SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING

SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING

Definition
A person’s cognitive and affective evaluations of his or her life. It
include emotional reactions to events as well as cognitive
judgments of satisfaction and fulfillment
.
It is a broad concept that includes
Experiencing pleasant emotions
Low levels of negative moods
High life satisfaction
The positive experiences embodied in high subjective well-being
are a core concept of positive psychology
 HISTORY
 After World War II, survey researchers began polling people about their
happiness and life satisfaction using simple global survey questionnaires

 George Gallup, Gerald Gurin and Hadley Cantril pioneered the use of large-
scale surveys as an assessment technique.

 Diener (2000a) proposed that a national index be created in which

subjective well-being would be tracked over time.

 Early subjective well-being studies were characterized by very short scales

 Norman Bradburn showed that pleasant and unpleasant affect are

somewhat independent and have different correlates—they are not simply
opposites of one another.
 Reason For The scientific discipline of
subjective well-being grew rapidly
 People around the globe are entering a “postmaterialistic” world, in
which they are concerned with issues of quality of life beyond
economic prosperity
 It is particularly democratic—it grants respect to what people think
and feel about their lives.
 people in the Western nations have achieved a level of material
abundance and health that allows them to go beyond mere survival
in seeking the good life
 The growing trend toward individualism around the globe. They are
concern with their own feelings and beliefs
 Researchers succeeded in developing scientific methods for studying
subjective well-being.
 CONCEPTION OF SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING
 S.W.B is psychological construct concern with what people think about and how they
feel about lives.
 In hedonic conception, S.W.B is defined by the balance of pleasant and enjoyable
versus unpleasant event in person life (Hayborn,2008)
 It is more commonly employed in research is Diener’s (1894) “Tripartite structure “
consisting of measure of:
❶ Positive Affect (P.A)
experience of pleasant emotion
and moods
❷ Negative Affect (N.A)
experience of unpleasant emotion
and moods
Hedonic balance = overall equilibrium
between P.A & N.A
Measured by P.A - N.A
❸ Life Satisfaction (L.N)
Global judgment of one’s life
Satisfaction with specific life domain (love, work and play)
 CONCEPTION OF SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING
Eudaimonic conception of wellbeing emphasize the idea that “We flourish by
fully exercising our human capacity” (Haybron,2008, PP, 25-26)
It is strongly reliant on Maslow’s ideas of self actualization and Roger’s
concept of fully functioning person
Based on premise- people feel happy if they experience life purpose,
challenges and growth.
In this conception wellbeing is determine not by quality of one’s sensual
and emotional experience but by extent to which one is living up to one’s
potential; making progress towards attaining one’s valued goals; and living
life of meaning purpose and virtue
PERMA model Seligman (2011) offer five components
 Positive emotions – feeling good
 Engagement – being completely absorbed in activities
 Relationships – being authentically connected to others
 Meaning – purposeful existence
 Achievement – a sense of accomplishment and success
 THEORIES OF SUBJECTIVE WELLBEING
 Two basic types of theories of subjective wellbeing (Happ
❶Life circumstance theories (bottom up theories)
From a bottom-up perspective, happiness represents an accumulation of happy
experiences.
Bottom-up influences include external events, and broad situational and
demographic factors, including health and marital status.
Bottom-up approaches are based on the idea that there are universal basic
human needs and that happiness results from their fulfillment.
In support of this view, there is evidence that daily pleasurable events are
