W. Wilson's (1967) review of the area of subjective well-being (SWB) advanced several conclusions regarding those who report high levels of "happiness". A number of his conclusions have been overturned: youth and modest aspirations no longer are seen as prerequisites of SWB. E. Diener's (1984) review placed greater emphasis on theories that stressed psychological factors. In the current article, the authors review current evidence for Wilson's conclusions and discuss modern theories of SWB that stress dispositional influences, adaptation, goals, and coping strategies. The next steps in the evolution of the field are to comprehend the interaction of psychological factors with life circumstances in producing SWB, to understand the causal pathways leading to happiness, understand the processes underlying adaptation to events, and develop theories that explain why certain variables differentially influence the different components of SWV (life satisfaction, pleasant affect, and unpleasant affect).

Subjective Well-Being: Three Decades of Progress

W Wilson's (1967) review of the area of subjective well-being (SWB) advanced several conclusions regarding those who report high levels of "happiness" A number of his conclusions have been overturned: youth and modest aspirations no longer are seen as prerequisites of SWB E Diener's (1984) review placed greater emphasis on theories that stressed psychological factors In the current article, the authors review current evidence for Wilson's conclusions and discuss modern theories of SWB that stress dispositional influences, adaptation, goals, and coping strategies The next steps in the evolution of the field are to comprehend the interaction of psychological factors with life circumstances in producing SWB, to understand the causal pathways leading to happiness, understand the processes underlying adaptation to events, and develop theories that explain why certain variables differentially influence the different components of SWB (life satisfaction, pleasant affect, and unpleasant affect) In 1967, Warner Wilson presented a broad review of subjective well-being (SWB) research entitled, "Correlates of Avowed Happiness" Based on the limited data available at that time, Wilson concluded that the happy person is a "young, healthy, welleducated, well-paid, extroverted, optimistic, worry-free, religious, married person with high self-esteem, job morale, modest aspirations, of either sex and of a wide range of intelligence" (p 294) In the three decades since Wilson's review, investigations into SWB have evolved Although researchers now know a great deal more about the correlates of SWB, they are less interested in simply describing the demographic characteristics that correlate with it Instead, they focus their effort on understanding the processes that underlie happiness This trend represents a greater recognition of the central role played by people's goals, coping efforts, and dispositions In this article, we review research on several major theoretical approaches to well-being and then indicate how these theories clarify the findings on demographic correlates of SWB Throughout the review we suggest four directions that researchers should pursue in the decades ahead These are by no means the only questions left to answer, but we believe they are the most interesting issues left to resolve First, the causal direction of the correlates of happiness must be examined through more sophisticated methodologies Although the causal priority of demographic factors such as marriage and income is intuitively appealing, it is by no means certain Second, researchers must focus greater attention on the interaction between internal factors (such as personality traits) and external circumstances As we shall see, demographic factors have surprisingly small effects on SWB, but these effects may depend on the personalities of those individuals being studied Thus, future research must take Person X Situation interactions into account Third, researchers must strive to understand the processes underlying adaptation Considerable adaptation to both good and bad circumstances often occurs, yet the processes responsible for these effects are poorly understood Research that examines how habituation, coping strategies, and changing goals influence adaptation will shed much light on the processes responsible for SWB Finally, theories must be refined to make specific predictions about how input variables differentially influence the components of SWB In the past, many researchers have treated SWB as a monolithic entity, but it is now clear that there are separable components that exhibit unique patterns of relations with different variables In each section of this article we discuss progress and opportunities in these four areas

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Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress

Introduction 1. Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle 2. Images of Relationship 3. Concepts of Self and Morality 4. Crisis and Transition 5. Women's Rights and Women's Judgment 6. Visions of Maturity References Index of Study Participants General Index

In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982.

Numerous studies show that happy individuals are successful across multiple life domains, including marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health. The authors suggest a conceptual model to account for these findings, arguing that the happiness-success link exists not only because success makes people happy, but also because positive affect engenders success. Three classes of evidence--crosssectional, longitudinal, and experimental--are documented to test their model. Relevant studies are described and their effect sizes combined meta-analytically. The results reveal that happiness is associated with and precedes numerous successful outcomes, as well as behaviors paralleling success. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that positive affect--the hallmark of well-being--may be the cause of many of the desirable characteristics, resources, and successes correlated with happiness. Limitations, empirical issues, and important future research questions are discussed.

/pdf/the-benefits-of-frequent-positive-affect-does-happiness-lead-4k0h6bmoho.pdf

The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?

