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Summary All Articles Science of Happiness
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A summary of all the articles we need to read for this course. The abstract and the most important points and conclusions from the articles are summarized here.
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SOH LiteratuurWeek 1
Helliwell, J.F., & Aknin, L.B. (2018). Expanding the social science of
happiness. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 248-252.
Humans are highly sociable - It is true, as suggested by the hierarchy of needs,
that social variables are significantly important for those whose basic material
needs have already been met. But this leaves them robustly important, and
worth improving, everywhere.
Beyond everyday experiences and relations, social capital bolsters well-being by
increasing resilience in the face of negative life shocks and stressors.
communities with higher social capital and trust tend to rebound faster after
natural disasters, such as earthquakes.
If social relationships and social capital are so critical for wellbeing, how can
people create and maintain these vital connections? One means is through kind
or generous behaviour intended to help others, labelled here as prosocial action.
Importantly, prosocial tendencies appear before several signs of high-level
executive control, suggesting that prosocial acts are not premeditated to
facilitate future gains, but instead reflect a genuine interest in the well-being of
others.
Importantly, generosity is not bound to high-income countries, but can be seen
across a wide span of human cultures from around the world.
Prosocial actions = natural tendency, reflex.
If prosocial action promotes social relationships and cooperative group living,
which are essential for survival, humans may not only engage in generous action,
but also have a reward system in place to reinforce this costly behaviour.
Importantly, experimental findings demonstrate that happiness is not simply a
correlate of prosociality, but an outcome that may serve to promote prosociality
in the future.
Finally, consistent with the notion that prosocial action is inherently rewarding,
introducing extrinsic material rewards for generous behaviour undermines
subsequent helping in children
In addition, the emotional rewards of generosity help to explain why people
engage in prosocial action when facing acute stress
The need for greater cross-disciplinary collaboration
1. First, cross-disciplinarily collaborative research can draw on an array of
research methodologies, data sources and theories from a variety of fields
to offer greater insight into the question at hand. Meer middelen? En
sources?
, 2. Second, crossdisciplinary collaborative research may offer legitimacy to
findings emerging within various fields by demonstrating the
generalizability or robustness of an association.
3. Third, cross-disciplinary collaboration can further thinking about when,
where, how and why social and prosocial factors can effectively boost
well-being, allowing testing and future policy reform.
4. Fourth, interdisciplinary collaborations offer new insight into past or
current well-being puzzles that solitary disciplines cannot tackle alone.
Hey Points Summary:
1. Focus Shift in Well-Being Research:
Current research and policy emphasize treating negative outcomes, with
insufficient tracking of subjective well-being in the general population or
among service providers and recipients.
2. Power of Positive Emotions:
Positive emotions and events have a stronger collective impact than
negative ones, contributing significantly to national life evaluations and
positive spillovers across populations.
3. Challenges to Adopting New Approaches:
o A natural tendency to favor existing methods can slow adoption of
new evidence.
o Despite these delays, careful experimentation and cautious
implementation reduce false starts.
4. Collaborative Research and Interdisciplinary Teams:
o Larger, interdisciplinary teams addressing complex problems have
greater scientific impact. Sustained collaboration is essential to
overcome disciplinary boundaries and generate innovative solutions.
5. Advancing Well-Being Policies:
o Broader data collection efforts and initiatives like the UN resolution
on well-being (2011) and the World Happiness Report have raised
policy interest globally.
o Institutions like the UK's What Works Well-Being Centre act as hubs
for sharing research and policy outcomes.
6. Comprehensive Approach to Policy Design:
Effective policy design requires integrating theories, large-scale surveys,
experiments, and natural trials to link causal insights with population-level
applications.
7. The “Last Mile” Challenge:
o The final stage—applying research to policy design and delivery—
offers the greatest potential for progress.
o Inclusive and interdisciplinary research strategies are critical to
improving public policies for well-being.
,Lucas (2018) - Reevaluating the Strengths and Weaknesses of Self-
Report Measures of Subjective Well-Being
Abstract - Although specific questions remain about the processes underlying
SWB judgments and certain limitations exist, research shows that the
psychometric properties of these measures are generally quite good.
Subjective well-being (SWB) = "a person's subjective evaluation of the quality of
life as a whole
Diener: cognitive and affective ways of measuring SWB, cognitive = how satisfied
are you with your life (scale), affective = how often do you experience these
positive affects?
