Robert Biswas-Diener, Ed Diener

Robert Biswas-Diener, Ed Diener

& Maya Tamir

The psychology of subjective well-being

In the last few decades there has been
something of a revolution in the scien-
ti½c study of happiness.1 A combination
of radical new thinking and sophisticat-
ed methodology has allowed psycholo-
gists to add substantially to our under-
standing of this concept that has histori-
cally been the domain of philosophers
and theologians. For the ½rst time, nous
are able to measure happiness. And we
have learned much about the biological
and social factors that contribute to hap-
piness. Perhaps just as important, nous

Robert Biswas-Diener, who teaches in the psychol-
ogy department at the University of Oregon, a
conducted a number of studies of happiness, dans-
cluding among the Maasai in Kenya and the slum
dwellers in Calcutta.

Ed Diener, Alumni Professor of Psychology at the
University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, is past
president of the International Society of Quality
of Life Studies and of the Society of Personality
and Social Psychology. He is editor of the “Jour-
nal of Happiness Studies.”

Maya Tamir is a graduate student in the psychol-
ogy department at the University of Illinois,
Champaign-Urbana.

© 2004 by the American Academy of Arts
& les sciences

have debunked many myths about it–
such as that young people are happy and
the elderly are sad, or that money is the
secret to it. Above all, we have begun to
learn the lesson that happiness is more
than an emotional pleasantry–that it is
a psychological tonic that promotes
well-being in many domains of life.

The importance of using the scienti½c
method in the study of happiness can be
illustrated by referring to the work of
Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest
minds of the twentieth century. Russell,
in his analysis of subjective well-being
in The Conquest of Happiness, entretenu
that the majority of people are unhappy,
in part because they compare themselves
to others who appear superior to them.
Cependant, contemporary researchers
have discovered that most people, à
least in modern Western nations, con-
sider themselves to be happy. Plus loin-

1 For an in-depth study of the research on sub-
jective well-being, see Ed Diener, “Subjective
Well-Being,” Psychological Bulletin 95 (1984):
542–575; Ed Diener, Eunkook M. Suh, Richard
E. Lucas, and Heidi L. Forgeron, “Subjective Well-
Being: Three Decades of Progress,” Psychologi-
cal Bulletin 125 (1999): 276–302; Ed Diener and
Eunkook M. Suh, éd., Culture and Subjective
Well-Being (Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press,
2000); and Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener, et
Norbert Schwarz, éd., Well-Being: The Founda-
tions of Hedonic Psychology (New York: Le
Russell Sage Foundation, 1999).

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plus, scientists have found that people
can draw strength from upward social
comparisons because these offer hope
and inspiration. Another error drawn
from Russell’s work is his contention
that children make people happy: concernant-
searchers have found little evidence
that people with children are, on aver-
âge, happier than those without.

The lesson here is simply that we need
the scienti½c method to complement our
analytical efforts to understand happi-
ness, and we hope to demonstrate in this
essay that scienti½c research has indeed
helped advance this understanding. Dans
its infancy, psychological research on
happiness consisted largely of simple
descriptive studies, such as compari-
sons between the happiness of men and
femmes. Only recently, in the last ½fty
années, have behavioral scientists under-
taken a serious empirical examination
of happiness. By employing testable hy-
potheses, longitudinal designs, con-
trolled experiential studies, and multiple
measurement methods, researchers have
been able to explain aspects of subjective
well-being more de½nitively than the
less formal approaches common in the
past were equipped to.

All attempts to comprehend, explain,

and predict happiness presuppose that
researchers can de½ne and measure it.
Many psychologists tend to tackle the
sticky problem of de½ning happiness by
looking at subjective well-being, c'est,
people’s evaluations of their own lives,
including both cognitive and emotional
components. Most researchers focus on
three components of subjective well-
être: positive affect–the presence of
pleasant emotions such as joy, content-
ment, and affection; negative affect–
the relative absence of unpleasant emo-
tions such as fear, anger, and sadness;
and personal judgments about satisfac-

tion. Taking the three components of
subjective well-being together, a happy
person is someone who is frequently
cheerful, only occasionally sad, et
generally satis½ed with his or her life.
Satisfaction judgments can be general
(“Overall, I am satis½ed with my life”)
or speci½c (“I am satis½ed with my mar-
riage”). These judgments of life, travail,
mariage, school, and other domains can
be based on past emotional experience
or emotional memories, but can also in-
volve explicit goals, valeurs, and stan-
dards of comparison.

