Happiness economics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The economics of happiness or happiness economics is the quantitative and theoretical study of happiness, positive and negative affect, well-being, quality of life, life satisfaction and related concepts, typically combining economics with other fields such as psychology, health and sociology. It typically treats such happiness-related measures, rather than wealth, income or profit, as something to be maximized. The field has grown substantially since the late 20th century, for example by the development of methods, surveys and indices to measure happiness and related concepts. Its findings have been described as a challenge to the economics profession.

Subject classifications

The subject may be categorized in various ways, depending on specificity, intersection, and cross-classification. For example, within the Journal of Economic Literature classification codes, it has been categorized under:

• Welfare economics at JEL: D63 – Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
• Health, education, and welfare at JEL: I31 – General Welfare; Basic needs; Living standards; Quality of life; Happiness
• Demographic economics at JEL:J18 – Public Policy.

Metrology

Given its very nature, reported happiness is subjective. It is difficult to compare one person's happiness with another's. It can be especially difficult to compare happiness across cultures. However, many happiness economists believe they have solved this comparison problem. Cross-sections of large data samples across nations and time demonstrate consistent patterns in the determinants of happiness.

Happiness is typically measured using subjective measures – e.g. self-reported surveys – and/or objective measures. One concern has always been the accuracy and reliability of people's responses to happiness surveys. Objective measures such as lifespan, income, and education are often used as well as or instead of subjectively reported happiness, though this assumes that they generally produce happiness, which while plausible may not necessarily be the case. The terms quality of life or well-being are often used to encompass these more objective measures.

Some scientists claim that happiness can be measured both subjectively and objectively by observing the joy center of the brain lit up with advanced imaging, although this raises philosophical issues, for example about whether this can be treated as more reliable than reported subjective happiness. 

Micro-econometric happiness equations have the standard form: ${\displaystyle W_{it}=\alpha +\beta {x_{it}}+\epsilon _{it}}$. In this equation ${\displaystyle W}$ is the reported well-being of individual ${\displaystyle i}$ at time ${\displaystyle t}$, and ${\displaystyle x}$ is a vector of known variables, which include socio-demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.

Happiness, well-being, or satisfaction with life, was seen as unmeasurable in classical and neo-classical economics. Van Praag was the first person who organized large surveys in order to explicitly measure welfare derived from income. He did this with the Income Evaluation Question (IEQ). This approach is called the Leyden School. It is named after the Dutch university where this approach was developed. Other Researchers included Arie Kapteyn and Aldi Hagenaars.

Determinants

GDP and GNP

Typically national financial measures, such as gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national product (GNP), have been used as a measure of successful policy. There is a significant association between GDP and happiness, with citizens in wealthier nations being happier than those in poorer nations. It has been argued that this relationship extends only to an average GDP per capita of about $15,000. In the 2000s, several studies have obtained the opposite result, so this Easterlin paradox is controversial.

Individual income

Historically, economists have said that well-being is a simple function of income. However, it has been found that once wealth reaches a subsistence level, its effectiveness as a generator of well-being is greatly diminished. Happiness economists hope to change the way governments view well-being and how to most effectively govern and allocate resources given this paradox.

In 2010, Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton found that higher earners generally reported better life satisfaction, but people's day-to-day emotional well-being only rose with earnings until a threshold annual income of $75,000.

Other factors have been suggested as making people happier than money. A short term course of psychological therapy is 32 times more cost effective at increasing happiness than simply increasing income.

Scholars at the University of Virginia, University of British Columbia and Harvard University released a study in 2011 after examining numerous academic paper in response to an apparent contradiction: "When asked to take stock of their lives, people with more money report being a good deal more satisfied. But when asked how happy they are at the moment, people with more money are barely different than those with less." Published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the study is entitled "If Money Doesn't Make You Happy, Then You Probably Aren't Spending It Right" and included the following eight general recommendations:

• Spend money on "experiences" rather than goods.
• Donate money to others, including charities, rather than spending it solely on oneself.
• Spend small amounts of money on many small, temporary pleasures rather than less often on larger ones.
• Don't spend money on "extended warranties and other forms of overpriced insurance."
• Adjust one's mindset to "pay now, consume later," instead of "consume now, pay later."
• Exercise circumspection about the day-to-day consequences of a purchase beforehand.
• Rather than buying products that provide the "best deal," make purchases based on what will facilitate well-being.
• Seek out the opinions of other people who have prior experience of a product before purchasing it.

In their "Unhappy Cities" paper, Edward Glaeser, Joshua Gottlieb and Oren Ziv examined the self-reported subjective well-being of people living in American metropolitan areas, particularly in relation to the notion that "individuals make trade-offs among competing objectives, including but not limited to happiness." The researchers findings revealed that people living in metropolitan areas where lower levels of happiness are reported are receiving higher real wages, and they suggest in their conclusion that "humans are quite understandably willing to sacrifice both happiness and life satisfaction if the price is right."

Social security

Ruut Veenhoven claimed that social security payments do not seem to add to happiness. This may be due to the fact that non-self-earned income (e.g., from a lottery) does not add to happiness in general either. Happiness may be the mind's reward to a useful action. However, Johan Norberg of CIS, a free enterprise economy think tank, presents a hypothesis that as people who think that they themselves control their lives are more happy, paternalist institutions may decrease happiness.

An alternative perspective focuses on the role of the welfare state as an institution that improves quality of life not only by increasing the extent to which basic human needs are met, but also by promoting greater control of one's life by limiting the degree to which individuals find themselves at the mercy of impersonal market forces that are indifferent to the fate of individuals. This is the argument suggested by the U.S. political scientist Benjamin Radcliff, who has presented a series of papers in peer reviewed scholarly journals demonstrating that a more generous welfare state contributes to higher levels of life satisfaction, and does so to rich and poor alike.

Employment

Generally, the well-being of those who are employed is higher than those who are unemployed. Employment itself may not increase subjective well-being, but facilitates activities that do (such as supporting a family, philanthropy, and education). While work does increase well-being through providing income, income level is not as indicative of subjective well-being as other benefits related to employment. Feelings of autonomy and mastery, found in higher levels in the employed than unemployed, are stronger predictors of subjective well-being than wealth.

When personal preference and the amount of time spent working do not align, both men and women experience a decrease in subjective well-being. The negative effect of working more or working less than preferred has been found across multiple studies, most finding that working more than preferred (over-employed) is more detrimental, but some found that working less (under-employed) is more detrimental. Most individuals' levels of subjective well-being returned to "normal" (level previous to time mismatch) within one year. Levels remained lower only when individuals worked more hours than preferred for a period of two years or more, which may indicate that it is more detrimental to be over-employed than under-employed in the long-term.

Employment status effects are not confined to the individual. Being unemployed can have detrimental effects on a spouse's subjective well-being, compared to being employed or not working (and not looking for work). Partner life satisfaction is inversely related to the number of hours their partner is underemployed. When both partners are underemployed, the life-satisfaction of men is more greatly diminished than women. However, just being in a relationship reduces the impact unemployment has on the subjective well-being of an individual. On a broad scale, high rates of unemployment negatively affect the subjective well-being of the employed.

Becoming self-employed can increase subjective well-being, given the right conditions. Those who leave work to become self-employed report greater life satisfaction than those who work for others or become self-employed after unemployment; this effect increases over time. Those who are self-employed and have employees of their own report higher life-satisfaction than those who are self-employed without employees, and women who are self-employed without employees report a higher life satisfaction than men in the same condition.

The effects of retirement on subjective well-being vary depending on personal and cultural factors. Subjective well-being can remain stable for those who retire from work voluntarily, but declines for those who are involuntarily retired. In countries with an average social norm to work, the well-being of men increases after retirement, and the well-being of retired women is at the same level as women who are homemakers or work outside the home. In countries with a strong social norm to work, retirement negatively impacts the well-being of men and women.

Relationships and children

Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men.

In rich societies, where a rise in income doesn't equate to an increase in levels of subjective well-being, personal relationships are the determining factors of happiness.

Glaeser, Gottlieb and Ziv suggest in their conclusion that the happiness trade-offs that individuals seem willing to make aligns with the tendency of parents to report less happiness, as they sacrifice their personal well-being for the "price" of having children.

Freedom and control

There is a significant correlation between feeling in control of one's own life and happiness levels. 

