Inverting the pyramid of needs: Positive psychology's new order for labor success

Positive psychologists claim to have demonstrated a causal relationship between happiness and life success, with the former accounting for why people usually end up better off in life than others, especially at workplace.

In this paper we will analyse the role that happiness-based repertoires and techniques provided by positive psychologists are playing in the current labor sphere.

Positive psychologists’ repertoires and techniques do not only meet the emerging demands derived from the changes in the notions of “work” and “worker” in the last decades, but also introduce a whole new logic in the construction of professional workers’ subjectivity, according to which happiness becomes a necessary psychological state that workers must first achieve and develop in order to attain job success at work.

This emerging logic does not only circumscribe to the labor sphere, but also reflects a broader cultural and economic phenomenon.