Lectures summary
- Benefits of a happy population happier people are more productive, healthier, live
longer, contribute to society, and have better social relationships (e.g., fewer divorces)
- Diener & Veenhoven 2 important happiness researchers
- - Hedonic wellbeing Consists of:
o Affective wellbeing: positive and negative affect
o Cognitive wellbeing: life satisfaction: general life satisfaction and/or domain-
specific satisfaction (health, work, social relationships, leisure, etc.).
Overall, general life satisfaction drives domain-specific satisfaction,
suggestion a top-down mechanism.
The importance of the domain-specific satisfactions varies across different
demographics, cultures, and norms.
o Hedonic wellbeing is most used in policy making (rather than eudaimonic
wellbeing), More specifically, most happiness interventions are evaluated by
means of positive and negative affect. However, increasing life-satisfaction is a
different story, as it is far more stable and long-lasting, but also more difficult to
change.
o Self-reports are most used to measure (hedonic) wellbeing. However, it is not that
easy to tell how happy you truly are, because happiness is a biased judgment:
social desirability and self-enhancement motivations are at play. Despite these
disadvantages, self-report, remains the most used measuring tool for wellbeing.
o Hedonic wellbeing increases by maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain.
However:
Negativity bias negative events have a bigger impact than positive
events. It’s thought that it is evolutionary beneficial to be more attuned to
avoid the “bad” than to achieve the “good”.
Optimism bias we think that our own life and future is better than that
of the average other, so we globally underestimate others’ happiness.
Hedonic adaptation over time, people tend to return to their baseline
level of happiness, both after positive and negative events, even major life
events (like winning the lottery/becoming handicapped). Only lasting
changes in life circumstances could alter your happiness level, but that
, depends on individual differences in adaptation & on prior levels of
happiness.
Hedonic treadmill describes a potential cause of hedonic adaptation: we
always think of how things could be better, and this constant strive for
more prevents us from reaching happiness.
Selection effects married people are more likely to report being “very
happy”, but married people were often already happier prior to marriage.
Impact bias correctly predicting the valence of emotions, but
overestimating the intensity and duration of those emotions. Causes of
impact bias:
Focalism: the tendency to overestimate how much we will think
about a specific event in the future and to underestimate the extent
to which other events will influence our thoughts and feelings.
Immune neglect: people's ignorance of our ability to (quickly)
make sense of things that happen. This is especially true when
predicting reactions to negative events: People fail to anticipate
how quickly they will cope psychologically with such events in
ways that speed their recovery from them.
Failure to consider hedonic adaptation
Forced comparison hypothesis the idea that individuals determine their
own social and personal worth based on how they stack up against others.
Coping personality model happy people construct their comparisons
and choose whether they let the comparison affect them, more than
unhappy people.
- Eudaimonic wellbeing Consists of:
o psychological wellbeing (self-acceptance, positive relations, autonomy,
environmental mastery, purpose in life and personal growth).
Increased autonomy and environmental mastery the older you get
Decreased purpose in life and personal growth the older you get
The higher your educational attainment, the more all aspects increase,
especially purpose in life and personal growth
o self-determination (autonomy, competence, and relatedness)
o meaning in life
o Also described as flourishing, and as the focus on the actualization of one’s
potential by fulfilling one’s daimon (true self).
- Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) - Kahneman According to Kahneman, “objective
happiness” can be measured using the DRM: it records the prevalence of immediate
positive affect in everyday life. HE states that happiness is the temporal average of
subjective experiences reported in real time over an extended period. This implies that
there is a discrepancy between real time experiences and our memories of the same
experiences. Positive psychology on the other side tries to convince people to learn to be
happy without making any changes in their situation. Kahneman does not like this view.
