Definitions from APA dictionary:

 Well-being: A state of happiness and contentment, with low levels of distress, overall
good physical and mental health and outlook, or good quality of life.
 Happiness: An emotion of joy, gladness, satisfaction, and well-being
Approaches to well-being and happiness
 Hedonism theory
 Eudaimonism theory
 Seligman: Authentic happiness & PERMA
 Broaden and built theory
 Languishing to flourishing
Hedonism
 Hedonism refers to feelings of pleasure
 According to ancient philosophers such as Epicurus, behaviour which results in
pleasure is right, and whatever increases pain is wrong
 Our life's goal should be to minimize pain and maximize pleasure” - Epicurus, Greek
philosopher
 Hedonism theorists are of the view that humans are psychologically constructed in
such a way that we exclusively seek pleasure
 Finding positive emotions, fostering positive emotions and creating high levels of
happiness
Eudaimonism
 Eudaimonia: A life in which the person flourishes, or fulfills their true potential. Such
a life could include many positive emotional experiences; no single feeling can be
considered as a representation of Eudaimonia.
 The eudaimonia approach to studying well-being defines happiness in terms of
achieving one’s fullest potential.
Criticism:
 It is not clear how the judgment of achieving one’s full potential can be made
 To find a definition of well-being that is broad enough to capture the full range of
eudaimonic experiences, is difficult

HEDONIC APPROACH EUDAIMONIC APPROACH

Finding positive emotions Expanding potentials/flourishing/

thriving

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 Fostering positive emotions Cultivating personal growth

Creating high levels of happiness Creating high levels of happiness

(through seeking pleasure/ avoiding (through flourishing)
pain)

Kahnemann, Diener & Schwartz (1999); Ryan & Deci (2001)

Authentic happiness Theory

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 • Positive emotions about the past, present, and future.
• Hedonic: Pursuit of increasing positive emotions /
pleasures irrespective of consequences
• Attempts to amplify these pleasures
• Enjoying moments of joy – good food, enjoyable
activities
Pleasant life • Small contribution to happiness
Limitations
• Temporary, fleeting experience
• Habituation and tolerance : After a few trials, tolerance
develops
• Consequences may lead to unhappiness in the long run,
in some cases

• A life of involvement, using positive strengths and talents

in pursuit of what one enjoys.
• Using one's strengths in activities that one finds
challenging and rewarding
Engaged life • No shortcuts; like there are to pleasures- Requires effort
• FLOW experienced while pursuing activities that
absolutely absorb us
• Expanding one’s creativity, doing interesting work
• Large contribution to happiness

• A life of significance, using positive strengths in pursuit

of belonging to and serving causes higher than oneself.
• Social connection, service to others
Meaningful life “People who want to live a more fulfilling life should quit
reading self help books and start helping others” -
Biswas-Diener, and Dean (2007) Example: Social
connection, service to others
• Very large contribution to happiness

Seligman:
• Most individuals, are “more likely to go for the pleasure of watching a football game
than for the gratification of tackling Sandberg’s biography of Lincoln”
• That is, we chose simpler pleasures over complex ones when they are presented
together
• However, one does realize that long-term happiness in higher level creatures is only
possible through a combination of pleasant emotions, engaging and meaningful
activities

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 • Seligman considers that positive psychology ought to be descriptive NOT prescriptive
and hence, the theories ought to be neutral
• Thus, the pleasant, engaged and meaningful life – both in a normal as well as an
antisocial person’s life will contribute to their overall happiness– irrespective of the
moral aspect
• A serial killer leads a pleasant life
• A skilled hit man leads an engaged life
• A fanatical terrorist leads a meaningful life
• However, a serial killer’s happiness is likely to be far less enduring and his means of
achieving that happiness is expected to land him in trouble as compared to another
person who functions within societal norms in the pursuit of happiness
PERMA Theory
• P - Positive emotions as in the pleasant life experience of Authentic happiness theory;
pleasure
• E - Engagement as in the engaged life experience of Authentic happiness theory; state
of flow
• R* - Relationships, social connectedness, a sense of belongingness
• M - Meaningfulness as in the meaningful life experience of Authentic happiness
theory; serving a
• greater cause
• A* - Accomplishment, a sense of achievement through reaching personal and
professional goal
• People will derive well-being from each of these five building blocks to varying
degrees.
• What is human flourishing and what enables it? Answer is PERMA
• Flourishing:
• Optimal functioning, indicator of well being
• Flourishing: “Gold standard” for assessing well being
Conclusion:
• PERMA maybe considered as indicator of well-being; as PERMA components cover
a wide range of factors associated with well-being
• New theory; more work required in the area to understand applicability across
cultures and contexts
PERMA Profiler link

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The Mental Health Continuum: From Languishing to Flourishing in Life (Corey L. M.
Keyes)

 There exists no standard by which to measure, diagnose, and study the presence of
mental health; science, by default, portrays mental health as the absence of
psychopathology (Keyes, 2005)
 Mental health has been studied for too long as merely the absence of mental illness.

 Keyes (2007): The presence of mental health is described as flourishing, while the
absence of mental health is characterized as languishing in life.
 Keyes (2006) identified that flourishing individuals have an enthusiasm for life and
are productively engaged with others and with society.
 Huppert (2009): Flourishers seem to have excellent mental and physical health and
are more resilient to vulnerabilities and challenges in life than non-flourishers.
 Flourishing: Positive functioning manifested through healthy relationships, resilience
in the face of personal challenges, and engagement with the world

Broaden and Build theory of positive emotions– Barbara Fredrickson (2004)

Positive emotions broaden people’s momentary thought-action repertoires and lead to actions
that build enduring personal resources.

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  According to this theory, experiencing any positive emotion should immediately and
temporarily “broaden” attention, cognitive, and behavioral responses. This is in
comparison to negative emotions which narrow our attention and behaviors to the
threat in our environment, so that we can behave in such a way as to avoid or reduce
the threat.
 During this broadening period our possible behaviors are “flexible” (Fredrickson &
Cohn, 200, p. 782). Flexible, means that there are many possible approach behaviors
we could exhibit for a positive emotion. Again, in comparison to negative emotions
which typically result in one behavior – attack, avoidance- behave in such a way as to
avoid or reduce the threat.
 Over a long period of time as we continue to experience positive emotions that
broaden our attention/thoughts/behaviors, this process will lead us to build personal
resources. These personal resources, in turn, have a direct impact on improved health,
life satisfaction, and depressive symptoms. So, broadening and building as adaptive
processes that improve survival and well-being.
 Summary: The broaden hypothesis states: “Positive emotions broaden the scopes of
attention, cognition, and action, widening the array of percepts, thoughts, and actions
presently in mind” . The narrow hypothesis states that negative emotions narrow
attention to focus on the threat in the environment.
 Reading material link
Conclusion
• Different theoretical models have been proposed through the years by researchers from
various disciplines such as philosophy, psychology and biology
• These models attempt to understand well-being from different standpoints as a complete
understanding of well-being will need to include these different perspectives
• Complex phenomenon; random factors and subjective experiences makes it difficult to
describe, predict, and assess it

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• Since well-being is a complex phenomena comprising of many elements, investigators need
to be careful in selecting the variables they wish to explore when studying different
populations and different contexts