Happiness360

What is subjective well- being? A: Subjective well-being is the scientific name for how people evaluate their lives. People can evaluate their lives in terms of a global ...

Is happiness really a single subject matter? A: As mentioned above, SWB is really an umbrella term that includes several different components, and these components are somewhat independent. ...

Q: Is Subjective Well-Being important? A: First, happiness is important in and of itself because it is how people evaluate their own lives. Certainly, it is hard to ...

A: It turns out that, at least in western culture where the studies have been conducted, that SWB (high levels of positive affect, in particular) produces good outcomes in many areas. ...

A: Philosophers wrote extensively about happiness, and bookstores are crammed with self-help books about it. What we are trying to add is the scientific approach. Although the philosophers and other writers, ...

A: Subjective well-being is defined as how a person evaluates his or her own life. These evaluations can be more focal (e.g., marital satisfaction, or satisfaction with one's car) or broader ...

A: So many popular writers seem to search for the "key," and sometimes even offer what they think is THE key to happiness. But our research indicates that there is no ...

A: I'm sure there must be a lot of good advice in many of these books. My job, however, is to examine which of these claims are valid and which are ...

A: There are certainly genetic influences on SWB. One type of evidence for a genetic predisposition that influences both positive affect and negative affect are the twin studies. For example, in ...

A: A recent study by Diener and Seligman took a first look at the happiest 10 percent of college students. We used many different types of SWB measures to make sure ...

A: For many years the results of surveys have indicated that people in some societies say they are happier and more satisfied than people in other societies. For example, Diener, Diener, ...

A: Campbell and Brickman hypothesized that we live on a "hedonic treadmill" - that we react strongly to good events, but then come back to neutral. They called this a treadmill ...

A: When wealth is measured within countries, wealthier people seem to be slightly happier on average. But the effects of money on happiness in general are not large. Dire poverty is ...

A: As I have said repeatedly, I have no simple, easy answer that will make everyone happy. Some people with serious problems need to see a therapist and get professional help. ...

A: This is a 64,000 dollar question, about which we have surprisingly little direct evidence. We know that cognitive style correlates with SWB. We also have some studies where cognitive style ...

A: In large surveys very few people say that they are extraordinarily happy - that they are mostly elated and exuberant. For instance, only a few percent of people in most ...

A: There is clear evidence that different things make different people happy. For example, the correlates of happiness vary somewhat for young versus old people. We find that there are different ...

A: There are lots of theories, but no powerful theory has emerged that can explain most of the data. There are theories about social comparison, about adaptation, and many other aspects ...

A: Few would be surprised to learn that neurotic people are less happy. After all, neuroticism is the propensity to experience negative emotions. Our data repeatedly also show that extraverts are ...

A: People who use nonattachment ("it's not that important") might suffer less, at least consciously, from negative events. However, several studies also show that this strategy may result in being less ...

A: Randy Larsen and I have studied people varying in emotional intensity, and this individual difference seems to have little relation to SWB. Some intense people are high in SWB, and ...

A: If people are satisfied with their health, it predicts their life satisfaction moderately well. However, objective measures of health (e.g., a physician's objective rating, not the person's own satisfaction), are ...

A: Our research on physical attractiveness shows that it has a small, but positive, influence on SWB. Like income and health, the effect is not large. But there is a small ...

A: Many researchers in the area of subjective well-being avoid the term "happiness" because it has several different meanings. For example, it can mean a joyful state, it can mean long-term ...

A: Our work from around the world suggests that most people are happy, not unhappy. A minority of respondents are basically unhappy, and a smaller percentage are actually depressed. The average ...

A: We are finding that happiness is not something shallow, or just a gimmick or imaginary thing. We can measure people's SWB, not just through what they say, but also biologically ...

A. Many studies, including those based on broad, international samples, show that people who claim to be religious also report higher SWB. This effect is not always strong. For example, in ...

A: My son, Robert Biswas-Diener, is collecting data among the Amish, and they are very different from most western respondents. We have collected data among prostitues and the homeless in the ...

A: People's values influence the goals that they set for themselves. For example, people who place a high value on the environment might set a goal of recycling and composting. People ...

A. We have learned some important things about SWB, but there is much that is still uncertain. Oftentimes people will ask us questions for which we simply have no good answer. ...

A. Reporters sometimes think that the particular questions on their mind, rather than the one's scientists are studying or those that scientists know about, are the important ones. Thus, reporters sometimes ...