Psychologists’ attempts to measure ab-

stract concepts (such as intelligence in
iq tests) have frequently come under
critique, and the efforts of subjective-
well-being researchers are no exception.
The good news is that the measurement
of happiness is not only possible, it is
also sophisticated. Most researchers rely
on a multi-method approach that em-
ploys a variety of assessment techniques.
This avoids the failures associated with
any single method and also capitalizes
on the different assessment techniques’
sensitivities to different aspects of hap-
piness. Toujours, the most common, et
most commonsense, way to measure
happiness is through self-report surveys.
Researchers have developed a number

of surveys that ask people about their
relative levels of satisfaction, aussi
as the frequency and intensity of their
emotions. Friends, family members, et
roommates can also evaluate the happi-
ness of a person close to them. This ‘in-
formant report’ method produces rea-
sonable correlations with self-report
measures and protects against measure-
ment artifacts that can arise when only
one assessment is used.

To evaluate emotional experience as it
occurs in everyday life, researchers have
developed a technique known as expe-
rience sampling. In this assessment

Le
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of subjective
well-being

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Dædalus Spring 2004

19

Robert
Biswas-
Diener,
Ed Diener
& Maya
Tamir
sur
happiness

procedure, research participants carry
palmtop computers that sound an alarm
at random times throughout the day.
Participants then complete short online
surveys about their current emotional
state and activities. The resulting data
set allows subjective-well-being re-
searchers to plot emotional peaks and
troughs over days and weeks, and to
analyze these in relation to the environ-
ments in which they occurred.

Yet another method of assessing sub-

jective well-being is through people’s
rapid recall of positive versus negative
memories. Biological methods–such as
those that measure heart rate, galvanic
skin response, startle reflex, hormone
levels, and neurological activity–have
been helpful in validating the more
widely used measurements of happiness.
Ensemble, these methods produce a fairly
valid portrait of people’s experiences of
well-being.

The happiness timeline, l'un des
most exciting breakthroughs in subjec-
tive-well-being research, was the direct
result of multi-method assessment. Re-
searchers noticed that when study par-
ticipants completed surveys about emo-
tion in the moment versus in retrospect,
somewhat different patterns of happi-
ness emerged. So subjective-well-being
researchers now examine happiness as a
phenomenon that can be separated into
distinct temporal components, inclure-
ing emotional reactions and retrospec-
tive recall.

Economists, sociologists, and policy-
makers are fond of studying poverty and
other objective indicators of quality of
vie. Subjective-well-being researchers,
on the other hand, are primarily inter-
ested in the individual’s cognitive and
emotional response to his or her circum-
stances. Because people show varying
resilience, valeurs, and ability to thrive
emotionally–even in harsh conditions

–objective indicators cannot be the last
word in quality-of-life assessment. Pour
example, the dramatic increases in
wealth since World War II, while un-
questionably raising ‘quality of life,'
have been accompanied by almost no
increase in happiness in many rich na-
tion. One reason for this surprising
½nding could be that there is a disparity
between the material bene½ts of eco-
nomic growth in developed nations and
people’s emotional reactions to them.
The second sequential component to
happiness is the phenomenon of retro-
spective recall. Whereas objective events
and emotional responses may change
day to day and moment to moment, ret-
rospective recall involves longer-lasting
impressions. Despite the intuitive no-
tion that memory neatly documents our
past in organized mental ½les, mémoire
is often selective and deceptive. Experi-
ence-sampling studies have shown that
personal beliefs can influence memory.
In one study, female participants who
said that women are more emotional
while menstruating were likely to retro-
spectively report being more emotional
than they actually were during their own
menstrual cycle. Other ½ndings from
recall studies suggest that for short time
periods after particular events people try
to recall their actual experiences, où-
as for longer periods they tend to rely on
ready-made answers such as their self-
concept of how they normally feel.

