His mother, Esther Edelman Levine, was also a professor of school psychology at Queens College, City University of New York.
[2] Later he moved to California State University, Fresno, where he was the Professor of Psychology and later chairperson of the department, as well as Associate Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics.
In one program, Levine and his students compared 31 countries around the world regarding their pace of everyday life.
By working with the United Nations and the country of Bhutan, he explored how to enhance world happiness.
Lastly, he studied the self, where he researched "an array of characters and conditions that challenge our assumptions about who we are and, most importantly, what we are capable of becoming.
[6] His second book is called The Power of Persuasion: How We’re Bought and Sold, which discusses how people prod, praise, and manipulate others into doing things they did not believe they could do, and later feel guilty for doing so.