Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being.
01 Jan 1989-Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (American Psychological Association)-Vol. 57, Iss: 6, pp 1069-1081
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the relationship between self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth, and found that these aspects are not strongly tied to prior assessment indexes.
Abstract: Reigning measures of psychological well-being have little theoretical grounding, despite an extensive literature on the contours of positive functioning. Aspects of well-being derived from this literature (i.e., self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth) were operationalized. Three hundred and twenty-one men and women, divided among young, middle-aged, and older adults, rated themselves on these measures along with six instruments prominent in earlier studies (i.e., affect balance, life satisfaction, self-esteem, morale, locus of control, depression). Results revealed that positive relations with others, autonomy, purpose in life, and personal growth were not strongly tied to prior assessment indexes, thereby supporting the claim that key aspects of positive functioning have not been represented in the empirical arena. Furthermore, age profiles revealed a more differentiated pattern of well-being than is evident in prior research.
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TL;DR: Males were found to be more assertive and had slightly higher self-esteem than females and females were higher than males in extraversion, anxiety, trust, and, especially, tender-mindedness.
Abstract: Four meta-analyses were conducted to examine gender differences in personality in the literature (1958-1992) and in normative data for well-known personality inventories (1940-1992). Males were found to be more assertive and had slightly higher self-esteem than females. Females were higher than males in extraversion, anxiety, trust, and, especially, tender-mindedness (e.g., nurturance). There were no noteworthy sex differences in social anxiety, impulsiveness, activity, ideas (e.g., reflectiveness), locus of control, and orderliness. Gender differences in personality traits were generally constant across ages, years of data collection, educational levels, and nations.
2,026 citations
TL;DR: Findings suggest that a set of general mathematical principles may describe the relations between positive affect and human flourishing.
Abstract: To flourish means to live within an optimal range of human functioning, one that connotes goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience. This definition builds on path-breaking work that measures mental health in positive terms rather than by the absence of mental illness (Keyes, 2002). Flourishing contrasts not just with pathology but also with languishing: a disorder intermediate along the mental health continuum experienced by people who describe their lives as “hollow” or “empty.” Epidemiological work suggests that fewer than 20% of U.S. adults flourish and that the costs of languishing are high; relative to flourishing (and comparable to depression), languishing brings more emotional distress, psychosocial impairment, limitations in daily activities, and lost work days (Keyes, 2002).
What predicts whether people will flourish or languish? Are the predictors similar for individuals, relationships, and larger groups? Drawing together existing theory and research on affect and nonlinear dynamic systems, we propose that a key predictor of flourishing is the ratio of positive to negative affect.
Over time, and in both private and social contexts, people experience a range of pleasant and unpleasant emotions and moods, and they express a variety of positive and negative evaluative sentiments or attitudes. We use affect to represent this spectrum of valenced feeling states and attitudes, with positive affect and positivity interchangeably representing the pleasant end (e.g., feeling grateful, upbeat; expressing appreciation, liking) and negative affect and negativity representing the unpleasant end (e.g., feeling contemptuous, irritable; expressing disdain, disliking). The affective texture of a person’s life—or of a given relationship or group—can be represented by its positivity ratio, the ratio of pleasant feelings and sentiments to unpleasant ones over time. Past research has shown that for individuals, this ratio predicts subjective well-being (Diener, 2000; Kahneman, 1999). Pushing further, we hypothesize that—for individuals, relationships, and teams—positivity ratios that meet or exceed a certain threshold characterize human flourishing. Although both negative and positive affect can produce adaptive and maladaptive outcomes, a review of the benefits of positive affect provides a particularly useful backdrop for our theorizing.
2,015 citations
Cites background from "Happiness is everything, or is it? ..."
...Items tapping positive psychological functioning measured self-acceptance, purpose in life, environmental mastery, positive relations with others, personal growth, and autonomy (Ryff, 1989)....
