Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life

Shigehiro Oishi
© 2025 | 256 pages

Synopsis

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—much like his father and grandfather before him. But is a happy life, or even a meaningful life, the only path to a good life?

In “Life in Three Dimensions,” Oishi enters into a debate that has animated psychology since 1984, when his mentor Ed Diener 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, Oishi's award-winning work has proposed a third dimension to a good psychological richness, a concept that prioritizes curiosity, exploration and a variety of experiences that help us grow as people.

“Life in Three Dimensions” explores the shortcomings of happiness and meaning as guides to a good life, pointing to complacency and regret as a "happiness trap" and narrowness and misplaced loyalty as a “meaning trap.” Psychological richness, Oishi proposes, balances the other two, offering insight and growth spurred by embracing uncertainty and challenges.

About the author

Shigehiro Oishi is the Marshall Field IV Professor of Psychology at UChicago. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2023). He received his bachelor’s degree at International Christian University in Tokyo, his master's of education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2000. He won the 2017 Society of Experimental Social Psychology Career Trajectory Award, the 2018 Carol and Ed Diener Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the 2021 Outstanding Achievement Award for Advancing Cultural Psychology.

His research focuses on culture, social ecology, and well-being. His lab is particularly interested in probing the concept of well being, and its predictors and consequences—as well as how these aspects might differ across cultures. Additionally, his research explores socio-ecological conditions that are detrimental or conducive to well-being, such as income inequality, residential mobility and walkability.

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