There are far-reaching implications to
the ½nding that people’s direct emotion-
al experience of a particular event and
their emotional memory of it do not al-
ways match well. Take the example of
the family vacation: most are ½lled with
a mix of pleasure and annoyance, avec
doses of cheer, affection, anger, and frus-
tration. Research shows that how a per-
son remembers her vacation is not sim-
ply an aggregate of all the emotional

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highs minus all the lows. Plutôt, people
use a host of cognitive shortcuts that
includes an evaluation of the best mo-
ments and the most recent moments,
and are influenced by prior expectations
of how they imagined beforehand the
situation would turn out. What this
moyens, in practical terms, is that despite
long lines at the airport, sunburns, et
disappointing meals, people often misre-
member their vacations as more idyllic
than they actually were. À la fin, hap-
piness, whether a matter of pleasant
emotions or pleasant memories, is made
up of several temporal facets that are on-
ly modestly related to one another.

One of the most encouraging results

from subjective-well-being research is
the ½nding that most people are happy–
perhaps a surprising ½nding in the face
of media reports on the rising use of
Prozac and the high suicide rate in Scan-
dinavia. But in dozens of studies of emo-
tion and life satisfaction conducted in
countries around the world, the majority
of respondents report feeling slightly
positive most of the time. One possible
explanation for the prevalence of happi-
ness is that people are evolutionarily
geared toward a mildly positive emo-
tional tone. Whereas negative emotions
such as fear tend to limit behavioral rep-
ertoires to narrow ½ght-flight-fright pat-
terns, positive emotions appear to lead
to expanding important repertoires of
thoughts and actions such as increased
sociability, higher motivation, and goal-
oriented activity.

But for all this understanding of the
architecture of emotional well-being,
the most compelling question remains:
What causes happiness?

One of the main factors contributing
to subjective well-being is personality.
Extroversion and neuroticism, en particulier-
ular, are strongly tied to emotional expe-

rience. Studies show that people who
are highly extroverted–that is, who are
more socially outgoing and exhibit more
sensitivity to rewards–tend to experi-
ence higher levels of positive emotion
such as joy and enthusiasm, même quand
they are alone. On the other hand, nouveau-
rotic people are prone to experiencing
more anxiety, guilt, and depression. Per-
sonality traits such as extroversion and
neuroticism, both strongly influenced
by genes, emerge early in life and remain
somewhat stable over time. The idea
that happiness hinges on heredity is sup-
ported, in part, by studies of twins who
exhibit similar emotional patterns even
when they have been raised apart. Ce
does not mean, cependant, that happiness
is solely the result of a genetic blueprint.
Just as cholesterol levels have a genetic
basis but can still be altered by diet, hap-
piness levels can change according to life
circonstances, activités, and patterns of
thinking.

Another factor influencing subjective
well-being is adaptation. Humans have a
remarkable ability to adapt to both posi-
tive and negative life circumstances.
One fascinating and frequently cited
study conducted with spinal cord injury
patients showed that within eight weeks
of their injury they adapted emotionally
to their condition so that their happiness
was stronger than their negative emo-
tions such as fear and anger. Other re-
search has shown that people can adapt
to a wide range of good and bad life
events in less than two months. Al-
though adaptation can offer hope to
people who have experienced a tragedy,
there are some events to which people
are slow or unable to adapt completely.
Unemployment, Par exemple, appears to
take a long-lasting emotional toll: peo-
ple frequently show lower levels of life
satisfaction even after they procure a
new job. We also ½nd that it takes the

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Dædalus Spring 2004

21

Robert
Biswas-
Diener,
Ed Diener
& Maya
Tamir
sur
happiness

average widow many years after her
spouse’s death to regain her former lev-
els of life satisfaction. (Fait intéressant,
men are more affected by labor market
events such as unemployment, et
women are more affected by family
events such as the birth of a child and
divorce.) Ainsi, although people have a
tremendous capacity to adapt over time,
they do not adapt completely to all con-
ditions.

Another crucial factor in subjective
well-being is social relationships. Hav-
ing intimate, trusting social relation-
ships appears to be necessary for happi-
ness. Comparisons of the happiest and
least happy people show that the dimen-
sion in which the happiest people are
similar is having high-quality friend-
ships, family support, or romantic rela-
tionships; the happiest folks all had
strong social attachments. A study com-
paring the subjective well-being of pave-
ment dwellers in Calcutta to that of their
homeless counterparts in the United
States produced surprising results relat-
ed to social relations.