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TL;DR: Reappraisal has a healthier profile of short-term affective, cognitive, and social consequences than suppression and issues in the development of reappraisal and suppression are considered to provide new evidence for an increasingly healthy emotion regulation profile during adulthood.
Abstract: Individuals regulate their emotions in a wide variety of ways. Are some forms of emotion regulation healthier than others? We focus on two commonly used emotion regulation strategies: reappraisal (changing the way one thinks about a potentially emotion-eliciting event) and suppression (changing the way one responds behaviorally to an emotion-eliciting event). In the first section, we review experimental findings showing that reappraisal has a healthier profile of short-term affective, cognitive, and social consequences than suppression. In the second section, we review individual-difference findings, which show that using reappraisal to regulate emotions is associated with healthier patterns of affect, social functioning, and well-being than is using suppression. In the third section, we consider issues in the development of reappraisal and suppression and provide new evidence for a normative shift toward an increasingly healthy emotion regulation profile during adulthood (i.e., increases in the use of reappraisal and decreases in the use of suppression).
1,968 citations
Cites background from "Happiness is everything, or is it? ..."
...In terms of Ryff’s (1989) six domains of psychological health, suppressors showed lower levels of well-being across the board, with the biggest effect for positive relations with others....
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TL;DR: Ryff as mentioned in this paper revisited key messages from Aristotle's Nichomacean Ethics to strengthen conceptual foundations of eudaimonic well-being, and examined ideas about positive human functioning from existential and utilitarian philosophy as well as clinical, developmental, and humanistic psychology.
Abstract: In an effort to strengthen conceptual foundations of eudaimonic well-being, key messages from Aristotle’s Nichomacean Ethics are revisited Also examined are ideas about positive human functioning from existential and utilitarian philosophy as well as clinical, developmental, and humanistic psychology How these perspectives were integrated to create a multidimensional model of psychological well-being [Ryff, CD: 1989a, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57(6), pp 1069–1081] is described, and empirical evidence supporting the factorial validity of the model is briefly noted Life course and socioeconomic correlates of well-being are examined to underscore the point that opportunities for eudaimonic well-being are not equally distributed Biological correlates (cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, immune) of psychological well-being are also briefly noted as they suggest possible health benefits associated with living a life rich in purpose and meaning, continued growth, and quality ties to others We conclude with future challenges in carrying the eudaimonic vision forward
1,960 citations
Cites background or methods from "Happiness is everything, or is it? ..."
...This was a progressive process (see Ryff, 1982, 1985, 1989b), wherein the objective was to identify recurrent themes or points of convergence in these many formulations of positive functioning....
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...This observation was central to my efforts to articulate a conception of psychological well-being (PWB) that was explicitly concerned with the development and self-realization of the individual (Ryff, 1989a)....
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...These patterns have been replicated across multiple studies, including those with community samples and nationally representative samples (Ryff, 1989a, 1991; Ryff and Keyes, 1995) as well as with instruments of dramatically different length (e.g., 3-item scales, 20-item scales)....
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...The objective in so doing is to show the various forms that wellbeing can take, while simultaneously to make clear the full scope of prior thinking that informed the Ryff (1989a) model of PWB....
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...The reduced item pools (32 items per scale, divided between 16 positively and negatively scored items) were then administered to the initial research sample of young, middle, and old-aged adults (Ryff, 1989a)....
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TL;DR: Discussion centers on how positive emotions are the mechanism of change for the type of mind-training practice studied here and how loving-kindness meditation is an intervention strategy that produces positive emotions in a way that outpaces the hedonic treadmill effect.
Abstract: B. L. Fredrickson's (1998, 2001) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions asserts that people's daily experiences of positive emotions compound over time to build a variety of consequential personal resources. The authors tested this build hypothesis in a field experiment with working adults (n = 139), half of whom were randomly-assigned to begin a practice of loving-kindness meditation. Results showed that this meditation practice produced increases over time in daily experiences of positive emotions, which, in turn, produced increases in a wide range of personal resources (e.g., increased mindfulness, purpose in life, social support, decreased illness symptoms). In turn, these increments in personal resources predicted increased life satisfaction and reduced depressive symptoms. Discussion centers on how positive emotions are the mechanism of change for the type of mind-training practice studied here and how loving-kindness meditation is an intervention strategy that produces positive emotions in a way that outpaces the hedonic treadmill effect.
