Here are the 20 most popular Greater Good articles from the past year, according to Google Analytics, followed by our staff’s nominations for the 10 best (but not-as-popular) articles we published in 2025.
1. 14 Movies That Highlight the Best in Humanity: 2025, by Sahar Habib Ghazi, Maryam Abdullah, Zaid Jilani, Joanne Chen, Jason Marsh, Katherine Reynolds Lewis, Margaret Golden, Criss Cuervo, Jill Suttie, Jeremy Adam Smith, and Kia Afcari: It’s time again for the Greater Goodies, honoring movies from the past year that exemplify human strengths and virtues.
2. What Matters Most to People Who Are Dying, by Jill Suttie and Diane Button: A new book explains how facing mortality helps people figure out what matters most, providing life lessons for us all.
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3. Seven Ways to Shift Your Difficult Emotions, by Jill Suttie: A new book gives guidance on research-based ways to manage our emotions more effectively without suppressing them.
“Talking about death is talking about life. If you start to understand what, for you, is most important and what might be most meaningful for you at the end of life, then you can live differently now. ”
4. When You Feel Alone, Try This Practice, by Kira Newman, Jill Suttie, and Shuka Kalantari: Loneliness can be hard to shake, as former U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy found. But there are little steps we can take each day to feel more connected.
5. Seven Ways to Bring More Meaning to Your Life, by Jill Suttie: A psychologist argues that asking ourselves existential questions and recognizing our values can make life more fulfilling and meaningful.
6. How Forgiveness Changes You and Your Brain, by Emiliana Simon-Thomas: The three systems of the brain involved in forgiveness can improve our well-being in other areas of life.
7. Six Steps to Decluttering Your Life, by Beth Kurland: Organizing and getting rid of some of your belongings can be a satisfying way to feel better and practice gratitude and mindfulness.
8. Twelve Steps to Self-Forgiveness, by Fred Luskin and Lyndon Harris: After you hurt someone, there is a path toward making amends, emotional healing, and finding acceptance and peace with yourself.
9. How Poetry Changes You and Your Brain, by Mable Buchanan Palmer: Emerging research finds that poetry can help us feel happier, healthier, and more connected to each other.
10. The Six Points of Connection We All Need, by Aaron Hurst and Nancy Connolly: Research indicates that a variety of different social behaviors help prevent loneliness and foster a sense of community and belonging.
“Emotion regulation in its simplest form are the strategies that we use to manage our feelings to achieve good relationships, well-being, and goals. ”
11. 16 Ways People Find Purpose Around the World, by Jill Suttie: A new study suggests that even across cultures, there is a lot of similarity in where humans find purpose in life and how it brings us fulfillment.
12. 10 Scientific Tips to Make You Better at Conversation, by Kira Newman: A new book explores everything we think we know—and often get wrong—about having good conversations.
13. Are We Getting Self-Care Wrong?, by Shanna B. Tiayon: Real self-care helps us manage stress in healthy ways—but some things we turn to for comfort don’t fit that bill.
14. What’s Driving Political Violence in America?, by Jeremy Adam Smith and Zaid Jilani: New research explores why political violence is rising—and what we can do to stop it.
15. How to Be Happier in Your Working Life, by Kia Afcari and Arthur Brooks: A new book offers science-based strategies to help you find more love, enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning in work and life.
16. What Does an Emotionally Regulated Adult Look Like?, by Kira Newman and Marc Brackett: A new book by Marc Brackett explains how learning the skill of emotion regulation can help us build a better life.
“When people have to handle extreme levels of messaging, going back and forth with lots more people simultaneously, it overwhelms their ability to be thoughtful, build empathy, or understand one another. ”
17. The Three Styles of Curiosity, by Kira Newman: A new study uncovers different ways we seek out information and why they might matter for our well-being and our societies.
18. How Social Media Brings Out the Worst in Us, by Jill Suttie and Nicholas Carr: A new book argues that social media does more harm than good and we might be happier and healthier using it less.
19. How to Help Your Kids Regulate Their Emotions, by Kira Newman and Marc Brackett: Marc Brackett explains what’s wrong with the way society teaches (or doesn’t teach) children about dealing with feelings—and how we can do better.
20. Feel Like Something’s Missing? Try to Live an Interesting Life, by Jill Suttie: A new book offers a potential alternative to aiming for a happy or a meaningful life.
Editors’ Picks
We polled our staff on their personal favorites from the past year—and came up with more you might also consider reading, listed by number of votes they received.
1. What Can Artificial Intelligence Teach Us About Human Love?, by Sahar Habib Ghazi: New research finds that AI companions can provide emotional support, intimacy, and personal growth, but they can also erode human relationships.
2. How Research Cuts Are Hurting the Science of a Meaningful Life, by Jill Suttie: Everything we offer at Greater Good is based on scientific research. Now that work is being threatened.
3. How Science and Culture Are Under Attack—and What We Can Do About It, by Jeremy Adam Smith: We are going to need to work together to defend scientific research, schools, universities, libraries, news organizations, and museums against government attacks.
“Societies that focus solely on economic growth may overlook other essential drivers of life satisfaction, such as job quality, a sense of personal freedom, strong social connections, and positive emotional experiences. ”
4. What Role Does Pleasure Play in Happiness?, by Todd B. Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener: Happiness is multifaceted, and we should be wary of discounting pleasure and enjoyment as shallow or self-indulgent.
5. Why Some Countries Are Happier Than Their Wealth Suggests, by Mohsen Joshanloo: Wealth alone does not determine how happy a nation is. Certain low-income countries are remarkably efficient at generating happiness.
6. How to Recover After Acting Against Your Own Values, by Diana Divecha and Robin Stern: Moral injury is the harm that we suffer when we’re asked to engage in or allow actions that seriously go against our moral values.
7. How Alternative Housing Can Bring Us Happiness and Community, by Courtney E. Martin: Nuclear families are no longer the norm in the United States. Could community living arrangements help us find the connection and support we crave?
8. What Is Love? Scientists Have Answers—But They Don’t All Agree, by Katherine Reynolds Lewis: Researchers across disciplines have attempted to define, categorize, and measure the elusive experience of love.
9. We’re Missing the Good News About Youth Mental Health, by Anya Kamenetz: There is a lot of positive news about young people’s well-being that is not receiving much attention.
10. How the Sunk Cost Fallacy Can Drive Bad Decisions, by Elizabeth Svoboda: The more we’ve invested in past decisions, the more reluctant we are to bail out. But we can correct this bias by counting the costs of staying on course.