A study conducted at the University of Zurich suggested that democracy and federalism bring well-being to individuals. It concluded that the more direct political participation possibilities available to citizens raises their subjective well-being. Two reasons were given for this finding. First, a more active role for citizens enables better monitoring of professional politicians by citizens, which leads to greater satisfaction with government output. Second, the ability for citizens to get involved in and have control over the political process, independently increases well-being.

American psychologist Barry Schwartz argues in his book The Paradox of Choice that too many consumer and lifestyle choices can produce anxiety and unhappiness due to analysis paralysis and raised expectations of satisfaction.

Religious diversity

National cross-sectional data suggest an inverse relationship between religious diversity and happiness, possibly by facilitating more bonding (and less bridging) social capital.

Happiness and leisure

Much of the research regarding happiness and leisure relies on subjective well-being (SWB) as an appropriate measure of happiness. Research has demonstrated a wide variety of contributing and resulting factors in the relationship between leisure and happiness. These include psychological mechanisms, and the types and characteristics of leisure activities that result in the greatest levels of subjective happiness. Specifically, leisure may trigger five core psychological mechanisms including detachment-recovery from work, autonomy in leisure, mastery of leisure activities, meaning-making in leisure activities, and social affiliation in leisure (DRAMMA). Leisure activities that are physical, relational, and performed outdoors are correlated with greater feelings of satisfaction with free time. Research across 33 different countries shows that individuals who feel they strengthen social relationships and work on personal development during leisure time are happier than others. Furthermore, shopping, reading books, attending cultural events, getting together with relatives, listening to music and attending sporting events is associated with higher levels of happiness. Spending time on the internet or watching TV is not associated with higher levels of happiness as compared to these other activities.

Research has shown that culture influences how we measure happiness and leisure. While SWB is a commonly used measure of happiness in North America and Europe, this may not be the case internationally. Quality of life (QOL) may be a better measure of happiness and leisure in Asian countries, especially Korea. Countries such as China and Japan may require a different measurement of happiness, as societal differences may influence the concept of happiness (i.e. economic variables, cultural practices, and social networks) beyond what QOL is able to measure. There seem to be some differences in leisure preference cross-culturally. Within the Croatian culture, family related leisure activities may enhance SWB across a large spectrum of ages ranging from adolescent to older adults, in both women and men. Active socializing and visiting cultural events are also associated with high levels of SWB across varying age and gender. Italians seem to prefer social conceptions of leisure as opposed to individualistic conceptions. Although different groups of individuals may prefer varying types and amount of leisure activity, this variability is likely due to the differing motivations and goals that an individual intends to fulfill with their leisure time.

Research suggests that specific leisure interventions enhance feelings of SWB. This is both a top-down and bottom-up effect, in that leisure satisfaction causally affects SWB, and SWB causally affects leisure satisfaction. This bi-directional effect is stronger in retired individuals than in working individuals. Furthermore, it appears that satisfaction with our leisure at least partially explains the relationship between our engagement in leisure and our SWB. Broadly speaking, researchers classify leisure into active (e.g. volunteering, socializing, sports and fitness) and passive leisure (e.g. watching television and listening to the radio). Among older adults, passive leisure activities and personal leisure activities (e.g. sleeping, eating, and bathing) correlate with higher levels of SWB and feelings of relaxation than active leisure activities. Thus, although significant evidence has demonstrated that active leisure is associated with higher levels of SWB, or happiness, this may not be the case with older populations.

Both regular and irregular involvement in sports leisure can result in heightened SWB. Serious, or systematic involvement in certain leisure activities, such as taekwondo, correlates with personal growth and a sense of happiness. Additionally, more irregular (e.g. seasonal) sports activities, such as skiing, are also correlated with high SWB. Furthermore, the relationship between pleasure and skiing is thought to be caused in part by a sense of flow and involvement with the activity. Leisure activities, such as meeting with friends, participating in sports, and going on vacation trips, positively correlate with life satisfaction. It may also be true that going on a vacation makes our lives seem better, but does not necessarily make us happier in the long term. Research regarding vacationing or taking a holiday trip is mixed. Although the reported effects are mostly small, some evidence points to higher levels of SWB, or happiness, after taking a holiday.

Economic security

Poverty alleviation are associated with happier populations. According to the latest systematic review of the economic literature on life satisfaction: Volatile or high inflation is bad for a population's well-being, particularly those with a right-wing political orientation. That suggests the impact of disruptions to economic security are in part mediated or modified by beliefs about economic security.

Political stability

The Voxeu analysis of the economic determinants of happiness found that life satisfaction explains the largest share of an existing government's vote share, followed by economic growth, which itself explains six times as much as employment and twice as much as inflation.

Economic freedom

Individualistic societies have happier populations. Institutes of economic freedom are associated with increases wealth inequality but does not necessarily contribute to decreases in aggregate well-being or subjective well-being at the population level. In fact, income inequality enhances global well-being. There is some debate over whether living in poor neighbours make one happier. And, living among rich neighbours can dull the happiness that comes from wealth. This is purported to work by way of an upward or downward comparison effect (Keeping up with the Joneses). The balance of evidence is trending in favour of the hypothesis that living in poor neighbourhoods makes one less happy, and living in rich neighbourhoods actually makes one happier, in the United States. While social status matters, a balance of factors like amenities, safe areas, well maintained housing, turn the tide in favour of the argument that richer neighbours are happier neighbours.

Democracy

"The right to participate in the political process, measured by the extent of direct democratic rights across regions, is strongly correlated with subjective well-being (Frey and Stutzer, 2002) ... a potential mechanism that explains this relationship is the perception of procedural fairness and social mobility." Institutions and well-being, democracy and federalism are associated with a happier population. Correspondingly, political engagement and activism have associated health benefits. On the other hand, some non democratic countries such as China and Saudi Arabia top the Ipsos list of countries where the citizenry is most happy with their government's direction. That suggests that voting preferences may not translate well into overall satisfaction with the government's direction. In any case, both of these factors revealed preference and domain specific satisfaction rather than overall subjective well being.

Economic development

Historically, economists thought economic growth was unrelated to population level well-being, a phenomenon labelled the Easterlin paradox. More robust research has identified that there is a link between economic development and the wellbeing of the population. A 2017 meta-analysis shows that the impact of infrastructure expenditure on economic growth varies considerable. So, one cannot assume an infrastructure project will yield welfare benefits. The paper doesn't investigate or elaborate on any modifiable variables that might predict the value of a project. However, government spending on roads and primary industries is the best value target for transport spending, according to a 2013 meta-analysis. 7%+/−3% per annum discount rates are typically applied as the discount rate on public infrastructure projects in Australia. Smaller real discount rates are used internationally to calculate the social return on investment by governments.

Alternative approach: economic consequences of happiness

While the mainstream happiness economics has focused on identifying the determinants of happiness, an alternative approach in the discipline examines instead what are the economic consequences of happiness. Happiness may act as a determinant of economic outcomes: it increases productivity, predicts one's future income and affects labour market performance. There is a growing number of studies justifying the so-called "happy-productive worker" thesis. The positive and causal impact of happiness on an individual's productivity has been established in experimental studies.

Happiness economics and indices timeline

The idea that happiness is important to a society is not new. Many other prominent intellectuals, philosophers and political leaders throughout history, including Aristotle, Confucius, and Plato, incorporated happiness into their work.

Thomas Jefferson put the "pursuit of happiness" on the same level as life and liberty in the United States' Declaration of Independence. Jeremy Bentham believed that public policy should attempt to maximize happiness, and he even attempted to estimate a "hedonic calculus". However, the American ruling philosophy protects the right of individuals to seek their own happiness, but does not place an equal responsibility for the citizens' happiness on the government. In the United States, there is no explicit policy that requires the rulers to develop the physical and mental well-being of the citizens or hold the government agencies accountable for their performance against specific measures or metrics of well-being. Until the 1972 there was no formal government policy, anywhere in the world, that placed happiness and well-being as a main criterion for public policy decision making.

The following is a chronological list of happiness economics and well-being indices: 

"Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product" by Jigme Singye Wangchuck, King of Bhutan. Slogan on a wall in Thimphu's School of Traditional Arts

 

1972 – Bhutan's former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, introduced the Gross National Happiness (GNH) philosophy and its four development pillars at an international conference.

