Subjective wellbeing

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Personal wellbeing in the UK 2012 - 13.png

Subjective well-being (English: subjective well-being , short: SWB) describes the self-perceived feeling of happiness in life or satisfaction with life. There are also measures of objective well-being that attempt to capture a person's quality of life . If you combine both areas, you get well-being as an indicator of prosperity on a national and international level.

Sometimes a distinction is made between subjective and objective well-being (SWB / OWB) a third distinct aspect, psychological or psychological well-being (PWB). However, SWB and PWB are also used synonymously.

History and background

Considerations about happiness, happiness or the good life go back to the earliest philosophers and thinkers (see also Philosophy of Happiness ). The idea of ​​SWB as it is today can be traced back to the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham , who believed that the basis of a good life was the presence of joy and pleasure and the absence of pain.

One of the earliest empirical works in this direction comes from John C. Flügel (1925), who examined the moods of people by recording emotional events for them and adding up the emotional reactions over the moments.

The scientific, particularly empirical, investigation of SWB began with the advent of positive and humanistic psychology in the 1970s and 80s. Its aim was to expand the focus of science, which had previously concentrated on negative aspects (e.g. mental disorders ), to include positive aspects (e.g. happiness , optimism , trust ).

Components

Although SWB is often used synonymously for luck, it should be noted that it is a collective term that brings together various phenomena. A broader consensus consists in dividing affective and cognitive aspects into two parts. In an early work on SWB, Ed Diener (1984) identified three essential, independent components of subjective well-being: life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. Diener later added area satisfaction (1999).

If SWB is measured on the basis of the cognitive aspect of life satisfaction, this is normally distributed in the population . The highest possible level of life satisfaction is 0.3–1.6%, depending on the population examined. If SWB is recorded on the basis of the affective aspects, it shows a positive skew (right skew ) distribution.

Influencing factors

In 1974 Richard Easterlin examined the relationship between income and happiness and found that more income does not necessarily make people happier (see also Easterlin's Paradox ). Easterlin's results were not without controversy and are still the basis for further research on an international and micro-level.

In the course of the last few decades, a large number of other variables and their effects on subjective well-being have been investigated, including age, gender, personality, education, employment relationships, marriage, religion and many more.

Theories

So far there is no comprehensive theory that could explain all aspects of subjective well-being. Well-known approaches are:

literature

  • Ed Diener : The Science of Well-Being: The Collected Works of Ed Diener . Springer Netherlands, 2009, ISBN 978-90-481-2349-0 .
  • Ed Diener: Culture and Well-Being: The Collected Works of Ed Diener . Springer Netherlands, 2009, ISBN 978-90-481-2351-3 .
  • Ed Diener: Assessing Well-Being: The Collected Works of Ed Diener . Springer Netherlands 2009, ISBN 978-90-481-2353-7 .
  • E. Diener, EM Suh, RE Lucas, HL Smith: Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress. In: Psychological Bulletin. 125 (1999), pp. 276-302.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David G. Myers, S. Hoppe-Graff, B. Keller: Psychology . 2nd ext. u. updated edition. Springer, 2008, ISBN 978-3-540-79032-7 , p. 576.
  2. Ryff, 1989.
  3. Ryff & Keyes, 1995.
  4. Renate Frank: Promoting well-being: Positive therapy in practice . 1st edition. Klett-Cotta, 2010, ISBN 978-3-608-89091-4 , p. 61/62.
  5. Psychological Well-Being. - Article on the website of grossnationalhappiness ( gross national happiness )
  6. Shane J. Lopez, CR Snyder: The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology. Oxford Univ. Press, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-986216-0 , p. 187.
  7. JC Flugel: A quantitative study of feeling and emotion in everyday life. In: British Journal of Psychology. 15 (April 1925), pp. 318-355.
  8. ^ E. Diener: Subjective well-being. In: Psychological Bulletin. 95: 542-575 (1984).
  9. ^ Gerhard Henrich, Peter Herschbach: Questions on Life Satisfaction (FLZM) - A Short Questionnaire for Assessing Subjective Quality of Life . In: European Journal of Psychological Assessment . tape 16 , no. 3 , September 2000, ISSN  1015-5759 , pp. 150–159 , doi : 10.1027 // 1015-5759.16.3.150 ( hogrefe.com [accessed May 9, 2020]).
  10. ^ John R. Crawford, Julie D. Henry: The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS): Construct validity, measurement properties and normative data in a large non-clinical sample . In: British Journal of Clinical Psychology . tape 43 , no. 3 , September 2004, p. 245–265 , doi : 10.1348 / 0144665031752934 ( crossref.org [accessed May 15, 2020]).
  11. ^ Richard Easterlin: Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? In: Paul A. David, Melvin W. Reder (Eds.): Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of Moses Abramovitz. Academic Press, New York 1974.
  12. ^ P. Dolan, T. Peasgood, M. White: Do we really know what makes us happy? A review of the economic literature on the factors associated with subjective well-being . In: Journal of economic psychology. 29 (2008), pp. 94-122.