associated with increased positive affect, and daily unpleasant events or
hassles are associated with increased negative affect
research suggests that external events account for a much smaller proportion of
the variance in self-reports of SWB than top-down factors, such as personality
A theory proposed to explain the limited impact of external events on SWB is
hedonic adaptation. Based originally on the concept of a "hedonic treadmill
this theory proposes that positive or negative external events temporarily
increase or decrease feelings of SWB, but as time passes people tend to
become habituated to their circumstances and have a tendency to return to a
personal SWB "set point" or baseline level.
 THEORIES OF SUBJECTIVE WELLBEING
 ❷Dispositional/construct theories (Top down theories)
 In the top-down view, global features of personality influence the way a person
perceives events.
 Individuals may therefore have a global tendency to perceive life in a consistently
positive or negative manner, depending on their stable personality traits.
 Top-down theories of SWB suggest that people have a genetic predisposition to be
happy or unhappy and this predisposition determines their SWB "set point".
 Set Point theory implies that a person's baseline or equilibrium level of SWB is a
consequence of hereditary characteristics and therefore, almost entirely predetermined
at birth.
 They do not rule out the possibility that is it possible for individuals to experience long
term changes in SWB
 genetically influenced predisposition to SWB comes from findings that personality has a
large influence on long-term SWB.
 This has led to the dynamic equilibrium model of SWB. This model proposes that
personality provides a baseline for emotional responses.
 External events may move people away from the baseline, sometimes dramatically, but
these movements tend to be of limited duration, with most people returning to their
baseline eventually
Set Point theory
 MEASUREMENT OF SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING
 Life satisfaction is generally measured using a self-report method. A common measurement for life satisfaction is
questionnaires.
 Affective balance is also generally measured using a self-report method. An example of a measurement of
affective balance is the PANAS (Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule)
 Sometimes a single SWB question attempts to capture an overall picture. For example the World Happiness
Report uses a Cantril ladder survey
 In which respondents are asked to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10, and the worst
possible life being a 0, and are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale
Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS)
 The SWLS is a short 5-item instrument designed to measure global cognitive judgments of satisfaction with one's
life
 The scale usually requires only about one minute of a respondent's time.
 The scale is in the public domain and therefore you are free to use it without permission or charge by all
professionals
Scale of Positive and Negative Experience(SPANE)
 The SPANE is a 12-item questionnaire includes six items to assess positive feelings and six items to assess negative
feelings.
 For both the positive and negative items, three of the items are general (e.g., positive, negative) and three per
subscale are more specific (e.g., joyful, sad).
 Flourishing Scale (FS)
 The Flourishing Scale consists of eight items describing important aspects of human functioning ranging from
positive relationships, to feelings of competence, to having meaning and purpose in life.
 The scale was called Psychological Well-being in an earlier publication, but the name was changed to more
accurately reflect the content because the scale includes content that goes beyond psychological well-being
narrowly defined.
PROBLEMS IN MEASUREMENT OF SUBJECTIVE WELL- BEING
 The issue with the such measurements of life satisfaction and affective balance is that they are self-reports. The
problem with self-reports is that the participants may be lying or at least not telling the whole truth on the
questionnaires.