Retrospective questions do not really work, accuracy depends on how long ago,
and biases
Experience sampling method = paar keer per dag moet je invullen wat je doet,
met wie en hoe je je voelt, dan geen geheugenproblemen
Day reconstruction method = dag opbreken in delen (ontbijt eten, hond uitlaten)
en zeggen welke affecten ze toen ervaarden.
there is no gold standard against which self-report measures of SWB can be
compared. (unlike hight and weight)
items that are typically included in well-being measures tend to be moderately to
strongly correlated
Together, these results suggest that single-item measures have a reasonable
degree of reliability.
This definition emphasizes that validity reflects a judgment that is based on
theories of the underlying construct that one hopes to assess.
Most SWB measures have high levels of face validity
Content validity problem for Oxford questionnaire and affect measures
Numerous studies show that standard, widely used measures of SWB tend to
show reasonable levels of convergent and discriminant validity
widely used measures of SWB show relatively strong evidence for construct
validity
In any case, evidence suggests that when single- and multiple-item measures are
compared, they tend to perform similarly. About validity. They concluded that
there was not a loss of validity when single-item measures were used.
This body of research demonstrates how factors like mood, question order, and
social comparison can affect the validity of SWB measures and has significantly
shaped perspectives on these self-reports, when participants are not aware.
maar slecht onderzocht dus nu weer opnieuw gedaan en minder gevonden.
Experiential measures aim to reduce memory biases by assessing affect in the
moment or soon after, but they may have unique issues, such as respondent
burden and concerns about stability when only short periods (e.g., one day) are
assessed.
Experiential measures are valuable for capturing short-term affective changes
but do not have a clear advantage over global measures in assessing stable well-
being.
, Tov (2018) - Well-Being Concepts and Components
Major aspects of affective well-being include valence, frequency versus intensity,
arousal, and interpersonal engagement. Major aspects of cognitive well-being
include life satisfaction, life evaluation, and domain satisfaction. Processes
underlying the structure of cognitive well-being are discussed including top-down
versus bottom-up models, and the tendency to use heuristics versus stable
sources of information to evaluate one’s life.
The first approach emphasizes a person’s evaluation of their own life--both
emotionally and cognitively. It has been referred to as hedonic well-being (HWB)
and consists of (i) frequent pleasant feelings, (ii) infrequent unpleasant feelings,
and (iii) an overall judgment that life is satisfying. This tripartite model is also
referred to as subjective well-being (Diener, 1984) because it prioritizes a
person’s own assessment of how well their life is going and whether they are
getting the things they want in life--without specific concern for what these
“things” actually are.
The second approach includes several concepts that together have been referred
to as eudaimonic well-being (EWB). This approach takes as its starting point that
there are certain needs or qualities that are essential for one’s psychological
growth and development; the fulfillment of these needs enables a person to
reach their full potential. Other EWB approaches emphasize living up to one’s
personal potential--in line with Aristotle’s view of eudaimonia as living in accord
with one’s true nature (or daimon). From this perspective, EWB is rooted in the
pursuit of goals and activities that are consistent with one’s values and identity.
Measures of HWB and EWB are highly correlated suggesting that positive feelings
and positive functioning tend to go hand in hand
the state of flow, in which a person is optimally engaged with what they are
doing. Thus, flow states may be more closely related to EWB (growth and
mastery) than HWB
optimistic beliefs ook goed, high correlation with HWB and EWB but not
synonymous with either.
the term flourishing to describe a condition characterized by high levels of both
HWB and EWB.
EWB consists of a range of constructs that vary across researchers.
Thus, the elements of EWB are thought of as antecedents to well-being rather
than as defining well-being.
Affective well-being (AWB) refers to the experience of pleasant and unpleasant
feelings. Thus AWB is typically assessed by asking respondents how often they
have experienced specific emotions
Cognitive well-being (CWB) is based on an evaluation of how well one’s life is
going relative to an ideal state of affairs. Scale questions
Strongly correlated
Compared with AWB, CWB tends to be based more on stable sources of
information such as global assessments about one’s life circumstances and
domains of life, rather than specific events or activities.
CWB more stable and AWB more fluctuating
ses by Eid and Diener (2004) support this hypothesis. If CWB tends to be based
on information that is more stable (relative to AWB), then it should be more
strongly associated with factors that stabilize or destabilize the general
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