2005 – Med Jones of the International Institute of Management introduced the first GNH Index and Global GNH Index Survey. The GNH Index, also known as Gross National Well-being (GNW) Index framework served as the first integrated objective (economic) and subjective (happiness) socioeconomic development framework. Prior the GNH Index, there were few development indices that improved upon the gross domestic product (GDP), but did not measure happiness. For example, the Genuine Progress Indicator was focused on the environmental cost of economic development, then later (in 2006) it was updated to include similar measures to the GNH Index. Another development index is the Human Development Index (HDI) that originally focused on literacy and education but also did not measure happiness. The HDI now measures three basic dimensions of human development, health (as measured by life expectancy at birth), overall knowledge level (as measured by the literacy rate), and standard of living (as measured by GDP per capita for a given year). Among the criticisms of the HDI is the complaint that it is a mixture of stock measures (life expectancy at birth and literacy rate) and a flow measure (GDP per capita for a given year). To overcome this criticism, Hou, Walsh, and Zhang (2015) proposed a new index called HDIF (Human Development Index Flow), in which they replaced life expectancy at birth by the under-five mortality rate (for a given year), and they also replaced the literacy rate by the gross primary school enrollment ratio for a given year). They calculated both the HDI and the HDIF for many countries and found that "the HDIF and the HDI tend to converge for wealthy countries and diverge for poor countries, especially those with low HDI rankings". The development performance of poor countries improved using the HDIF while the performance of the wealthy countries declined.

2006 – The Genuine Progress Indicator was updated from a green measurement system to a broader concept that included quantitative measurement of well-being and happiness. The new measure is motivated by the philosophy of the GNH and the same notion of that subjective measures like well-being are more relevant and important than more objective measures like consumption. It is not measured directly, but only by means of the factors which are believed to lead to it.

2007 – Thailand releases Green and Happiness Index (GHI).

2008 – French President Nicolas Sarkozy launched a Happiness Initiative similar to GNH, calling for the inclusion of happiness and well-being among the criteria for national governance policies. He commissioned three prominent economists, Joseph Stiglitz (USA), Amartya Sen (India), Jean-Paul Fitoussi (France), to publish a report calling for a global "statistical system which goes beyond commercial activity to measure personal well-being." Later it was described as gross domestic happiness (GDH). The GDH Index is similar to the GNH Index of 2005.

2009 – In the United States, the Gallup poll system launched the happiness survey collecting data on national scale. The Gallup Well-Being Index was modeled after the GNH Index framework of 2005. The Well-Being Index score is an average of six sub-indexes which measure life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities. In October 2009, the US scored 66.1/100.

2010 – The concept was taken seriously, as the Centre for Bhutan Studies, under the leadership of Karma Ura, developed a sophisticated survey instrument to measure the population's general level of well-being. Two Canadians, Michael and Martha Pennock played a major role in developing the Bhutanese survey, which took a six- to seven-hour interview to complete. They developed a shorter international version of the survey which has been used in their home region of Victoria BC as well as in Brazil. The Pennocks also collaborated with Ura in the production of a policy lens which is used by the Bhutanese GNH Commission for anticipating the impact of policy initiatives upon the levels of GNH in Bhutan.

2010 – The Center for Bhutan Studies further defined the original four pillars with greater specificity into eight general contributors to happiness—physical, mental and spiritual health; time-balance; social and community vitality; cultural vitality; education; living standards; good governance; and ecological vitality. The Bhutan GNH Index.

2010 – The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative OPHI at the University of Oxford in UK, launched the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) for the United Nations Development Programme, (UNDP). Similar to the GNH Index of 2005, OPHI promotes collection and analysis of data on five dimensions including Quality of work, Empowerment, Physical safety, Ability to go about without shame, Psychological wellbeing.

2011 – UN General Assembly Resolution 65/309, titled "Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development."

2011 – The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched "Better Life Index" (BLI).

2011 – The United Nations released the World Happiness Report.

 

2011 – Canadian Index of Wellbeing Network (CIW Network) released The Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW).

2011 – The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an article suggesting that western GDP economics is an incomplete development model and called for the adoption of Bhutan's GNH philosophy and Jones' GNH Index in Israel.

2011 – Chuluun Togtokh criticized the HDI in an article published in Nature, calling for a revised HDI, writing that "The revised index should include each nation's per capita carbon emissions, and so become a Human Sustainable Development Index (HSDI)." Bravo (2014) provided details of how the HSDI was computed and proposed an amended HSDI by including the proportion of forested area in each country. He argued that this proposed indicator "represents an important measure of the capacity of natural system to provide fundamental ecological services."

2012 – In a report prepared for the US Congressman Hansen Clarke, R, researchers Ben Beachy and Juston Zorn, at John F. Kennedy School of Government in Harvard University, recommended that "the Congress should prescribe the broad parameters of new, carefully designed supplemental national indicators; it should launch a bipartisan commission of experts to address unresolved methodological issues, and include alternative indicators." They proposed that the government can use the survey results to see which well-being dimensions are least satisfied and which districts and demographic groups are most deficient, so as to allocate resources accordingly. The report list the Gross National Happiness Index and its seven measurement area as one of the main frameworks to consider.

2012 – Professor Peter T. Coleman, a director of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia University, suggested that Jones' GNH Index initiative could inform the Global Peace Index Initiative GPI.

2012 – South Korea launched Happiness Index citing the GNH Index framework.

2012 – The government of Goa, India, published a strategy for socioeconomic development citing the GNH Index as a model for measuring happiness.

2012 – The city of Seattle in Washington, launched its own happiness index initiative, emphasizing measures similar to the GNH Index.

2013 – The Social Progress Index SPI was launched by Michael Porter.

2013 – The president of Singapore, Tony Tan, proposed that in addition to building up substantial financial reserves, Singapore needed to focus on building up its "social reserves", a concept that appears to have parallels to GNH.

2013 – Economist Karol Jan Borowiecki motivates that well-being indices can be obtained from the way people communicate, as is established in psychology, and compiles the first well-being indices covering the life-time of a person.

2013 – A joint commission led by the Conseil économique et social, the Conseil supérieur pour un développement durable and the Observatoire de la Compétitivité introduces a set of indicators measuring the quality of life in Luxembourg. The conclusions of the commission are summarised in a document titled "Projet PIBien-être", which identifies 64 indicators belonging to 11 different domains to assess quality of life in Luxembourg.

2014 – The government of Dubai launched its localized Happiness Index to measure the public's contentment and satisfaction with different government services.

2014 – The United Kingdom launched its own well-being and happiness statistics.

2015 – Within the "Projet PIBien-être" launched in 2013, STATEC (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg) presents a preliminary analysis of the "Luxembourgish Index of Well-being" (LIW), a first proposal of synthetic indicator measuring the quality of life in Luxembourg. The presentation entitled "Preliminary Assessment of Quality of Life in Luxembourg" was delivered by Marcin Piekałkiewicz on 16 December 2015.

2017 – The Minderoo Foundation launched the Global Slavery Index, providing a map of the estimated prevalence of modern slavery. The information allows an objective comparison and assessment of both the problem and adequacy of the response in 167 countries.

Related studies

The Satisfaction with Life Index. Blue through red represent most to least happy respectively; grey areas have no reliable data available.

 

The Satisfaction with Life Index is an attempt to show the average self-reported happiness in different nations. This is an example of a recent trend to use direct measures of happiness, such as surveys asking people how happy they are, as an alternative to traditional measures of policy success such as GDP or GNP. Some studies suggest that happiness can be measured effectively. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), published in November 2008 a major study on happiness economics in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In 2013, John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffery Sachs compiled a treatise under the title "World Happiness report 2013" to elaborate on the measurement of popular happiness in different countries thereby adding to the wealth of happiness data available while specifically discussing the issues of measurement, explanation and policy. Global and Regional Happiness Levels are explained in terms of 10 regional groupings of countries based on happiness data available for the year 2010-2012. The happiness level is explained as a function of GDP per capita, social support, and healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and perceptions of corruption.

There are also several examples of measures that includes self-reported happiness as one variable. Happy Life Years, a concept brought by Dutch sociologist Ruut Veenhoven, combines self-reported happiness with life expectancy. The Happy Planet Index combines it with life expectancy and ecological footprint. 