Psychology has long been enamored of the dark side of human existence, rarely exploring a more positive view of the mind. What has psychology contributed, for example, to our understanding of the various human virtues? Regrettably, not much. The last decade, however, has witnessed a growing movement to abandon the exclusive focus on the negative. Psychologists from several subdisciplines are now asking an intriguing question: "What strengths does a person employ to deal effectively with life?" The Handbook of Positive Psychology provides a forum for a more positive view of the human condition. In its pages, readers are treated to an analysis of what the foremost experts believe to be the fundamental strengths of humankind. Both seasoned professionals and students just entering the field are eager to grasp the power and vitality of the human spirit as it faces a multitude of life challenges. The Handbook is the first systematic attempt to bring together leading scholars to give voice to the emerging field of positive psychology.

Handbook of positive psychology

This study compares the amount of time dual-career husbands and wives spend in housework, relative to their same-sex counterparts in other dual-earner and single-earner households. Data on 1,565 white couples drawn from the 1976 wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics were entered into a multiple regression analysis of husbands' and wives' weekly hours of housework. Across couple types, wives spent considerably more hours in housework than husbands and performed about 79% of all the housework that was done in their homes. Dual-career wives performed significantly fewer hours of housework each week than did full-time housewives, but they did not differ significantly from other fulltime employed wives. Dual-career husbands only differed significantly in their household labor from nonprofessional or nonmanagerial husbands of full-time housewives. They did not allocate significantly more time to housework each week than professional or managerial husbands married to housewives or than husbands in other dual-earner families in which the wives had nonprofessional/nonmanagerialjobs. Dual-career couples were not found to be more egalitarian than other couples in their allocation of time to household labor. Consequences of these findings for the extent of viability of the dual-career family form are discussed.

A Residue of Tradition: Jobs, Careers, and Spouses' Time in Housework

This report analyzes General Social Survey data from 1972 through 1989 on the personal happiness of married and never-married individuals. Earlier studies (Glenn and Weaver, 1988) had reported a significant decrease in the difference between these two categories, with the "advantage" of the married progressively declining from 1972 through 1986. This article shows that the process reversed somewhat during the latter part of the 1980s, with the effect of marriage on happiness returning to fairly typical levels in 1987 and 1988 after several years of relatively minimal differences in the early part of the decade. However, the difference diminished once again in 1989. The analysis shows that never-married males and younger never-married females were happier in the late 1980s than in the 1970s, and that younger married women were somewhat less happy in the late 1980s than in the 1970s. These trends, however, are generally weaker than earlier evidence suggested.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/352991.pdf

Marital Status and Personal Happiness: An Analysis of Trend Data.

Previous research has shown the changing degree to which spouses are involved in work and family roles over the course of married life. Drawing on those major life-cycle trends, this study tests hypotheses that link variation in husbands' and wives' participation in housework to stages of the family life cycle. We expected that women would spend less time in housework before and after childbearing stages, while their husbands would spend more time in domestic labor during periods of least occupational involvement, that is, early in their employment career and after retirement. Multiple regression was used to analyze the housework time of 1,618 white couples from the 1976 wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Findings from this analysis are generally consistent with our hypotheses in that the salience of work and family roles affects the respective amounts of time that spouses allocate to household labor. Finally, our results raise broader concerns regarding the measurement of role sharing and the recent conceptual emphasis on the family work day.

The Family Life Cycle and Spouses' Time in Housework.

Conceptual frameworks are often organized around a metaphor (Gergen et al., 1980). When the metaphor is powerful and embraced by the culture, the framework is easily understood and readily adapted to explain a wide range of phenomenon. During the 1960s, the social exchange framework was formally advanced in the work of sociologists George Homans (1961) and Peter Blau (1964a) and the work of social psychologists John Thibaut and Harold Kelley (1959). Each of these perspectives make use of an economic metaphor. They view social relationships as extended “markets” in which each individual acts out of self-interest with the goal of maximizing profits. Thibaut and Kelley assert, for example, that “… every individual voluntarily enters and stays in any relationship only as long as it is adequately satisfactory in terms of his rewards and costs” (1959, p. 37). Likewise, Homans asserts that “… the open secret of human exchange is to give the other man behavior that is more valuable to him than it is costly to you and to get from him behavior that is more valuable to you than it is costly to him” (1961, p. 62).

Exchange and Resource Theories

A social learning theory of deviant behavior (Akers, 1985) is used to identify the process through which fraternity membership may be correlated with sexual aggression. Fraternity members are significantly more likely than "independents" to engage in nonphysical coercion and to use drugs and alcohol as a sexual strategy but do not differ significantly in their use of physical coercion. When the social learning variables are controlled fraternity membership has no significant effect on sexual coercion and aggression.

Constance L. Shehan

Papers

A Residue of Tradition: Jobs, Careers, and Spouses' Time in Housework

Marital Status and Personal Happiness: An Analysis of Trend Data.

The Family Life Cycle and Spouses' Time in Housework.

Exchange and Resource Theories

Social Contexts and Social Learning in Sexual Coercion and Aggression: Assessing the Contribution of Fraternity Membership