Life Satisfaction or Subjective Well Being - Coursework Example

Life Satisfaction Or ive Well Being Table of contents Pages 1 Abstract 3 2 Introduction 4 3 Measuring Subjective Well Being 4-5 4 Correlations to the big five 6-7 5 Subjective Well Being and Culture 7-8 6 Subjective Well Being and adaptation 9 7 Subjective Well Being and age 10-11 8 Subjective Well Being and Genes 11-12 9 Need to monitor Subjective Well Being 12 10 Conclusion 12-13 11 Bibliography 14-17 1 Abstract Subjective well-being is a broad category of phenomena that includes people’s emotional responses, domain satisfactions, and global judgments of life satisfaction. Wilson 1967 believed a happy person to be ‘well-paid, young, educated, religious, and married.’ Research now verifies that The happy person, though not necessarily ‘young, married……’ is in effect blessed with a positive temperament, an optimist, and does not ruminate excessively about bad events, and is living in an economically developed society, has good friends, and possesses adequate resources for making progress toward valued goals. Nobody would assert that SWB is an adequate condition for mental health, nor would psychologists want to evaluate peoples lives exclusively on the basis of whether they are happy; psychologists value other characteristics. Nonetheless, where the opinions of individuals are granted respect, peoples self evaluations of their lives figures prominently in assessing the success of a society.   2 Introduction For ages thinkers have deliberated the query, what is the good life? They have focused on criterion such as love, happiness, or self-knowledge as the central characteristics of quality of life. A different idea of what comprises a good life is that it is needed for people themselves to believe that they are living high-quality lives. This subjective definition of quality of life is autonomous in that it gives each person the right to determine whether his /her life is worthwhile. This definition of the good life has come to be called “subjective well-being” (SWB) and in informal terms it is labeled “happiness.” SWB refers to peoples assessments of their lives, both affective and cognitive. People experience ample SWB when they feel several pleasant and few unpleasant feelings, when they are busy in exciting activities, when they enjoy many pleasures and few pains, and when they are content with their lives. There are further features of a happy life and of psychological health, but SWB focuses on peoples self evaluations of their lives. 3 Measuring Subjective Well Being Peoples disposition and emotions reflect on-line responses to events happening to them. Each person also makes broader conclusions about his or her life as a whole, as well as about areas such as marriage and work. Consequently, there are a number of distinguishable components of SWB such as life satisfaction (global judgments of ones life), satisfaction with important areas (e.g., marital satisfaction), positive affect, and low levels of negative affect. Earlier on, researchers studying the aspects of happiness as a rule relied on a single self-report item to measure each construct. For example, Andrews and Withey (1976) questioned respondents, “How do you feel about your life as a whole?” Respondents were given a 7-point response scale varying from delighted to terrible. Recent measures of SWB, on the other hand, contain multiple items. The PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Scale; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) measures both positive and negative affect, each one with 10 affect items. the Satisfaction With Life Scale evaluates life satisfaction with matter such as “In most ways my life is close to my ideal” and “So far I have gotten the important things I want in life” (Pavot & Diener, 1993). The psychometric properties of these scales tend to be strong but, they offer only one approach to evaluating SWB. In the naturalistic experience-sampling method (ESM), researchers evaluate respondents SWB at random instants in their everyday lives, generally over one to four weeks. Sandvik, Diener, and Seidlitz (1993) found that all the methods ---- ‘one-time self-reported life satisfaction, ESM measures of life satisfaction, reports by friends and relatives, and peoples memories of positive versus negative life events correlate at moderate-to-strong levels.’ 4 Correlations to the big five There are five major personality traits known as the Big Five. Extraversion and agreeableness refer to the quality of ones interpersonal relations. In comparison to extraversion, which focuses mainly on the quantity and intensity of relationships, agreeableness focuses on specific behaviors undertaken during interpersonal interactions, such as cooperating and trusting others. Third Conscientiousness or Constraint primarily explains task behavior and generally accepted impulse control. The fourth is most often labeled as either Neuroticism or Emotional Stability. Normally, Neuroticism identifies aspects related to adaptation or lack of adaptation. Finally, John (1990) indicated that the best term for the fifth would be Openness to Experience. This term encompasses the components of intellect, culture, creativeness, broad interests, and cognitive complexity. The traits that have received the most theoretical and empirical attention in relation to SWB are extraversion and neuroticism. Based on Gray’s (1991) theories, Lucas et al. (1998) suggested that extraverts are more responsive to rewards and that this responsiveness manifests itself in the shape of greater pleasant affect when exposed to pleasing stimuli. Higher positive affect in turn motivates persons to approach rewarding stimuli. Since social circumstances have a tendency to be more fun and rewarding than nonsocial circumstances, extraverts’ high positive affect and responsiveness to rewards leads to better social behavior. Thus, it is conjectured that extraversion may actually result from personal differences in pleasant affect. In 1991, McCrae and Costa incorporated the remaining three factors in their theory. The theory is that, “open” persons are characterized by “both a broader and deeper scope of awareness and by a need to enlarge and examine experience [such that Openness to Experience is] positively correlated with both positive and negative affect” (McCrae & Costa, 1991 , p. 228). In this manner, Openness to Experience was envisaged to serve as a “double-edged sword” that predisposes persons to feel both the good and the bad more intensely. Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were anticipated to have instrumental effects on SWB by aiding more positive experiences in social circumstances, which in turn increase SWB. Since Agreeableness improves relationship quality and Conscientiousness encourages achievement of tasks, McCrae and Costa (1991) implied these would be most strongly correlated with SWB. Other researchers feel that extraversion is related to positive affect through more indirect means (e.g., Argyle & Lu, 1990; Pavot, Diener, & Fujita, 1990). both extraverts and introverts experience more positive affect in social circumstances than in nonsocial circumstances (Pavot et al., 1990). If extraverts spend more time in social circumstances, their superior happiness could be explained by the larger amount of time spent in positive, happy meeting with people. Pavot et al. found that extraverts were happier than introverts, even when alone. Furthermore, Diener, Sandvik, Pavot, and Fujita (1992) found that extraverts were in general happier than introverts whether they living alone or with others, working in nonsocial jobs or in social jobs, or living in rural or urban areas. Moreover, Pavot et al. (1990) found in a time-sampling study that extraverts did not spend extra time with others, though they were happier than introverts. 5 Subjective Well Being and Culture One notable finding is that variables often compare differently with life satisfaction in different cultures. Individualistic cultures are those that stress the significance of the individual and his /her thoughts, preferences, and feelings. Whereas, in collectivist cultures, individuals are more prepared to yield their wishes to the will of the group. Diener and Diener (1995) found that self-worth correlated more robustly with life satisfaction in individualistic than in collectivist cultures. Hence, even a variable that seems basically of great importance to westerners, self-esteem, is not greatly correlated with life satisfaction in other cultures. Another national difference in the correlates of mental health was uncovered by Eunkook Suh (1999). He found considerable differences in whether “congruence” (acting consistently across situations and in accord with ones “self”) determines life satisfaction in South Korea compared to the United States. Suh found that congruence was not as important to SWB in Korea. Again, a variable that numerous western psychologists have viewed as decisive to mental health is more culture bound than believed. Even in cultures that are not fully westernized, individuals reported that happiness and life satisfaction were very important, and they reflected about them often. However there was a trend in the most westernized nations to grant SWB greater importance, average levels of concern about happiness were high in all of the countries reviewed. Table 1 shows means from an international college sample of 7,204 respondents in 42 countries, suggesting how students in diverse countries view happiness (see Suh, Diener, Oishi, & Triandis, 1998, for more information about this sample). Mean values are shown for how regularly the respondents reported thinking about SWB and for how significant they believed SWB is. Among the total sample, only 6% of respondents rated money as more important than happiness. Furthermore, fully 69% rated happiness at the top of the importance scale, and only 1% claimed to have never thought about it. Of the respondents, 62% rated life satisfaction at the top of the importance scale, and only 2% reported never having thought about it. (American Psychologist© 2000 American Psychological Association January 2000, Vol. 55, No. 1,) As people all over the world fulfill more of their fundamental material needs, it is likely that SWB will grow to be an even more important goal. Thus, even though SWB is not sufficient for the good life (e.g., Diener, Sapyta, & Suh, 1998), it appears to be increasingly indispensable for it Subjective Well Being and Adaptation In a model 1971 article, Brickman and Campbell stated that all people toil on a “hedonic treadmill.” As they get higher in their accomplishments and wealth, their expectations also increase. Soon they adjust to the new level, and it no longer satisfies them. On the negative part, people are dejected when they first encounter hardship, but they soon acclimatize and it no longer makes them dejected. On the base of this reasoning, Brickman and Campbell proposed that individuals are predestined to hedonic neutrality in the long run. Silver (1982) found that people with spinal cord injuries were extremely unhappy directly after the accident that shaped their disability but rapidly began to adapt. She found that within eight weeks, positive emotions outweighed negative emotions in her respondents. During this time, respondents experienced a downward drift in unpleasant emotions and an upward drift in pleasant emotions, suggestive of a return toward the baseline state of mood experienced by most people. The basic idea has stuck: People do respond strongly to good and bad events, but they are inclined to adapt over time and return to their baseline degree of happiness. A societal demonstration of adaptation is contained in