 Participants may be lying or holding back from revealing certain things because they are either embarrassed or
they may be filling in what they believe the researcher wants to see in the results

 To gain more accurate results, other methods of measurement have been used to determine one’s SWB.

❶ Another way to corroborate or confirm that the self-report results are accurate is through informant reports.
Informant reports are given to the participant’s closest friends and family and they are asked to fill out either a
survey or a form asking about the participants mood, emotions, and overall lifestyle

❷ Another method of gaining a better understanding of the true results is through ESM, or the Experience
Sampling Method.
In this measure, participants are given a beeper/pager that will randomly ring throughout the day. Whenever the
beeper/pager sounds, the participant will stop what he/she is doing and record the activity they are currently
engaged in and their current mood and feelings

❸A third measurement to ensure validity is the Day Reconstruction Method.

In this measure, participants fill out a diary of the previous days’ activities. The participant is then asked to describe
each activity and provide a report of how they were feeling, what mood they were experiencing, and any
emotions that surfaced
. To ensure valid results, a researcher may tend to use self-reports along with another form of measurement


Subjective Well-Being and Culture
 1) Cultures and countries can differ in the average level of subjective well-
being report by members or citizens
 Citizens of relatively wealthy, stable democratic countries usually report
greater subjective well-being than do the citizens of poorer non-democratic
or politically unstable countries
 2) cultures can differ in how strongly the three major components of
subjective well-being (positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction)
correlate with each other
 positive and negative emotions are more closely related to reports of life
satisfaction among Westerners than among Easterners
 3) cultures can differ in what predicts subjective well-being and what
subjective well-being predicts
 greater self-esteem is generally associated with greater subjective well-
being in almost all cultures, but the strength of this association can vary
across cultures
 the association between self-esteem and life satisfaction is usually smaller
among East Asian populations than among Western population.
 Cultural differences can influence subjective well-being in several ways.
 some studies suggest that relationship harmony and pursuing goals that
make other people happy are more closely related to subjective well-being
among Asians and Asian Americans than among European Americans
 HAPPINESS
 Happiness is a positive emotional state that is subjectively defined by each
person. The term is rarely used in scientific studies because there is little
consensus on its meaning.

 The term subjective well-being often is used as a synonym for happiness in

the psychology

 Theories of happiness have been divided into three types:

 (1) need/goal satisfaction theories

 psychoanalytic and humanistic theorists (Sigmund Freud and

 Abraham Maslow, respectively) suggested that the reduction of tension or
the satisfaction of needs lead to happiness.
 we are happy because we have reached our goals.
 Such "happiness as satisfaction" makes happiness a target of our
psychological pursuits.
 HAPPINESS
 (2) process/activity theories
 In the process/activity camp, theorists posit that engaging in particular life
activities generates happiness
 .
 Mike Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced CHEEK-SENT-ME-HIGH), who was
one of the first 20th-century theorists to examine process/activity
conceptualizations of happiness

 people who experience flow (engagement in interesting activities that

match or challenge task-related skills) in daily life tend to be very happy.

 process/activity theorists (e.g., Emmons, 1986; Snyder, 1994) have

emphasized how the process of pursuing goals generates energy and
happiness.

 This pursuit-of-happiness perspective mirrors America's founders‘ promise

of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
 HAPPINESS
 (3) Genetic personality predisposition (Diener et aI., 2002)

 Tend to see happiness as stable, whereas theorists in the happiness-as-satisfaction and

process/activity camps view it as changing with life conditions.

 This is theory of personality-based or biologically determined happiness.

 Theories suggesting that happiness may be a more stable personality trait or a characteristic
that is genetically based.

 Studies of the biological or genetic determinants of happiness have found that up to 40% of
positive emotionality and 55% of negative emotionality are genetically based about 50% of
the variance in happiness that is not explained by biological components.
 A Model of Complete Mental Health

 Ryff and Keyes (1995; Keyes & Lopez, 2002; Keyes & Magyar-Moe, 2003) combine
many principles of pleasure to define complete mental health. Specifically, they view
optimal functioning as the combination of
 Emotional well-being (as they refer to subjective well-being; defined as the presence
of positive affect and satisfaction with life and the absence of negative affect),
 Social well-being (incorporating acceptance, actualization, contribution,coherence,
and integration)
 Psychological well-being (combining self-acceptance, personal growth, purpose in life,
environmental mastery, autonomy, positive relations with others).
 Taking the symptoms of mental illness into consideration, they define "complete
mental health" as the combination of "high levels of symptoms of emotional well-
being, psychological well-being, and social well-being, as well as the absence of recent
mental illness“ (Keyes & Lopez, 2002, p. 49).

 This view of mental health combines all facets of well-being into a model that is both
dimensional (because extremes of mental health and illness symptomatology are
reflected) and categorical (because assignment to distinct diagnostic categories is
possible).
 This complete state model suggests that combined mental health and mental illness
symptoms may be ever-changing resulting in fluctuations in states of overall well-
being ranging from complete mental illness to complete mental health.
A Model of Complete Mental Health