Distinguished Professor Arthur Stone’s expertise in the measurement of subjective well-being has come to the attention of the national press. On August 1 he was quoted in a USA Today front page article about recent initiatives by governments to measure the happiness of citizens in other than economic terms. Dr. Stone chairs a National Academy of Sciences advisory panel that is evaluating methods for measuring subjective well-being for potential use in official surveys. In the article by Wendy Koch, titled “If money doesn't buy happiness,” Dr. Stone is quoted as saying that the advisory panel is wary about using the term “happiness” to describe what social scientists and governments are attempting to measure, partly because the concept of happiness is so ambiguous and partly because the measurement of pain and suffering is of equal importance.
On August 12, the New York Times Magazine referenced a recent publication by Dr. Stone and colleagues about the effects of day of the week on positive and negative mood. In an article titled “Day-of-week mood patterns in the United States: On the existence of ‘Blue Monday’, ‘Thank God it's Friday’ and weekend effects” published in the May 2012 issue of the Journal of Positive Psychology, Dr. Stone and colleagues presented evidence that Americans tend to experience better moods on weekends and Fridays and that moods on Mondays are not significantly different from those on other weekdays.