Myerss (2000) discussion of income and SWB over the past fifty years. Income has risen considerably in many countries since World War II, and yet SWB has been almost even in the United States and other developed countries (Oswald, 1997). Actually, peoples requirements increase as their incomes mount, and they adapt to high levels of income, with no relative increase in SWB. This analysis is supported by Clarks (1998) finding that fresh changes in pay predicted job fulfillment, whereas average levels of pay did not. 7 Subjective Well Being and age Are elder individuals susceptible to a decline in subjective well-being? Empirical evidence in general suggests that SWB is relatively stable during adulthood and does not show great negative age differences even in the elderly. The lack of strong relationships between age and subjective well-being, in spite of an increase in risks and losses with progressing age, has been termed a paradox (.Filipp, 1996; Staudinger, Marsiske, & Baltes, 1995) The stability-despite-loss paradox exists for positive and negative affect. Several studies have investigated the relationship between age and the negative and positive affect. Diener and Suh (1997) also found no steady decline in negative affect in their study based on an extremely large and heterogeneous sample of about 60,000 individuals aged between 20 and 99 years from 43 countries. Costa, McCrae, and Zonderman (1987) investigated a large sample of 4,942 people aged between 25 and 74, found that elderly participants experienced negative affect less frequently than youthful participants, but no longitudinal changes transpired over time. Stacey and Gatz (1991) reported a longitudinal study with a comparable retest interval of 14 years based on a sample of 1,159 people ranging in age from 15 to 86 years at the first wave. In this study, elder participants also felt negative affect less frequently than younger participants. Longitudinally, negative affect remained unaffected in people of the oldest age group (64–86 years), but younger participants (15–64 years) experienced a decrease in negative affect over time. Stacey and Gatz (1991) reported that elder participants experienced positive affect less often than younger participants. Longitudinally, positive affect remained constant in younger participants (15–64 years), but decreased in older people (65–86 years). Ferring and Filipp (1995) reported the same type of results when investigating solely older people over a small retest interval of 10 months. Cross-sectionally, positive affect was lesser in very old people (75 to 92 years) than in participants 65 to 75 years. Only very old people experienced a decrease in positive affect over time, while positive affect remained steady in 65 to 75 years age group. 8 Subjective Well Being and Genes One theoretical model for the link between personality and SWB is that some individuals have a genetic predisposition to be happy or unhappy, which is apparently caused by inborn differences in the nervous system. The strongest verification for a temperamental predisposition to feel certain levels of SWB is taken from behavior–genetic studies of heritability. Heritability studies approximate the amount of discrepancy in SWB scores that can be clarified by one’s genes. Tellegen et al. (1988), observed monozygotic and dizygotic twins who were brought up together and others who were raised apart. Tellegen et al. discovered that monozygotic twins who grew up in separate homes were more like each other than were dizygotic twins who were reared together or apart. Moreover, twins who were reared in the same family were not much more like each other than were twins who were reared apart. Tellegen et al. projected that genes account for about 40% of the discrepancy in positive emotionality and 55% of the discrepancy in negative emotionality, while shared family environment accounts for 22% and 2% of the discrepancy in positive emotionality and negative emotionality, correspondingly. Braungart, Plomin, DeFries, and Fulker (1992) used both adoption and twin methodologies and discovered significant heritability for positive affect in 12-month-old babies. 9 Need to monitor Subjective Well Being Indicators of SWB can be used to track happiness over time. Preferably, these indicators would consist of ESMs of nationally representative samples of respondents. National ESM surveys could offer valuable information on how often and intensely people feel satisfied and happy in a variety of life circumstances and across different types of situations. The SWB of persons from various age groups, provinces, occupational categories, and income levels could be evaluated, and policymakers and leaders would then be more likely to consider SWB in their decisions. As long as national indicators center on the creation of goods and services, it is those issues that leaders are likely to consider. If a national indicator of SWB were accessible, policies could be judged partially by how they influenced contentment. Idyllically, the national SWB indicators would take account of various components of SWB, such as pleasant and unpleasant affect, life satisfaction, achievement, and more precise states such as stress, warmth, trust, and joy. The “Eurobarometer” surveys carried out in European nations could serve as a replica for an index that could be implemented in other countries. A value of national indicators is that researchers could verify which sections of society are least happy and perhaps form policies to aid them. 10 Conclusion SWB researchers previously focused on who is happy (see Diener et al., 1999)—whether they are the married, the affluent, spiritual individuals, or other demographic groups. The current focus, on the other hand, has been on when and why persons are happy and on what developments influence SWB. 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