Gross National Happiness (GNH) is a concept introduced by the King of Bhutan in 1972 as an alternative to GDP. Several countries have already developed or are in the process of developing such an index. Bhutan's index has led that country to limit the amount of deforestation it will allow and to require that all tourists to its nation must spend US$200 Allegedly, low-budget tourism and deforestation lead to unhappiness.

After the military coup of 2006, Thailand also instituted an index. The stated promise of the new Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont is to make the Thai people not only richer but happier as well. Much like GDP results, Thailand releases monthly GNH data. The Thai GNH index is based on a 1–10 scale with 10 being the most happy. As of May 13, 2007, the Thai GNH measured 5.1 points. The index uses poll data from the population surveying various satisfaction factors such as, security, public utilities, good governance, trade, social justice, allocation of resources, education and community problems.

Australia, China, France, and the United Kingdom are also coming up with indexes to measure national happiness. The UK began to measure national wellbeing in 2012. North Korea also announced an international Happiness Index in 2011 through Korean Central Television. North Korea itself came in second, behind #1 China [DJS -- If you don't find this pretty funny, you have no sense of humor]. Canada released the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW) in 2011 to track changes in wellbeing. The CIW has adopted the following working definition of wellbeing: The presence of the highest possible quality of life in its full breadth of expression focused on but not necessarily exclusive to: good living standards, robust health, a sustainable environment, vital communities, an educated populace, balanced time use, high levels of democratic participation, and access to and participation in leisure and culture.

Ecuador's and Bolivia's new constitutions state the indigenous concept of "good life" ("buen vivir" in Spanish, "sumak kawsay" in Quichua, and "suma qamaña" in Aymara) as the goal of sustainable development.

Neoclassical economics

Neoclassical, as well as classical economics, are not subsumed under the term happiness economics although the original goal was to increase the happiness of the people. Classical and neoclassical economics are stages in the development of welfare economics and are characterized by mathematical modeling. Happiness economics represents a radical break with this tradition. The measurement of subjective happiness respectively life satisfaction by means of survey research across nations and time (in addition to objective measures like lifespan, wealth, security etc.) marks the beginning of happiness economics.

Criticism

Some have suggested that establishing happiness as a metric is only meant to serve political goals. Recently there has been concern that happiness research could be used to advance authoritarian aims. As a result, some participants at a happiness conference in Rome have suggested that happiness research should not be used as a matter of public policy but rather used to inform individuals.

Even on the individual level there is discussion on how much effect external forces can have on happiness. Less than 3% of an individual's level of happiness comes from external sources such as employment, education level, marital status, and socioeconomic status. To go along with this, four of the Big Five Personality Traits are substantially associated with life satisfaction, openness to experience is not associated. Having high levels of internal locus of control lead to higher reported levels of happiness.

Even when happiness can be affected by external sources, it has high hedonic adaptation, some specific events such as an increase in income, disability, unemployment, and loss (bereavement) only have short-term (about a year) effects on a person's overall happiness and after a while happiness may return to levels similar to unaffected peers.

What has the most influence over happiness are internal factors such as genetics, personality traits, and internal locus of control. It is theorized that 50% of the variation in happiness levels is from genetic sources and is known as the genetic set point. The genetic set point is assumed to be stable over time, fixed, and immune to influence or control. This goes along with findings that well-being surveys have a naturally positive baseline.

With such strong internal forces on happiness it is hard to have an effect on a person's happiness externally. This in turn lends itself back to the idea that establishing a happiness metric is only for political gain and has little other use. To support this even further it is believed that a country aggregate level of SWB can account for more variance in government vote share than standard macroeconomic variables, such as income and employment.

Technical criticism

According to Bond and Lang (2018) the results are skewed due to the fact that the respondents have to "round" their true happiness to the scale of, e.g., 3 or 7 alternatives (e.g., very happy, pretty happy, not too happy). This "rounding error" may cause a less happy group seem more happy, in the average. This would not be the case if the happiness of both groups would be normally distributed with the same variance, but that is usually not the case, based on their results. For some not-implausible log-normal assumptions on the scale, typical results can be reversed to the opposite results.

They also show that the "reporting function" seems to be different for different groups and even for the same individual at different times. For example, when a person becomes disabled, they soon start to lower their threshold for a given answer (e.g., "pretty happy"). That is, they give a higher answer than they would have given at the same happiness state before becoming disabled.

Subjective well-being

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Personal wellbeing in the UK 2012 - 13

Subjective well-being (SWB) is a self-reported measure of well-being, typically obtained by questionnaire.

Ed Diener developed a tripartite model of subjective well-being in 1984, which describes how people experience the quality of their lives and includes both emotional reactions and cognitive judgments. It posits "three distinct but often related components of wellbeing: frequent positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and cognitive evaluations such as life satisfaction."

SWB therefore encompasses moods and emotions as well as evaluations of one's satisfaction with general and specific areas of one's life. Concepts encompassed by SWB include happiness. 

SWB tends to be stable over time and is strongly related to personality traits. There is evidence that health and SWB may mutually influence each other, as good health tends to be associated with greater happiness, and a number of studies have found that positive emotions and optimism can have a beneficial influence on health.

Construction of SWB

Diener et al. argued that the various components of SWB represent distinct constructs that need to be understood separately, even though they are closely related. Hence, SWB may be considered "a general area of scientific interest rather than a single specific construct". Due to the specific focus on the subjective aspects of well-being, definitions of SWB typically exclude objective conditions such as material conditions or health, although these can influence ratings of SWB. Definitions of SWB therefore focus on how a person evaluates his/her own life, including emotional experiences of pleasure versus pain in response to specific events and cognitive evaluations of what a person considers a good life. Components of SWB relating to affect include positive affect (experiencing pleasant emotions and moods) and low negative affect (experiencing unpleasant, distressing emotions and moods), as well as "overall affect" or "hedonic balance", defined as the overall equilibrium between positive and negative affect, and usually measured as the difference between the two. High positive affect and low negative affect are often highly correlated, but not always.

Components of SWB

There are two components of SWB. One is Affective Balance and the other is Life Satisfaction. An individual's scores on the two measures are summed to produce a total SWB score. In some cases, these scores are kept separate.

• Affective balance

Affective balance refers to the emotions, moods, and feelings a person has. These can be all positive, all negative, or a combination of both positive and negative. Some research shows also that feelings of reward are separate from positive and negative affect.

• Life satisfaction

Life satisfaction (global judgments of one's life) and satisfaction with specific life domains (e.g. work satisfaction) are considered cognitive components of SWB. The term "happiness" is also commonly used in regards to SWB and has been defined variously as "satisfaction of desires and goals" (therefore related to life satisfaction), as a "preponderance of positive over negative affect" (therefore related to emotional components of SWB), as "contentment", and as a "consistent, optimistic mood state" and may imply an affective evaluation of one's life as a whole. Life satisfaction can also be known as the "stable" component in one's life. Affective concepts of SWB can be considered in terms of momentary emotional states as well as in terms of longer-term moods and tendencies (i.e. how much positive and/or negative affect a person generally experiences over any given period of time). Life satisfaction and in some research happiness are typically considered over long durations, up to one's lifetime. "Quality of life" has also been studied as a conceptualization of SWB. Although its exact definition varies, it is usually measured as an aggregation of well-being across several life domains and may include both subjective and objective components.

Measurement of SWB components

Life satisfaction and Affect balance are generally measured separately and independently.

• 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.

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.

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. The participant may write in the self-report that they are very happy, however that participant’s friends and family record that he/she is always depressed. This would obviously be a contradiction in results which would ultimately lead to inaccurate results.

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. Tracking this over a period of a week or a month will give researchers a better understanding of the true emotions, moods, and feelings the participant is experiencing, and how these factors interact with other thoughts and behaviors. A 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. Thus to ensure valid results, a researcher may tend to use self-reports along with another form of measurement mentioned above. Someone with a high level of life satisfaction and a positive affective balance is said to have a high level of SWB.

Theories

Theories of the causes of SWB tend to emphasise either top-down or bottom-up influences.

Top-down perspective

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 "setpoint". 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. Evidence for this genetic predisposition derives from behavior-genetic studies that have found that positive and negative affectivity each have high heritability (40% and 55% respectively in one study). Numerous twin studies confirm the notion of set point theory, however, they do not rule out the possibility that is it possible for individuals to experience long term changes in SWB.

