Week 18 Reading 3
Happiness: The Science of Subjective Well-Being
Key terms:
Happiness: The popular word for subjective well-being. Scientists sometimes avoid using
this term because it can refer to different things, such as feeling good, being satisfied, or
even the causes of high subjective well-being.
Internal causes: The person’s outlook and habitual response tendencies that influence their
happiness—for example, their temperament or optimistic outlook on life.
External causes: Situational factors outside the person that influence his or her subjective
well-being, such as good and bad events and circumstances such as health and wealth.
Life satisfaction: A person reflects on their life and judges to what degree it is going well, by
whatever standards that person thinks are most important for a good life.
Positive feelings: Desirable and pleasant feelings. Moods and emotions such as enjoyment
and love are examples.
Negative feelings: Undesirable and unpleasant feelings that people tend to avoid if they can.
Moods and emotions such as depression, anger, and worry are examples.
Subjective well-being: The name that scientists give to happiness—thinking and feeling that
our lives are going very well.
Adaptation: The fact that after people first react to good or bad events, sometimes in a
strong way, their feelings and reactions tend to dampen down over time and they return
toward their original level of subjective well-being.
Self-report-scales: Self-report surveys or questionnaires in which participants indicate their
levels of subjective well-being, by responding to items with a number that indicates how
well off they feel.
Types of Happiness:
Three major types of happiness are:
o high life satisfaction
o frequent positive feelings
o infrequent negative feelings
“Subjective well-being” is the label given by scientists to the various forms of happiness
taken together. Although there are additional forms of SWB, the three in the table below
have been studied extensively. The table also shows that the causes of the different types of
happiness can be somewhat different.
You can see in the table that there are different causes of happiness, and that these
causes are not identical for the various types of SWB. Therefore, there is no single
key, no magic wand—high SWB is achieved by combining several different important
elements. Thus, people who promise to know the key to happiness are
oversimplifying.
Some people experience all three elements of happiness—they are very satisfied,
enjoy life, and have only a few worries or other unpleasant emotions.
Other unfortunate people are missing all three.
Most of us also know individuals who have one type of happiness but not another:
o imagine an elderly person who is completely satisfied with her life—she has
done most everything she ever wanted—but is not currently enjoying life that
much because of the infirmities of age.
o There are others who show a different pattern, for example, who really enjoy
life but also experience a lot of stress, anger, and worry.
o And there are those who are having fun, but who are dissatisfied and believe
they are wasting their lives.
Causes of Subjective Well-Being:
People can be happy or unhappy because of their personalities and the way they think
about the world (internal causes) or because of the external circumstances in which they
live (external causes).
Inborn temperament:
o Inborn tendency to experience positive or negative emotional states
o Genes account for:
40% of pleasant emotions
55% of unpleasant emotions
48%of overall well-being
Personality:
o results from an interaction between inborn temperament and the environment
o Extroversion: Invigorated by socializing, more positive emotions
o Neuroticism: rapid arousal and slow relaxation, dramatic but in a negative way, more
negative emotions
Outlook:
o Optimism vs pessimism
o Cognitive hope: even when others get discouraged, I know I can find a solution to the
problem.
o Emotional hope: I believe that each day has potential.
o There is only a weak association between outlook and SWB
Resilience: ability to adapt to changes and challenges, positively associated with happiness
Societal Influences on Happiness:
A very important influence on how happy people are is the society in which they live.
Figure 1 shows life satisfaction around the world. You can see that some nations, those with
the darkest shading on the map, are high in life satisfaction. Others, the lightest shaded
areas, are very low.
Much of North America and Europe have relatively high life satisfaction, and much of Africa
is low in life satisfaction.
For life satisfaction living in an economically developed nation is helpful because when
people must struggle to obtain food, shelter, and other basic necessities, they tend to be
dissatisfied with lives.
However, other factors, such as trusting and being able to count on others, are also crucial
to the happiness within nations
For enjoying life our relationships with others seem more important than living in a
wealthy society.
Having more real life friends increases happiness (vs more online friends).
One factor that predicts unhappiness is conflict—individuals in nations with high internal
conflict or conflict with neighboring nations tend to experience low SWB.
Money and Happiness:
Will money make you happy? A certain level of income is needed to meet our needs, and
very poor people are frequently dissatisfied with life
However, having more and more money has diminishing returns—higher and higher
incomes make less and less difference to happiness.
Wealthy nations tend to have higher average life satisfaction than poor nations.
The goal is to find a level of income that you can live with and earn. Don’t let your
aspirations continue to rise so that you always feel poor, no matter how much money you
have.
Research shows that:
o materialistic people often tend to be less happy
o putting your emphasis on relationships and other areas of life besides just money is a
wise strategy.
o Spending money on buying something for someone else or donating to charity
makes you happier than if you spend it on yourself
When too many other valuable things are sacrificed to earn a lot of money—such as
relationships or taking a less enjoyable job—the pursuit of money can harm happiness.
People’s aspirations are what they want in life, including income, occupation, marriage, and
so forth. If people’s aspirations are high, they will often strive harder, but there is also a risk
of them falling short of their aspirations and being dissatisfied. The goal is to have
challenging aspirations but also to be able to adapt to what actually happens in life.
One’s outlook and resilience are also always very important to happiness.
Happiness comes not to people who never have problems—there are no such individuals—
but to people who are able to bounce back from failures and adapt to disappointments.
Adaptation to Circumstances:
When good and bad events occur, people often react strongly at first, but then their
reactions adapt over time and they return to their former levels of happiness.
For instance, many people are euphoric when they first marry, but over time they grow
accustomed to the marriage and are no longer ecstatic.
People also adapt over time to bad events. However, people take a long time to adapt to
certain negative events such as unemployment.
Some people are resilient and bounce back quickly after a bad event, and others are fragile
and do not ever fully adapt to the bad event.
Outcomes of High Subjective Well-Being:
Most of the evidence so far suggests that happy people are healthier, more sociable, more
productive, and better citizens. Research shows that the happiest individuals are usually
very sociable. The table below summarizes some of the major findings.
This does not mean that people should be constantly euphoric. In fact, it is appropriate and
helpful sometimes to be sad or to worry. Most successful people in the workplace seem to
be those who are mostly positive but sometimes a bit negative.
What is not helpful is to be chronically unhappy.
Measuring Happiness:
SWB researchers have relied primarily on self-report scales to assess happiness—how
people rate their own happiness levels on self-report surveys. People respond to numbered
scales to indicate their levels of satisfaction, positive feelings, and lack of negative feelings.
Another method is by filling out the Flourishing Scale below
There are scales to measure life satisfaction, positive and negative feelings, and whether a
person is psychologically flourishing.
Flourishing has to do with whether a person:
o feels meaning in life
o has close relationships
o feels a sense of mastery over important life activities.
The self-report scales have proved to be relatively valid, although people can lie, or fool
themselves, or be influenced by their current moods or situational factors.
Because the scales are imperfect, well-being scientists also sometimes use biological
measures of happiness:
o the strength of a person’s immune system
o measuring various brain areas that are associated with greater happiness
Scientists also use reports by family, coworkers, and friends—these people reporting how
happy they believe the target person is.
Some Ways to Be Happier:
Prescriptions about how to achieve more happiness are often oversimplified because
happiness has different components and prescriptions need to be aimed at where each
individual needs improvement
Ways to increase SWB:
o Exercise
o Get off social media
o Increase real life social interactions
People with prolonged serious unhappiness might need help from a professional
