Subjective well-being

Personal wellbeing in the UK 2012–13

Subjective well-being (SWB) is a self-reported measure of well-being, typically obtained by questionnaire.[1][2]

Ed Diener developed a tripartite model of SWB in 1984, which describes how people experience the quality of their lives and includes both emotional reactions and cognitive judgments.[3] It posits "three distinct but often related components of wellbeing: frequent positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and cognitive evaluations such as life satisfaction."[4][5] SWB is an overarching ideology that encompasses such things as "high levels of pleasant emotions and moods, low levels of negative emotions and moods, and high life-satisfaction."[6]

SWB therefore encompasses moods and emotions as well as evaluations of one's satisfaction with general and specific areas of one's life.[7] SWB is one definition of happiness.

Although SWB tends to be stable over the time[7] and is strongly related to personality traits,[8] the emotional component of SWB can be impacted by situations; for example, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, lowered emotional well-being by 74%.[9] There is evidence that health and SWB may mutually influence each other, as good health tends to be associated with greater happiness,[10] and a number of studies have found that positive emotions and optimism can have a beneficial influence on health.[11]

  1. ^ "A Short Introduction to Subjective Well-Being: Its Measurement, Correlates and Policy Uses" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-12-02. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
  2. ^ Waldron, Sam (September 2010). "Measuring Subjective Wellbeing in the UK" (PDF) (Working paper). Office for National Statistics (UK). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-01-07.
  3. ^ Diener, Ed (1984). "Subjective well-being". Psychological Bulletin. 95 (3): 542–575. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.95.3.542. PMID 6399758.
  4. ^ Tov & Diener (2013), Subjective Well-Being. Research Collection School of Social Sciences. Paper 1395. https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1395/ Archived 2020-12-02 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ Busseri, Michael A.; Sadava, Stan W. (2011). "A Review of the Tripartite Structure of Subjective Well-Being: Implications for Conceptualization, Operationalization, Analysis, and Synthesis". Personality and Social Psychology Review. 15 (3): 290–314. doi:10.1177/1088868310391271. PMID 21131431. S2CID 36921423.
  6. ^ Lopez, Shane J.; Snyder, C. R. (2011-10-13). The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology. OUP USA. ISBN 978-0-19-986216-0. Archived from the original on 2022-09-09. Retrieved 2022-03-11.
  7. ^ a b Diener, Ed; Suh, E.M.; Lucas, R.E.; Smith, H.L (1999). "Subjective well-being: Three Decades of Progress" (PDF). Psychological Bulletin. 125 (2): 276–302. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.125.2.276. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-03-29. Retrieved 2015-04-05.
  8. ^ Steel, Piers; Schmidt, Joseph; Shultz, Jonas (2008). "Refining the relationship between personality and Subjective well-being" (PDF). Psychological Bulletin. 134 (1): 138–161. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.134.1.138. hdl:1880/47915. PMID 18193998. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-01-31. Retrieved 2011-12-18.
  9. ^ Yang, Haiyang; Ma, Jingjing (2020-07-01). "How an Epidemic Outbreak Impacts Happiness: Factors that Worsen (vs. Protect) Emotional Well-being during the Coronavirus Pandemic". Psychiatry Research. 289: 113045. doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113045. ISSN 0165-1781. PMC 7190485. PMID 32388418.
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference Okunmeta-analysis was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference Dienerhealth was invoked but never defined (see the help page).