Diener et al. note that heritability studies are limited in that they describe long-term SWB in a sample of people in a modern western society but may not be applicable to more extreme environments that might influence SWB and do not provide absolute indicators of genetic effects. Additionally, heritability estimates are inconsistent across studies.

Further evidence for a 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.

Bottom-up perspective

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 fulfilment. 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.

However, 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 "setpoint" or baseline level. 

The hedonic treadmill theory originally proposed that most people return to a neutral level of SWB (i.e. neither happy nor unhappy) as they habituate to events. However, subsequent research has shown that for most people, the baseline level of SWB is at least mildly positive, as most people tend to report being at least somewhat happy in general and tend to experience positive mood when no adverse events are occurring. Additional refinements to this theory have shown that people do not adapt to all life events equally, as people tend to adapt rapidly to some events (e.g. imprisonment), slowly to others (e.g. the death of a loved one), and not at all to others (e.g. noise and sex).

Factors affecting SWB

Personality and genetics

A number of studies have found that SWB constructs are strongly associated with a range of personality traits, including those in the five factor model. Findings from numerous personality studies show that genetics account for 20-48% of the variance in Five-Factor Model and the variance in subjective well-being is also heritable. Specifically, neuroticism predicts poorer subjective well-being whilst extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience tend to predict higher subjective well-being. A meta-analysis found that neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were significantly related to all facets of SWB examined (positive, negative, and overall affect; happiness; life satisfaction; and quality of life). Neuroticism was the strongest predictor of overall SWB and is the strongest predictor of negative affect.

A large number of personality traits are related to SWB constructs, although intelligence has negligible relationships. Positive affect is most strongly predicted by extraversion, to a lesser extent agreeableness, and more weakly by openness to experience. Happiness was most strongly predicted by extraversion, and also strongly predicted by neuroticism, and to a lesser extent by the other three factors. Life satisfaction was significantly predicted by neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Quality of life was very strongly predicted by neuroticism, and also strongly predicted by extraversion and conscientiousness, and to a modest extent by agreeableness and openness to experience. One study found that subjective well-being was genetically indistinct from personality traits, especially those that reflected emotional stability (low Neuroticism), and social and physical activity (high Extraversion), and constraint (high Conscientiousness).

DeNeve (1999) argued that there are three trends in the relationship between personality and SWB. Firstly, SWB is closely tied to traits associated with emotional tendencies (emotional stability, positive affectivity, and tension). Secondly, relationship enhancing traits (e.g. trust, affiliation) are important for subjective well-being. Happy people tend to have strong relationships and be good at fostering them. Thirdly, the way people think about and explain events is important for subjective well-being. Appraising events in an optimistic fashion, having a sense of control, and making active coping efforts facilitates subjective well-being. Trust, a trait substantially related to SWB, as opposed to cynicism involves making positive rather than negative attributions about others. Making positive, optimistic attributions rather than negative pessimistic ones facilitates subjective well-being.

The related trait of eudaimonia or psychological well-being, is also heritable. Evidence from one study supports 5 independent genetic mechanisms underlying the Ryff facets of psychological well-being, leading to a genetic construct of eudaimonia in terms of general self-control, and four subsidiary biological mechanisms enabling the psychological capabilities of purpose, agency, growth, and positive social relations.

Social influences

A person's level of subjective well-being is determined by many different factors and social influences prove to be a strong one. Results from the famous Framingham Heart Study indicate that friends three degrees of separation away (that is, friends of friends of friends) can affect a person's happiness. From abstract: "A friend who lives within a mile (about 1.6 km) and who becomes happy increases the probability that a person is happy by 25%."

Wealth

Research indicates that wealth is related to many positive outcomes in life. Such outcomes include: improved health and mental health, greater longevity, lower rates of infant mortality, experience fewer stressful life events, and less frequently the victims of violent crimes. However, research suggests that wealth has a smaller impact on SWB than people generally think, even though higher incomes do correlate substantially with life satisfaction reports.

The relative influence of wealth together with other material components on overall subjective well-being of a person is being studied through new researches. The Well-being Project at Human Science Lab investigates how material well-being and perceptual well-being works as relative determinants in conditioning our mind for positive emotions.

In a study done by Aknin, Norton, & Dunn (2009), researchers asked participants from across the income spectrum to report their own happiness and to predict the happiness of others and themselves at different income levels. In study 1, predicted happiness ranged between 2.4-7.9 and actual happiness ranged between 5.2-7.7. In study 2, predicted happiness ranged between 15-80 and actual happiness ranged between 50-80. These findings show that people believe that money does more for happiness than it really does. However, some research indicates that while socioeconomic measures of status do not correspond to greater happiness, measures of sociometric status (status compared to people encountered face-to-face on a daily basis) do correlate to increased subjective well-being, above and beyond the effects of extroversion and other factors.

The Easterlin Paradox also suggests that there is no connection between a society's economic development and its average level of happiness. Through time, the Easterlin has looked at the relationship between happiness and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) across countries and within countries. There are three different phenomena to look at when examining the connection between money and Subjective well-being; rising GDP within a country, relative income within a country, and differences in GDP between countries.

More specifically, when making comparisons between countries, a principle called the Diminishing Marginal Utility of Income (DMUI) stands strong. Veenhoven (1991) said, "[W]e not only see a clear positive relationship [between happiness and GNP per capita], but also a curvilinear pattern; which suggest that wealth is subject to a law of diminishing happiness returns." Meaning a $1,000 increase in real income, becomes progressively smaller the higher the initial level of income, having less of an impact on subjective well-being. Easterlin (1995) proved that the DMUI is true when comparing countries, but not when looking at rising gross domestic product within countries.

Health

There are substantial positive associations between health and SWB so that people who rate their general health as "good" or "excellent" tend to experience better SWB compared to those who rate their health as "fair" or "poor". A meta-analysis found that self-ratings of general health were more strongly related to SWB than physician ratings of health. The relationship between health and SWB may be bidirectional. There is evidence that good subjective well-being contributes to better health. A review of longitudinal studies found that measures of baseline subjective well-being constructs such as optimism and positive affect predicted longer-term health status and mortality. Conversely, a number of studies found that baseline depression predicted poorer longer-term health status and mortality. Baseline health may well have a causal influence on subjective well-being so causality is difficult to establish. A number of studies found that positive emotions and optimism had a beneficial impact on cardiovascular health and on immune functioning. Changes in mood are also known to be associated with changes in immune and cardiovascular response. There is evidence that interventions that are successful in improving subjective well-being can have beneficial effects on aspects of health. For example, meditation and relaxation training have been found to increase positive affect and to reduce blood pressure. The effect of specific types of subjective well-being is not entirely clear. For example, how durable the effects of mood and emotions on health are remains unclear. Whether some types of subjective well-being predict health independently of others is also unclear. Meditation has the power to increase happiness because it can improve self-confidence and reduces anxiety, which increases your well-being. Cultivating personal strengths and resources, like humour, social/animal company, and daily occupations, also appears to help people preserve acceptable levels of SWB despite the presence of symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress.

Research suggests that probing a patient's happiness is one of the most important things a doctor can do to predict that patient's health and longevity. In health-conscious modern societies, most people overlook the emotions as a vital component of one's health, while over focusing on diet and exercise. According to Diener & Biswas-Diener, people who are happy become less sick than people who are unhappy. There are three types of health: morbidity, survival, and longevity. Evidence suggests that all three can be improved through happiness:

1. Morbidity, simply put, is whether or not someone develops a serious illness, such as the flu or cancer. In a 30-year longitudinal study, participants who were high in positive emotions were found to have lower rates of many health problems. Some of these illnesses/problems include lower death rates from heart disease, suicide, accidents, homicides, mental illnesses, drug dependency, and liver disease related to alcoholism. Additionally, results showed that depressed participants were more likely to have heart attacks and recurrences of heart attacks when compared to happy people.
2. Survival is the term used for what happens to a person after he/she has already developed or contracted a serious illness. Although happiness has been shown to increase health, with survival, this may not be the case. Survival may be the only area of health that evidence suggests happiness may actually be sometimes detrimental. It is unclear why exactly research results suggest this is the case, however Diener & Biswas-Diener offer an explanation. It is possible that happy people fail to report symptoms of the illness, which can ultimately lead to no treatment or inadequate treatment. Another possible reason may be that happy people tend to be optimistic, leading them to take their symptoms too lightly, seek treatment too late, and/or follow the doctor’s instructions half-heartedly. And lastly, Diener & Biswas-Diener suggest that people with serious illnesses may be more likely to choose to live out the rest of their days without painful or invasive treatments.
3. Longevity, the third area of health, is measured by an individual's age of death. Head researcher Deborah Danner of the University of Kentucky researched links between an individual's happiness and that individual's longevity. Danner recruited 180 Catholic nuns from a nearby convent as the participants of her study. She chose nuns because they live very similar lives. This eliminates many confounding variables that might be present in other samples, which can lead to inaccurate results. Such confounding variables could include drug use, alcohol abuse, diet, and sexual risk-taking. Since there are few differences among the nuns as far as the confounding variables, this sample offered the best option to match a controlled laboratory setting. Results showed that nuns who were considered happy or positive in their manner and language on average lived 10 years longer than the nuns who were considered unhappy or negative in their manner and language. A follow-up study by health researcher Sarah Pressman examined 96 famous psychologists to determine if similar results from the nun research would be seen as well. Pressman's results showed that the positive or happy psychologists lived, on average, 6 years longer. The psychologists who were considered negative or unhappy lived, on average, 5 years less.