1,904 citations
Cites methods from "Happiness is everything, or is it? ..."
...Our third index of social resources was drawn from Ryff’s (1989) psychological well-being scale (see above)....
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...We measured five additional psychological resources using subscales of Ryff’s (1989) broader psychological well-being measure....
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References
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TL;DR: In this paper, the effects of reward or reinforcement on preceding behavior depend in part on whether the person perceives the reward as contingent on his own behavior or independent of it, and individuals may also differ in generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement.
Abstract: The effects of reward or reinforcement on preceding behavior depend in part on whether the person perceives the reward as contingent on his own behavior or independent of it. Acquisition and performance differ in situations perceived as determined by skill versus chance. Persons may also differ in generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. This report summarizes several experiments which define group differences in behavior when Ss perceive reinforcement as contingent on their behavior versus chance or experimenter control. The report also describes the development of tests of individual differences in a generalized belief in internal-external control and provides reliability, discriminant validity and normative data for 1 test, along with a description of the results of several studies of construct validity.
21,451 citations
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TL;DR: The literature on subjective well-being (SWB), including happiness, life satisfaction, and positive affect, is reviewed in three areas: measurement, causal factors, and theory.
Abstract: The literature on subjective well-being (SWB), including happiness, life satisfaction, and positive affect, is reviewed in three areas: measurement, causal factors, and theory. Psychometric data on single-item and multi-item subjective well-being scales are presented, and the measures are compared. Measuring various components of subjective well-being is discussed. In terms of causal influences, research findings on the demographic correlates of SWB are evaluated, as well as the findings on other influences such as health, social contact, activity, and personality. A number of theoretical approaches to happiness are presented and discussed: telic theories, associationistic models, activity theories, judgment approaches, and top-down versus bottom-up conceptions.
10,021 citations
"Happiness is everything, or is it? ..." refers background in this paper
...On a more general level, increased interest in the study of psychological well-being follows from the recognition that the field of psychology, since its inception, has devoted much more attention to human unhappiness and suffering than to the causes and consequences of positive functioning (Diener, 1984;Jahoda, 1958)....
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TL;DR: The general depression scales used were felt to be insufficient for the purpose of this research project and the more specific scales were also inadequate.
Abstract: The fact that there is a need for assessing depression, whether as an affect, a symptom, or a disorder is obvious by the numerous scales and inventories available and in use today. The need to assess depression simply and specifically as a psychiatric disorder has not been met by most scales available today. We became acutely aware of this situation in a research project where we needed to correlate both the presence and severity of a depressive disorder in patients with other parameters such as arousal response during sleep and changes with treatment of the depressive disorder. It was felt that the general depression scales used were insufficient for our purpose and that the more specific scales were also inadequate. These inadequacies related to factors such as the length of a scale or inventory being too long and too time consuming, especially for a patient
8,413 citations
TL;DR: The literature on subjective well-being (SWB), including happiness, life satisfaction, and positive affect, is reviewed in this article in three areas: measurement, causal factors, and theory.
Abstract: The literature on subjective well-being (SWB), including happiness, life satisfaction, and positive affect, is reviewed in three areas: measurement, causal factors, and theory. Psychometric data on single-item and multi-item subjective well-being scales are presented, and the measures are compared. Measuring various components of subjective well-being is discussed. In terms of causal influences, research findings on the demographic correlates of SWB are evaluated, as well as the findings on other influences such as health, social contact, activity, and personality. A number of theoretical approaches to happiness are presented and discussed: telic theories, associationistic models, activity theories, judgment approaches, and top-down versus bottom-up conceptions.
7,799 citations