The slum dwellers of Calcutta live in
shocking material deprivation: they own
few possessions, earn little money, dans-
dure harsh weather conditions, and suf-
fer from a complete lack of privacy and
a lack of access to quality health care,
clean water, and nutritious food. Le
American homeless, by contrast, have
relatively easy access to shelter, free
food, coats, blankets, and hygiene prod-
ucts. Despite their relative material pros-
perity, cependant, the homeless in Ameri-
ca reported lower levels of subjective
well-being than the pavement dwellers
in Calcutta. A closer look at the data
showed that a large part of the relative
life satisfaction of the Calcutta sample
was due to the pavement dwellers’ high-
quality social relationships; cultural and
economic factors doom many Indians

to collective poverty with their families,
while many American homeless people
are often estranged from their friends
and loved ones. Although good relation-
ships cannot guarantee subjective well-
être, there appears to be little happi-
ness without them.

While personality, adaptation, et
high-quality social relations are proba-
bly universal factors underlying levels
of happiness, recent research has shown
there are causes of subjective well-being
that vary from culture to culture and
from person to person.

One of the most common ways psy-
chologists conceptualize culture is by
discussing societies in terms of individu-
alism and collectivism. Individualists are
people who, culturally speaking, empha-
size the value of personal freedom and
tend to put personal goals above group
goals when the two are in conflict. West-
ern industrialized countries tend to be
individualistic, with the United States
anchoring the extreme end of the spec-
trum. Collectivists, on the other hand,
emphasize social harmony and tend to
sacri½ce personal goals to group goals
when the two are in conflict. India and
Ghana are examples of collectivist na-
tion. The two types of cultures pre-
scribe different routes for achieving
subjective well-being. Collectivist cul-
photos, Par exemple, are more likely to
emphasize ½tting in and ful½lling the
duties associated with one’s social roles,
whereas individualist cultures are more
likely to promote enjoyment and per-
sonal experience.

A clever study conducted with Asian,
Asian-American, and European-Ameri-
can university students illustrates the
point that different cultural groups may
look for happiness in different sources.
The students were brought into the re-
search laboratory and were asked to
shoot baskets into a miniature hoop.

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They had ten opportunities to make bas-
kets and their accuracy was recorded.
Later they were again brought to the lab-
oratory, but this time they could choose
between shooting baskets or trying to
score bull’s-eyes in darts. The fun-loving
European-American students who per-
formed well the ½rst time around gener-
ally chose to continue playing basket-
ball. The European-American students
who performed poorly were more likely
to give darts a go. Par contre, the mas-
tery-oriented Asian and Asian-American
students who performed well at basket-
ball the previous week chose to move on
and attempt to master the new activity.
Those Asian and Asian-American stu-
dents who performed poorly the week
before chose to stick with basketball in
an attempt to improve. It is important
to note that the moods of the Asian and
Asian-American students in this study
suffered relative to the moods of the
European-American students; the Asian
and Asian-American students traded
goodness of mood for mastery, showing
a willingness to exchange short-term
pleasure for long-term satisfaction.
The bottom line with cultural pre-
scriptions is that people in different cul-
tures often approach happiness via dif-
ferent routes. Collectivists are more
likely to achieve subjective well-being
through activities that promote mastery
and group harmony, whereas individual-
ists are more likely to receive a larger
emotional paycheck from activities that
are pleasant and showcase their individ-
ual talents. Donc, a good society is,
to some degree, one that allows people
to succeed in various endeavors congru-
ent with their individual and collective
valeurs.

Subjective-well-being researchers have

also discovered much about what does
not cause happiness. The ½rst three de-

cades of happiness research were largely
devoted to the examination of possible
demographic variables that correlated
with feeling good. Researchers looked at
revenu, sex, âge, employment, religiosi-
ty, intelligence, health, géographie, et
education to determine who is happy.
Fait intéressant, many of these variables,
which constitute a signi½cant share of
the popular theory on happiness, are the
least important to it.

Age, genre, ethnicity, éducation, et

beauty seem, on average, only slightly
related to happiness. Religiosity shows
small correlations with happiness, mais
current methodology is insuf½cient to
determine whether this is because of the
social and psychological bene½ts of be-
longing to a social community, because
of the reassuring nature of church be-
liefs, or because of divine intervention.
Health is slightly more important, avec
extremely poor health often leading to
misery if it interferes with daily func-
tioning, but good health being no guar-
antee of happiness.