Physical characteristics

A positive relationship has been found between the volume of gray matter in the right precuneus area of the brain, and the subject's subjective happiness score. A 6 week mindfulness based intervention was found to correlate with a significant gray matter increase within the precuneus.

Leisure

There are a number of domains that are thought to contribute to subjective well-being. In a study by Hribernik and Mussap (2010), leisure satisfaction was found to predict unique variance in life satisfaction, supporting its inclusion as a distinct life domain contributing to subjective well-being. Additionally, relationship status interacted with age group and gender on differences in leisure satisfaction. The relationship between leisure satisfaction and life satisfaction, however, was reduced when considering the impact of core affect (underlying mood state). This suggests that leisure satisfaction may primarily be influenced by an individual's subjective well-being level as represented by core affect. This has implications for possible limitations in the extent to which leisure satisfaction may be improved beyond pre-existing levels of well-being and mood in individuals.

Cultural variations

Although all cultures seem to value happiness, cultures vary in how they define happiness. There is also evidence that people in more individualistic cultures tend to rate themselves as higher in subjective well-being compared to people in more collectivistic cultures.

In Western cultures, predictors of happiness include elements that support personal independence, a sense of personal agency, and self-expression. In Eastern cultures, predictors of happiness focus on an interdependent self that is inseparable from significant others. Compared to people in individualistic cultures, people in collectivistic cultures are more likely to base their judgments of life satisfaction on how significant others appraise their life than on the balance of inner emotions experienced as pleasant versus unpleasant. Pleasant emotional experiences have a stronger social component in East Asian cultures compared to Western ones. For example, people in Japan are more likely to associate happiness with interpersonally engaging emotions (such as friendly feelings), whereas people in the United States are more likely to associate happiness with interpersonally disengaging emotions (pride, for example). There are also cultural differences in motives and goals associated with happiness. For example, Asian Americans tend to experience greater happiness after achieving goals that are pleasing to or approved of by significant others compared to European Americans. There is also evidence that high self-esteem, a sense of personal control and a consistent sense of identity relate more strongly to SWB in Western cultures than they do in Eastern ones. However, this is not to say that these things are unimportant to SWB in Eastern cultures. Research has found that even within Eastern cultures, people with high self-esteem and a more consistent sense of identity are somewhat happier than those who are low in these characteristics. There is no evidence that low self-esteem and so on are actually beneficial to SWB in any known culture.

A large body of research evidence has confirmed that people in individualistic societies report higher levels of happiness than people in collectivistic ones and that socioeconomic factors alone are insufficient to explain this difference. In addition to political and economic differences, individualistic versus collectivistic nations reliably differ in a variety of psychological characteristics that are related to SWB, such as emotion norms and attitudes to the expression of individual needs. Collectivistic cultures are based around the belief that the individual exists for the benefit of the larger social unit, whereas more individualistic cultures assume the opposite. Collectivistic cultures emphasise maintaining social order and harmony and therefore expect members to suppress their personal desires when necessary in order to promote collective interests. Such cultures therefore consider self-regulation more important than self-expression or than individual rights. Individualistic cultures by contrast emphasise the inalienable value of each person and expect individuals to become self-directive and self-sufficient. Although people in collectivistic cultures may gain happiness from the social approval they receive from suppressing self-interest, research seems to suggest that self-expression produces a greater happiness "payoff" compared to seeking approval outside oneself.

Positive psychology

Positive psychology is particularly concerned with the study of SWB. Positive psychology was founded by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) who identified that psychology is not just the study of pathology, weakness, and damage; but it is also the study of strength and virtue. Researchers in positive psychology have pointed out that in almost every culture studied the pursuit of happiness is regarded as one of the most valued goals in life. Understanding individual differences in SWB is of key interest in positive psychology, particularly the issue of why some people are happier than others. Some people continue to be happy in the face of adversity whereas others are chronically unhappy at the best of times.

Positive psychology has investigated how people might improve their level of SWB and maintain these improvements over the longer term, rather than returning to baseline. Lyubomirsky (2001) argued that SWB is influenced by a combination of personality/genetics (studies have found that genetic influences usually account for 35-50% of the variance in happiness measures), external circumstances, and activities that affect SWB. She argued that changing one's external circumstances tends to have only a temporary effect on SWB, whereas engaging in activities (mental and/or physical) that enhance SWB can lead to more lasting improvements in SWB.

According to Sonja Lyubomirsky the determinants of happiness are a combination of a person's genetic set-point, intentional activities and life circumstances

Use in Happiness economics

SWB is often used in appraising the wellbeing of populations.

Affect (psychology)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Affect is a concept used in psychology to describe the experience of feeling or emotion. The term "affect" takes on a different meaning in other fields. In psychology, affect mediates an organism's interaction with stimuli. The word also refers sometimes to affect display, which is "a facial, vocal, or gestural behavior that serves as an indicator of affect" (APA 2006).

The affective domain represents one of the three divisions described in modern psychology: the cognitive, the behavioral, and the affective. Classically, these divisions have also been referred to as the "ABC of psychology", in that case using the terms "affect", "behavior", and "cognition". In certain views, the cognitive may be considered as a part of the affective, or the affective as a part of the cognitive; it is important to note that "cognitive and affective states … [are] merely analytic categories."

Affective states are psycho-physiological constructs. According to most current views, they vary along 3 principal dimensions: valence, arousal, and motivational intensity. Valence is the subjective positive-to-negative evaluation of an experienced state. Emotional valence refers to the emotion’s consequences, emotion-eliciting circumstances, or subjective feelings or attitudes. Arousal is objectively measurable as activation of the sympathetic nervous system, but can also be assessed subjectively via self-report. Arousal is a construct that is closely related to motivational intensity but they differ in that motivation necessarily implies action while arousal does not. Motivational intensity refers to the impulsion to act; the strength of an urge to move toward or away from a stimulus. Simply moving is not considered approach (or avoidance) motivation without a motivational urge present.

All three of these categories can be related to cognition when considering the construct of cognitive scope. Initially, it was thought that positive affects broadened whereas negative affects narrowed cognitive scope. However, evidence now suggests that affects high in motivational intensity narrow cognitive scope whereas affects low in motivational intensity broaden it. The cognitive scope has indeed proven to be a valuable construct in cognitive psychology.

Theoretical perspective

"Affect" can mean an instinctual reaction to stimulation that occurs before the typical cognitive processes considered necessary for the formation of a more complex emotion. Robert B. Zajonc asserts this reaction to stimuli is primary for human beings and that it is the dominant reaction for non-human organisms. Zajonc suggests that affective reactions can occur without extensive perceptual and cognitive encoding and be made sooner and with greater confidence than cognitive judgments (Zajonc, 1980). 

Many theorists (e.g. Lazarus, 1982) consider affect to be post-cognitive: elicited only after a certain amount of cognitive processing of information has been accomplished. In this view, such affective reactions as liking, disliking, evaluation, or the experience of pleasure or displeasure each result from a different prior cognitive process that makes a variety of content discriminations and identifies features, examines them to find value, and weighs them according to their contributions (Brewin, 1989). Some scholars (e.g. Lerner and Keltner 2000) argue that affect can be both pre- and post-cognitive: initial emotional responses produce thoughts, which produce affect. In a further iteration, some scholars argue that affect is necessary for enabling more rational modes of cognition (e.g. Damasio 1994).