- Happiness pie states that our happiness consists of our genetic setpoint (50%),
intentional activity (40%), and circumstances (10%). With this theory, positive
psychology acknowledges the importance of one’s genetic setpoint and life
circumstances, but emphasizes that happiness can be actively pursued by doing
- Benefits of a happy population happier people are more productive, healthier, live
longer, contribute to society, and have better social relationships (e.g., fewer divorces)
- Diener & Veenhoven 2 important happiness researchers
- - Hedonic wellbeing Consists of:
o Affective wellbeing: positive and negative affect
o Cognitive wellbeing: life satisfaction: general life satisfaction and/or domain-
specific satisfaction (health, work, social relationships, leisure, etc.).
Overall, general life satisfaction drives domain-specific satisfaction,
suggestion a top-down mechanism.
The importance of the domain-specific satisfactions varies across different
demographics, cultures, and norms.
o Hedonic wellbeing is most used in policy making (rather than eudaimonic
wellbeing), More specifically, most happiness interventions are evaluated by
means of positive and negative affect. However, increasing life-satisfaction is a
different story, as it is far more stable and long-lasting, but also more difficult to
change.
o Self-reports are most used to measure (hedonic) wellbeing. However, it is not that
easy to tell how happy you truly are, because happiness is a biased judgment:
social desirability and self-enhancement motivations are at play. Despite these
disadvantages, self-report, remains the most used measuring tool for wellbeing.
o Hedonic wellbeing increases by maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain.
However:
Negativity bias negative events have a bigger impact than positive
events. It’s thought that it is evolutionary beneficial to be more attuned to
avoid the “bad” than to achieve the “good”.
Optimism bias we think that our own life and future is better than that
of the average other, so we globally underestimate others’ happiness.
Hedonic adaptation over time, people tend to return to their baseline
level of happiness, both after positive and negative events, even major life
events (like winning the lottery/becoming handicapped). Only lasting
changes in life circumstances could alter your happiness level, but that
, depends on individual differences in adaptation & on prior levels of
happiness.
Hedonic treadmill describes a potential cause of hedonic adaptation: we
always think of how things could be better, and this constant strive for
more prevents us from reaching happiness.
Selection effects married people are more likely to report being “very
happy”, but married people were often already happier prior to marriage.
Impact bias correctly predicting the valence of emotions, but
overestimating the intensity and duration of those emotions. Causes of
impact bias:
Focalism: the tendency to overestimate how much we will think
about a specific event in the future and to underestimate the extent
to which other events will influence our thoughts and feelings.
Immune neglect: people's ignorance of our ability to (quickly)
make sense of things that happen. This is especially true when
predicting reactions to negative events: People fail to anticipate
how quickly they will cope psychologically with such events in
ways that speed their recovery from them.
Failure to consider hedonic adaptation
Forced comparison hypothesis the idea that individuals determine their
own social and personal worth based on how they stack up against others.
Coping personality model happy people construct their comparisons
and choose whether they let the comparison affect them, more than
unhappy people.
- Eudaimonic wellbeing Consists of:
o psychological wellbeing (self-acceptance, positive relations, autonomy,
environmental mastery, purpose in life and personal growth).
Increased autonomy and environmental mastery the older you get
Decreased purpose in life and personal growth the older you get
The higher your educational attainment, the more all aspects increase,
especially purpose in life and personal growth
o self-determination (autonomy, competence, and relatedness)
o meaning in life
o Also described as flourishing, and as the focus on the actualization of one’s
potential by fulfilling one’s daimon (true self).
- Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) - Kahneman According to Kahneman, “objective
happiness” can be measured using the DRM: it records the prevalence of immediate
positive affect in everyday life. HE states that happiness is the temporal average of
subjective experiences reported in real time over an extended period. This implies that
there is a discrepancy between real time experiences and our memories of the same
experiences. Positive psychology on the other side tries to convince people to learn to be
happy without making any changes in their situation. Kahneman does not like this view.
- Happiness pie states that our happiness consists of our genetic setpoint (50%),
intentional activity (40%), and circumstances (10%). With this theory, positive
psychology acknowledges the importance of one’s genetic setpoint and life
circumstances, but emphasizes that happiness can be actively pursued by doing
