creating positive law schools; fostering innovation, creativity, and
entrepreneurship; understanding some of the complexities and subtleties of evaluating
policies with subjective well-being measures; and designing sustainable government
regulatory philosophy to teach people to make better decisions; we have sought to
demonstrate this one single overarching goal: through these and other roles,
institutions in the form of organizations, laws, and policies can help people achieve
and sustain blossoming, engaged, and zestful lives. We hope that our brief survey
helps point to “recommendations for how to change institutions for the better of
humankind” (Bohnet, 2006, p. 232). We strongly believe that applying evidence-
based positive psychology research to building positive law firms; creating positive
law schools; the organic fostering of innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship;
evaluating policies based upon subjective well-being measures; and the crafting of
positive government regulatory philosophy and policies all have the potential to

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
32
enable and sustain the flourishing and thriving of individuals, organizations,
institutions, and communities in diverse settings and ways.
Questions
1. How does empirical positive psychology research suggest blueprints for
building sustainable positive (large) law firms and other legal organizations?
2. What positive psychology interventions will help law school organically
change their cultures to graduate happy, resilient lawyers who are prepared to pursue
fulfilling legal practices with clients who feel well-cared and communities who feel
benefited by lawyers?
3. What positive psychology interventions foster innovation, creativity, and
entrepreneurship in individuals, organizations, communities, and societies?
4. What are the costs and benefits of employing measures of subjective well-
being, rather than of economic well-being, as well-being criteria and standards for
evaluating how law and policy affect individuals, communities, nations, the world,
and our environment?
5. How does positive psychology inform government regulatory policy’s
potential to enable individuals and communities to flourish and thrive, while neither
banning particular decisions nor prohibiting specific behaviors?
6. How is positive parentonomics different from libertarian paternalism?
7. What are social architecture, thinking architecture, and learning
architecture? How do they differ from choice architecture and information
architecture?

Huang Positive Institutions: Organizations, Laws, and Policies
33
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