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How do we measure well-being?
The preference-based approach to well being
Preference-based perspective is the idea that people are better off when they themselves consider what is important.
Some people think hard work is necessary to have a valuable life while others prefer family or going out with friends.
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Key Ideas
Subjective well-being
This is the primary way Positive Psychology researchers have defined and measured people's happiness and well-being.
It's defined as your evaluations of your own life and your mo...
Subjective Well-Being components
It consists of 3 parts: positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction.
Positive affect and negative affect are basically your emotions and moods, and life satisfaction refers to the evaluation of your life as a whole (how satisfied you are with your life, what you would change etc).
Measuring Subjective Well-Being
Tracking your own subjective well-being can be very powerful if you keep alongside a journal of your life's events.
Keep it up for some time and you will see trends emerge. You'll also be able to adjust your activities in order to maximize positive affect and life satisfaction and minimize negative affect.
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Key Ideas
Describing Hope
Hope is a positive cognitive state based on determination and planning to meet a goal successfully. It consists of three things:
- Goals thinking
4 Types of Hope
- Realistic hope: It is hope for an outcome that is reasonable and possible. For example, hope for ease from chronic pain, knowing that complete eradication is unrealistic.
- Utopian hope: It is a collectively oriented hope that combined action can lead to a better future for everyone.
- Chosen hope: Hope helps us live with a problematic present in an uncertain future. Choosing hope for the smallest range of goals is essential to control negative emotions.
- Transcendent hope, or existential hope, is the hope that is not tied to a specific outcome, but a general hope that something good can happen.
Being Hopeful: Benefits
- Hope correlates with high academic and athletic performance, greater physical and psychological well-being, better self-esteem, and increased relationships.
- Hope can enhance well-being over time.
- Hope results in the person viewing stressful situations as a challenge rather than a threat.
- Hope can be seen as creating a buffer against chronic anxiety.
- Hope is a motivational factor that sustains actions toward long-term goals.
- Hope is positively related to overall life satisfaction.
- Hope motivates individuals to maintain their positive involvement in life despite any limitations they may have.
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Key Ideas
Human nature is more than biology
The level of happiness is part of our genetic makeup - we have a set level and cannot rise above or fall below it.
Some scientists envision the day that we can manipulate our happiness ge...
Quantifying happiness
Happiness has always been difficult to quantify because it is subjective, depending on if you have a short- or a long-term outlook on life. Recently, researchers have started to distinguish between two types of happiness:
- Hedonic happiness that provides a mental high;
- Eudaimonic happiness, a sense of well-being which involves a life well-lived.
The staples of happiness
People will always be happy when they see their children prosper when they feel loved, secure, and well-fed.
But, this formula for happiness is so obvious that most people dismiss it. They would rather look for a secret ingredient. The answer is that there is no secret.