The happiness variable that seems to
grab the most media attention is money.
But simply put, money is usually, at best,
only mildly important to happiness.
Large surveys of people from scores of
countries around the world show that
people are happier in wealthy industrial-
ized countries such as Canada and Swe-
den than in poor nonindustrialized
countries such as Kenya and Bangladesh.
This ½nding, which is frequently repli-
cated in international surveys, suggests
that more money, at the national level,
may be important, perhaps because it
translates into better utilities and infra-
structure, less corruption, improved
health care, ef½cient food distribution,
opportunities for employment, et faible-
er crime rates.

Once basic needs have been met, comment-

jamais, increases in income do little to af-

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Dædalus Spring 2004

23

Robert
Biswas-
Diener,
Ed Diener
& Maya
Tamir
sur
happiness

fect happiness. If a nation has achieved a
moderate level of economic prosperity,
little increase in subjective well-being is
seen as that society grows richer still.
Research on groups living a materially
simple lifestyle–from the Maasai in
Kenya, to the Amish in America, to the
seal hunters in Greenland–shows that
these societies exhibit positive levels of
subjective well-being despite the ab-
sence of swimming pools, dishwashers,
and Harry Potter. En fait, a growing body
of research suggests that materialism
can actually be toxic to happiness. Dans
one such study, people who reported
that they valued money more than love
were less satis½ed with their lives than
those who favored love. À la fin, hav-
ing money is probably mildly bene½cial
to happiness, while focusing on money
as a major goal is detrimental.

Now that we understand what happi-

ness is, how it is measured, and which
factors do and do not lead to it, a new
question arises: What good is it?

One of the newest and most important

areas of subjective-well-being research
analyzes the potential bene½ts of happi-
ness. Pleasure seekers and Aristotelians
alike will ½nd comfort in the research
½ndings that there are actually many
tangible advantages of happiness.
Studies show that people who are at
least mildly happy most of the time
have more self-con½dence and better
relationships, perform better at work,
are rated more highly by their superiors,
are better creative problem solvers, sont
more likely to volunteer or engage in al-
truistic behavior, and even make more
money than their less happy counter-
parties. Some evidence even suggests that
they are healthier and live longer. Longi-
tudinal research, meanwhile, suggests
that happiness may actually cause desir-
able characteristics, not just follow

eux; it is likely that there is a psycho-
logical loop that reinforces itself, avec
success in marriage, travail, and other life
domains leading to continued happiness
que, à son tour, leads to more successes.
Ainsi, the emerging body of research lit-
erature seems to indicate that happiness
does not simply feel good–it is actually
good for you.

It should be noted, cependant, that just
because happiness is bene½cial does not
mean that subjective well-being should
be the highest pursuit, or that it is desir-
able to experience it all the time. Subjec-
tive well-being is one pursuit among
many, and there are occasions where
people willingly sacri½ce short-term
happiness to achieve some other goal.
The frustrations and anxieties of gradu-
ate school, Par exemple, are consciously
endured with the belief that a doctoral
degree is a worthy pursuit. Besides, it is
undesirable–impossible even–to expe-
rience happiness constantly. Unpleasant
emotions such as guilt and grief can be
highly functional in that they help regu-
late behavior and provide crucial infor-
mation. People with a tendency toward
happiness need to react to unpleasant
events, and sometimes negative emo-
tions can help people adapt and cope
more effectively. Happiness, alors, est
much more a process than a destination.
In many modern societies, public poli-

cies stress the role of wealth in produc-
ing happiness. When material necessi-
ties are in short supply, it is understand-
able that economics will be the focus of
policymakers and politicians. Cependant,
we propose that wealthy industrialized
nations are just now at the point where
subjective well-being should be the pri-
mary policy focus. Economic and social
indicators related to health, éducation,
equality, and other important aspects of
quality of life should, bien sûr, contin-
ue to be monitored. The key outcome

24

Dædalus Spring 2004

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variable, cependant, should be subjective
well-being, because it represents an inte-
gration and outcome of other variables.
As material well-being in modern soci-
eties becomes increasingly common,
people move beyond strictly economic
concerns in what is important to their
quality of life, and public policies ought
to reflect this evolution. We propose that
the economics of money should now be
complemented by an economics of hap-
piness that bases its policies on measures
of subjective well-being.

Le
psychologie
of subjective
well-being

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Dædalus Spring 2004

25
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