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Subjective Well-Being

What is Subjective Well-Being?

Subjective Well-Being is a person's cognitive and affective evaluations of his or her life as a whole.

This includes experiencing high levels of pleasant emotions and moods, low levels of negative emotions and moods, and high life-satisfaction.

Definition

An Example of Subjective Well-Being

For Example...

A person who is working in a job that they both enjoy and receive fair extrinsic benefit (i.e. fair wages and health care benefit) would be more likely to have a more positive subjective well-being than a person who may be unhappy with their job, whether it is caused by not having an intrinsic interest in the job, receiving unrealistic extrinsic benefit, or a combination of the two.

This example looks more towards the Life Satisfaction component of subjective well-being

Summary of Subjective Well-Being: The Science of Happiness and Life Satisfaction

Summary

Oishi, Diener, and Lucas describe the literature that is available on Subjective Well-Being, covering the history of subjective well-being, how subjective well-being can be measured, the theoretical approaches to subjective well-being, current findings in the field of subjective well-being research, and what future research that the authors believe will be needed to further our understanding of subjective well-being in the future

History of Subjective Well-Being

Empirical studies of subjective well-being began to take place early in the twentieth century. Experiments included Flugel's study of moods, which initiated the modern experience-sampling approaches to measuring subjective well-being online as people go about their daily lives

History of Subjective Well-Being

Other experiments showed:

- Pleasant and unpleasant affects are somewhat independent of one another, so they must be studied separately to understand a person's well-being

- Getting rid of pain may not result in a corresponding increase in pleasure

There are several reviews on specific aspects and correlates of subjective well-being: Personality, Goals, Job Satisfaction,

Economic Status, Life Events, and Parenthood

Theoretical Approach to Subjective Well-Being

Many theories of happiness have been proposed, and those theories can be categorized into four groups...

Theoretical Approach to Subjective Well-Being

Need and Goal Satisfaction Theories

This category centers on the idea that reducing tensions (ex. the elimination of pain and the satisfaction of biological and psychological needs) leads to happiness.

Need and Goal Satisfaction Theories

These include Freud's Pleasure Principle and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs model

Research found that the level to which individuals' needs were met was positively associated with the level of their life satisfaction

Process or Activity Theories

Activity theorists continue to believe that taking part in an activity itself produces happiness, and that people who often experience "flow" (engaged in interesting activities that match their level of skill) tend to be happy

Process or Activity Theories

Goal researchers agree that having important goals and making progress toward goals are reliable indicators of well-being, and therefore goal theories can combine the elements of need satisfaction and pleasurable activity in explaining subjective well-being

Comparison Standards Theories

This category of theories suggest that there are no absolute factors that influence subjective well-being

There are three types of standards that have been proposed so far: The person's past level, social comparisons, and ideals

Comparison Standards Theories

If a person's life surpasses the standards to which they compare it, they will be satisfied and happy. On the other hand, if their life falls short of the comparison standards, the individual will be dissatisfied and unhappy

Genetic and Personality Predisposition Theories

One reason for the stability of subjective well-being is that there is a substantial genetic component to it; to some degree, people are born prone to be happy or unhappy

Genetic and Personality Predisposition Theories

When personality influences are examined in further detail, the traits that are most consistently linked to subjective well-being are extraversion and neruoticism, more specifically, cheerfulness and depression

Differences in subjective well-being also result from stable individual differences in how people think about the world

Measurement of Subjective Well-Being

Initially, the main research measures were self-report data that was provided by research participants, however there were major concerns on behalf or researchers.

Researchers were concerned whether self-report instruments are valid. After all, people might say that they are happy, yet not truly experience high subjective well-being. However, it was found that the self-report measures are connected with other types of assessment, including expert ratings based on interviews with respondents.

Measurement of Subjective Well-Being

Global judgements of life satisfaction do not faithfully correspond with the average mood or level of satisfaction experienced across many different moments or domains, because these judgements are likely to be influenced by a person's current mood, his or her beliefs about happiness, and the ease of retrieving positive and negative information

Current Findings Include...

Current Findings

  • Income is consistently related to subjective well-being both within-nation and between-nation analyses. However, income change over time has little net effect on subjective well-being

  • Age is also related to subjective well-being, but the effects are small and depend on the component of subjective well-being measured

  • Many individuals who experience radical changes in life circumstances (ex. becoming disabled, divorced, or unemployed) do not return to the pre-incidence level of happiness, and therefore, the concept of a "set-point" should not be deemed fixed

  • Happiness assessed at one point was associated with positive later outcomes. Happy people were also more likely to be in a stable romantic relationship then less happy people a decade later.

However, the relationship between happiness and important life outcomes is not always linear

Future Research

It is important, first, to increase our understanding of what each type of well-being measure reflects, and to develop reliable and valid non-self-report measures of well-being in the future.

Second, more attention should be paid to developmental processes. In particular, gene-environment interaction needs to be spelled out in the future to advance our understanding of "when" and "for whom" a particular life event has a lasting impact

Third, a longitudinal approach should be taken in an investigation of society and culture. Specifically, the way in which changes in politics, the economy, and culture have on the impact on people's well-being

Future Research

Finally, a rapidly developing new area of research is the influence of subjective well-being on future behavior and health

A New Experience to Further Understanding

A New Experience

As we have seen earlier, Life Satisfaction is one of the key components of subjective well-being. The following is a version of the Satisfaction with Life Scale. This exercise will help to determine how satisfied you are with your life currently. A similar version of this scale can be found in the Positive Psychology: Theory, Research and Applications Textbook

The following are five

statements that you may agree or disagree

with. using the 1-7 scale shown here, indicate your

level of agreement with each item by assigning the

appropriate number with the item in question. Please be open

and honest in your responses.

3 - Slightly Disagree

2 - Disagree

1 - Strongly Disagree

7 - Strongly Agree

6 - Agree

5 - Slightly Agree

4 - Neither Agree nor Disagree

Exercise

1. In most ways, my life is close to my ideal

2. The conditions of my life are excellent

3. I am satisfied with my life

4. So far, i have gotten the important things i want in life

5. If I could live my life over, i would change almost nothing

Results

Add up the numerical responses to the five items and use the following information to help interpret your results

What Do the Results Mean?

5-9 : Extremely dissatisfied with your life

10-14 : Very dissatisfied with your life

15-19 : Slightly dissatisfied with your life

20 : About neutral

21-25 : Somewhat satisfied with your life

26-30 : Very satisfied with your life

31-35 : Extremely satisfied with your life

Once you have your score from the exercise, you can then begin to reflect more fully on where you might like to make changes to build a greater sense of life satisfaction

Let's Get Creative!

The Art's Connection

Connection?

Overall, subjective well-being is a measure of a person's happiness. The smiley face that is depicted is a symbol that many people associate with happiness.

The words that make up the picture itself are some of the key words and topics that have a link to subjective well-being as well, the topic being the base of the image, and the key words making up the detail components.

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