A divergence from a narrow reinforcement model of emotion allows other perspectives about how affect influences emotional development. Thus, temperament, cognitive development, socialization patterns, and the idiosyncrasies of one's family or subculture might interact in nonlinear ways. For example, the temperament of a highly reactive/low self-soothing infant may "disproportionately" affect the process of emotion regulation in the early months of life (Griffiths, 1997).

Some other social sciences, such as geography or anthropology, have adopted the concept of affect during the last decade. In French psychoanalysis a major contribution to the field of affect comes from André Green. The focus on affect has largely derived from the work of Deleuze and brought emotional and visceral concerns into such conventional discourses as those on geopolitics, urban life and material culture. Affect has also challenged methodologies of the social sciences by emphasizing somatic power over the idea of a removed objectivity and therefore has strong ties with the contemporary non-representational theory.

History

A number of experiments have been conducted in the study of social and psychological affective preferences (i.e., what people like or dislike). Specific research has been done on preferences, attitudes, impression formation, and decision making. This research contrasts findings with recognition memory (old-new judgments), allowing researchers to demonstrate reliable distinctions between the two. Affect-based judgments and cognitive processes have been examined with noted differences indicated, and some argue affect and cognition are under the control of separate and partially independent systems that can influence each other in a variety of ways (Zajonc, 1980). Both affect and cognition may constitute independent sources of effects within systems of information processing. Others suggest emotion is a result of an anticipated, experienced, or imagined outcome of an adaptational transaction between organism and environment, therefore cognitive appraisal processes are keys to the development and expression of an emotion (Lazarus, 1982).

Psychometric measurement

Affect has been found across cultures to comprise both positive and negative dimensions. The most commonly used measure in scholarly research is the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). The PANAS is a lexical measure developed in a North American setting and consisting of 20 single-word items, for instance excited, alert, determined for positive affect, and upset, guilty, and jittery for negative affect. However, some of the PANAS items have been found either to be redundant or to have ambiguous meanings to English speakers from non-North American cultures. As a result, an internationally reliable short-form, the I-PANAS-SF, has been developed and validated comprising two 5-item scales with internal reliability, cross-sample and cross-cultural factorial invariance, temporal stability, convergent and criterion-related validities.

Mroczek and Kolarz have also developed another set of scales to measure positive and negative affect. Each of the scales has 6 items. The scales have shown evidence of acceptable validity and reliability across cultures.

Non-conscious affect and perception

In relation to perception, a type of non-conscious affect may be separate from the cognitive processing of environmental stimuli. A monohierarchy of perception, affect and cognition considers the roles of arousal, attention tendencies, affective primacy (Zajonc, 1980), evolutionary constraints (Shepard, 1984; 1994), and covert perception (Weiskrantz, 1997) within the sensing and processing of preferences and discriminations. Emotions are complex chains of events triggered by certain stimuli. There is no way to completely describe an emotion by knowing only some of its components. Verbal reports of feelings are often inaccurate because people may not know exactly what they feel, or they may feel several different emotions at the same time. There are also situations that arise in which individuals attempt to hide their feelings, and there are some who believe that public and private events seldom coincide exactly, and that words for feelings are generally more ambiguous than are words for objects or events. Therefore, non-conscious emotions need to be measured by measures circumventing self-report such as the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT; Quirin, Kazén, & Kuhl, 2009). 

Affective responses, on the other hand, are more basic and may be less problematic in terms of assessment. Brewin has proposed two experiential processes that frame non-cognitive relations between various affective experiences: those that are prewired dispositions (i.e. non-conscious processes), able to "select from the total stimulus array those stimuli that are causally relevant, using such criteria as perceptual salience, spatiotemporal cues, and predictive value in relation to data stored in memory" (Brewin, 1989, p. 381), and those that are automatic (i.e. subconscious processes), characterized as "rapid, relatively inflexible and difficult to modify... (requiring) minimal attention to occur and... (capable of being) activated without intention or awareness" (1989 p. 381). But a note should be considered on the differences between affect and emotion.

Arousal

Arousal is a basic physiological response to the presentation of stimuli. When this occurs, a non-conscious affective process takes the form of two control mechanisms: one mobilizing and the other immobilizing. Within the human brain, the amygdala regulates an instinctual reaction initiating this arousal process, either freezing the individual or accelerating mobilization.

The arousal response is illustrated in studies focused on reward systems that control food-seeking behavior (Balleine, 2005). Researchers have focused on learning processes and modulatory processes that are present while encoding and retrieving goal values. When an organism seeks food, the anticipation of reward based on environmental events becomes another influence on food seeking that is separate from the reward of food itself. Therefore, earning the reward and anticipating the reward are separate processes and both create an excitatory influence of reward-related cues. Both processes are dissociated at the level of the amygdala, and are functionally integrated within larger neural systems.

Motivational intensity and cognitive scope

Measuring Cognitive Scope

Cognitive scope can be measured by tasks involving attention, perception, categorization and memory. Some studies use a flanker attention task to figure out whether cognitive scope is broadened or narrowed. For example, using the letters “H” and “N” participants need to identify as quickly as possible the middle letter of 5 when all the letters are the same (e.g. “HHHHH”) and when the middle letter is different from the flanking letters (e.g. “HHNHH”). Broadened cognitive scope would be indicated if reaction times differed greatly from when all the letters were the same compared to when the middle letter is different. Other studies use a Navon attention task to measure difference in cognitive scope. A large letter is composed of smaller letters, in most cases smaller “L”’s or “F”’s that make up the shape of the letter “T” or “H” or vice versa. Broadened cognitive scope would be suggested by a faster reaction to name the larger letter, whereas narrowed cognitive scope would be suggested by a faster reaction to name the smaller letters within the larger letter. A source-monitoring paradigm can also be used to measure how much contextual information is perceived: for instance, participants are tasked to watch a screen which serially displays words to be memorized for 3 seconds each, and also have to remember whether the word appeared on the left or the right half of the screen. The words were also encased in a colored box, but the participants did not know that they would eventually be asked what color box the word appeared in.

Main Research Findings

Motivation intensity refers to the strength of urge to move toward or away from a particular stimulus.

Anger and fear affective states, induced via film clips, conferred more selective attention on a flanker task compared to controls as indicated by reaction times that were not very different, even when the flanking letters were different from the middle target letter. Both anger and fear have high motivational intensity because propulsion to act would be high in the face of an angry or fearful stimulus, like a screaming person or coiled snake. Affects high in motivational intensity, thus, narrow cognitive scope making people able to focus more on target information. After seeing a sad picture, participants were faster to identify the larger letter in a Navon attention task, suggesting more global or broadened cognitive scope. The sad emotion is thought to sometimes have low motivational intensity. But, after seeing a disgusting picture, participants were faster to identify the component letters, indicative of a localized more narrow cognitive scope. Disgust has high motivational intensity. Affects high in motivational intensity, thus, narrow cognitive scope making people able to focus more on central information. whereas affects low in motivational intensity broadened cognitive scope allowing for faster global interpretation. The changes in cognitive scope associated with different affective states is evolutionarily adaptive because high motivational intensity affects elicited by stimuli that require movement and action should be focused on, in a phenomenon known as goal-directed behavior. For example, in early times seeing a lion (fearful stimulus) probably elicited a negative but high motivational affective state (fear) in which the human being was propelled to run away. In this case the goal would be to avoid getting killed. 

Moving beyond just negative affective states, researchers wanted to test whether or not the negative or positive affective states varied between high and low motivational intensity. To evaluate this theory, Harmon-Jones, Gable and Price created an experiment using appetitive picture priming and the Navon task, which would allow them to measure the attentional scope with the detection of the Navon letters. The Navon task included a neutral affect comparison condition. Typically, neutral states cause broadened attention with a neutral stimulus. They predicted that a broad attentional scope could cause a faster detection of global (large) letters, whereas a narrow attentional scope could cause a faster detection of local (small) letters. The evidence proved that the appetitive stimuli produced a narrowed attentional scope. The experimenters further increased the narrowed attentional scope in appetitive stimuli by telling participants they would be allowed to consume the desserts shown in the pictures. The results revealed that their hypothesis was correct in that the broad attentional scope led to quicker detection of global letters and the narrowed attentional scope led to quicker detection of local letters. 

Researchers Bradley, Codispoti, Cuthbert and Lang wanted to further examine the emotional reactions in picture priming. Instead of using an appetitive stimulus they used stimulus sets from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). The image set includes various unpleasant pictures such as snakes, insects, attack scenes, accidents, illness, and loss. They predicted that the unpleasant picture would stimulate a defensive motivational intensity response, which would produce strong emotional arousal such as skin gland responses and cardiac deceleration. Participants rated the pictures based on valence, arousal and dominance on the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) rating scale. The findings were consistent with the hypothesis and proved that emotion is organized motivationally by the intensity of activation in appetitive or defensive systems.

Prior to research in 2013, Harmon-Jones and Gable performed an experiment to examine whether neural activation related with approach-motivation intensity (left frontal-central activity) would trigger the effect of appetitive stimuli on narrowed attention. They also tested whether individual dissimilarities in approach motivation are associated with attentional narrowing. In order to test the hypothesis, the researchers used the same Navon task with appetitive and neutral pictures in addition to having the participants indicate how long since they had last eaten in minutes. To examine the neural activation, the researchers used an electroencephalography and recorded eye movements in order to detect what regions of the brain were being used during approach motivation. The results supported the hypothesis suggesting that the left frontal-central hemisphere is relative for approach-motivational processes and narrowed attentional scope. Some psychologists were concerned that the individuals who were hungry had an increase in the left frontal-central due to frustration. This statement was proved false because the research shows that the dessert pictures increase positive affect even in the hungry individuals. The findings revealed that narrowed cognitive scope has the ability to assist us in goal accomplishment.

Clinical Applications

Later on, researchers connected motivational intensity to clinical applications and found that alcohol-related pictures caused narrowed attention for persons who had a strong motivation to consume alcohol. The researchers tested the participants by exposing them to alcohol and neutral pictures. After the picture was displayed on a screen, the participants finished a test evaluating attentional focus. The findings proved that exposure to alcohol-related pictures led to a narrowing of attentional focus to individuals who were motivated to use alcohol. However, exposure to neutral pictures did not correlate with alcohol-related motivation to manipulate attentional focus. The Alcohol Myopia Theory (AMT) states that alcohol consumption reduces the amount of information available in memory, which also narrows attention so only the most proximal items or striking sources are encompassed in attentional scope. This narrowed attention leads intoxicated persons to make more extreme decisions than they would when sober. Researchers provided evidence that substance-related stimuli capture the attention of individuals when they have high and intense motivation to consume the substance. Motivational intensity and cue-induced narrowing of attention has a unique role in shaping people’s initial decision to consume alcohol. In 2013, psychologists from the University of Missouri investigated the connection between sport achievement orientation and alcohol outcomes. They asked varsity athletes to complete a Sport Orientation Questionnaire which measured their sport-related achievement orientation on three scales—competitiveness, win orientation, and goal orientation. The participants also completed assessments of alcohol use and alcohol-related problems. The results revealed that the goal orientation of the athletes were significantly associated with alcohol use but not alcohol-related problems.

In terms of psychopathological implications and applications, college students showing depressive symptoms were better at retrieving seemingly “nonrelevant” contextual information from a source monitoring paradigm task. Namely, the students with depressive symptoms were better at identifying the color of the box the word was in compared to nondepressed students. Sadness (low motivational intensity) is usually associated with depression, so the more broad focus on contextual information of sadder students supports that that affects high in motivational intensity narrow cognitive scope whereas affects low in motivational intensity broaden cognitive scope.

The Motivational Intensity theory states that the difficulty of a task combined with the importance of success determine the energy invested by an individual. The theory has three main layers. The innermost layer says human behavior is guided by the desire to conserve as much energy as possible. Individuals aim to avoid wasting energy so they invest only the energy that is required to complete the task. The middle layer focuses on the difficulty of tasks combined with the importance of success and how this affects energy conservation. It focuses on energy investment in situations of clear and unclear task difficulty. The last layer looks at predictions for energy invested by a person when they have several possible options to choose at different task difficulties. The person is free to choose among several possible options of task difficulty. The motivational intensity theory offers a logical and consistent framework for research. Researchers can predict a person’s actions by assuming effort refers to the energy investment. The motivational intensity theory is used to show how changes in goal attractiveness and energy investment correlate.

Mood

Mood, like emotion, is an affective state. However, an emotion tends to have a clear focus (i.e., its cause is self-evident), while mood tends to be more unfocused and diffuse. Mood, according to Batson, Shaw and Oleson (1992), involves tone and intensity and a structured set of beliefs about general expectations of a future experience of pleasure or pain, or of positive or negative affect in the future. Unlike instant reactions that produce affect or emotion, and that change with expectations of future pleasure or pain, moods, being diffuse and unfocused and thus harder to cope with, can last for days, weeks, months or even years (Schucman, 1975). Moods are hypothetical constructs depicting an individual's emotional state. Researchers typically infer the existence of moods from a variety of behavioral referents (Blechman, 1990). Habitual negative affect and negative mood is characteristic of high neuroticism.

Positive affect and negative affect (PANAS) represent independent domains of emotion in the general population, and positive affect is strongly linked to social interaction. Positive and negative daily events show independent relationships to subjective well-being, and positive affect is strongly linked to social activity. Recent research suggests that high functional support is related to higher levels of positive affect. In his work on negative affect arousal and white noise, Seidner found support for the existence of a negative affect arousal mechanism regarding the devaluation of speakers from other ethnic origins. The exact process through which social support is linked to positive affect remains unclear. The process could derive from predictable, regularized social interaction, from leisure activities where the focus is on relaxation and positive mood, or from the enjoyment of shared activities. The techniques used to shift a negative mood to a positive one are called mood repair strategies.

Social interaction

Affect display is a critical facet of interpersonal communication. Evolutionary psychologists have advanced the hypothesis that hominids have evolved with sophisticated capability of reading affect displays.

Emotions are portrayed as dynamic processes that mediate the individual's relation to a continually changing social environment. In other words, emotions are considered to be processes of establishing, maintaining, or disrupting the relation between the organism and the environment on matters of significance to the person.

Most social and psychological phenomena occur as the result of repeated interactions between multiple individuals over time. These interactions should be seen as a multi-agent system—a system that contains multiple agents interacting with each other and/or with their environments over time. The outcomes of individual agents' behaviors are interdependent: Each agent’s ability to achieve its goals depends on not only what it does but also what other agents do.

Emotions are one of the main sources for the interaction. Emotions of an individual influence the emotions, thoughts and behaviors of others; others' reactions can then influence their future interactions with the individual expressing the original emotion, as well as that individual's future emotions and behaviors. Emotion operates in cycles that can involve multiple people in a process of reciprocal influence.

Affect, emotion, or feeling is displayed to others through facial expressions, hand gestures, posture, voice characteristics, and other physical manifestation. These affect displays vary between and within cultures and are displayed in various forms ranging from the most discrete of facial expressions to the most dramatic and prolific gestures.

Observers are sensitive to agents' emotions, and are capable of recognizing the messages these emotions convey. They react to and draw inferences from an agent's emotions. It should be noted that the emotion an agent displays may not be an authentic reflection of his or her actual state.

Agents' emotions can have effects on four broad sets of factors:

1. Emotions of other persons
2. Inferences of other persons
3. Behaviors of other persons
4. Interactions and relationships between the agent and other persons.

Emotion may affect not only the person at whom it was directed, but also third parties who observe an agent's emotion. Moreover, emotions can affect larger social entities such as a group or a team. Emotions are a kind of message and therefore can influence the emotions, attributions and ensuing behaviors of others, potentially evoking a feedback process to the original agent.

Agents' feelings evoke feelings in others by two suggested distinct mechanisms:

• Emotion Contagion – people tend to automatically and unconsciously mimic non-verbal expressions. Mimicking occurs also in interactions involving textual exchanges alone.
• Emotion Interpretation – an individual may perceive an agent as feeling a particular emotion and react with complementary or situationally appropriate emotions of their own. The feelings of the others diverge from and in some way compliment the feelings of the original agent.

People may not only react emotionally, but may also draw inferences about emotive agents such as the social status or power of an emotive agent, his competence and his credibility. For example, an agent presumed to be angry may also be presumed to have high power.