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ples from diverse nations. Certain predictors of SWB do generalize across cultures. For example, feelings of social support,
trust, and mastery predict individual SWB in all areas of the
world. Personality, as well as the fulfillment of basic needs, also
predicts SWB across the globe.
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One important influence on how people evaluate the conditions of their lives, beyond circumstances and personality, is
the judgment standards they use. People might use their
desires as a standard for evaluating their lives. For instance,
peoples income aspirations can outstrip their rising incomes
so that even successful individuals can feel dissatisfied (e.g.,
Graham & Pettinato, 2006). Individuals might also use social
comparison, judging their life circumstances on the basis of
how other people are doing. Findings from my laboratory and
those of others suggests that social comparison effects on
SWB do not fully follow from the theory proposed by Festinger (1954), which stated that individuals compare themselves to those who are similar and proximal to them. On the
basis of the original theory, people ought to be more satisfied
with their incomes and lives if they are better off materially
than their neighbors and co-workers, and less satisfied if they
fall below this standard. Findings reveal, however, that material standards now extend across the nations of the world.
Festinger (1954) constructed the theory of social comparison before television became ubiquitous. Now 84% of
households worldwide own a television (based on the Gallup
World Poll). Many television programs aired around the
world are produced in Western nations and portray prosperous lifestyles in these countries. The Internet and print media
provide information about material comforts in the most
economically developed nations. Thus, people may know as
much about the material lives of individuals in wealthy
nations, as portrayed in the media, as they do about their
neighbors. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that people now
judge their own incomes in reference to a world standard.
In support of a worldwide standard for income, nations
line up well in life satisfaction based on their average
incomes. Figure 1 shows the strong relation between income and life satisfaction among the nations of the world,
indicating that national wealth is a major predictor of the
average SWB in them. When peoples incomes were standardized by their age and occupation within their nations,
these predictors reflecting peoples local standing on income added only a small increment in predicting their life
satisfaction beyond peoples absolute incomes (Diener,
Tay, & Oishi, 2012). Furthermore, the slopes of income
and life satisfaction within nations are not as steep as the
slope of mean income and mean life satisfaction across
nations, thus contradicting the idea that local social comparisons are primary.
Becchetti, Castriota, and Giachin (2011) found that life
satisfaction depends on the distance between peoples
income and that in the richest nations. Peoples satisfac591
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8
Correlation = .82
7
3
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
4.5
5.0
Figure 1
Income and Life Satisfaction in Nations
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
-1
-2
Cancer Remission
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Day Number
Note. Possible moods vary from 6 (extremely positive) to 6 (extremely
negative).
Why do people often adapt more quickly for feelings than for
life satisfaction (Luhmann, Hofman, Eid, & Lucas, 2012)?
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tors. Social support (being able to count on others in emergencies and feeling respected), safety (not having been
assaulted or having things stolen), and water quality (reflecting environmental well-being as well as societal spending on
basic needs for everyone) all substantially predict life satisfaction and enjoyment of life after controlling for household
income. Thus, SWB measures have the ability to capture
forms of quality of life besides money. The SWB measures
can reflect aspects of quality of life such as social capital that
are not contained in social indicators such as crime statistics.
SWB measures also can help policymakers estimate weights
to give to various aspects of quality of life.
The SWB measures reflect facets of society and daily
living that are relevant for policy. For instance, life satisfaction is lower when commuting to work is long and difficult
(Stutzer & Frey, 2008), when the air is polluted (Luechinger,
2007), and when there is airport noise (van Praag & Baarsma,
2005). Each of these findings can have policy implications.
For example, the SWB findings point to certain policies (e.g.,
zoning that allows work areas, shopping areas, and housing
areas to be proximal to one another) rather than to other
policies (e.g., building more freeways and subways connecting to the suburbs).
In the health area, SWB data can help apportion research
dollars between diseases based in part on the amount of
misery or unhappiness they cause (Dolan & White, 2007).
There are policy questions in education, housing, and many
other areas on which the SWB data can help throw additional
light on the issues. The data on happiness do not provide
complete answers about what policies should be adopted, of
course, but they can provide additional insights that can be of
help in policy deliberations.
There has now been notable success in nations discussing
and adopting measures of SWB to use in policy deliberations.
For example, in 2010 the prime minister of the United Kingdom announced that the nation would monitor well-being,
and the measures that were adopted included life satisfaction
and positive feelings. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a major international
organization that helps coordinate statistics between more
than 30 of the wealthiest nations of the world. The OECD has
been issuing reports on the validity of the SWB measures and
how they might be used in the national accounting systems of
nations. There are parallel efforts in nations such as Chile,
Japan, and Australia. In the United States, some of the
national health-monitoring activities of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) include surveys of SWB.
The Himalayan nation of Bhutan has famously declared that
it will use GHP, or the gross happiness product, to guide its
policies. Thus, the idea of national and international accounts
of SWB is becoming a reality.
The finding that societies differ substantially in SWB
leads to important applied questions: What societal factors
most influence SWB? What do the SWB measures assess that
November 2012 American Psychologist
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Methodological Advances
Although the limitations of self-report measures and crosssectional correlations at one point in time have been understood for many decades, the field of SWB is still based
primarily on these methods. Recent research using longitudinal and experimental designs as well as employing multimethod measurement reveals that prior conclusions must
often be revised when more sophisticated methodologies are
used. Thus, we need more rigorous research methods in the
field.
A problem with cross-sectional correlational designs is
that they fail to capture causal direction. Thus married people
might be happier because the married state makes people
happy or because people who marry tend to be dispositionally
happier than never-married or divorced individuals. Lucas,
Clark, Georgellis, and Diener (2003) found that people who
will later marry were happier even many years before marrying than were people who did not marry and people who
got married and then divorced. Indeed, people who divorced
were less happy even many years before they married in the
first place (Lucas et al., 2003; Luhmann & Eid, 2009). These
findings point to the possibility that many correlations reported in the literature may be due to selection of individuals
into the condition rather than to the condition itselffor
example, having children, being unemployed, or getting divorced. Thus, longitudinal designs are valuable in SWB
research, and cross-sectional findings must be interpreted
cautiously.
Experimental and quasi-experimental studies can also substantially enhance SWB research. For example, in the health
domain, one can analyze the effects of SWB on health
parameters by experimentally raising or lowering the moods
of participants and then assessing physiological variables (see
Diener & Chan, 2011, for examples). The research of Suh and
his colleagues described earlier is an example of using both
experimental and naturalistic methods to confirm the causes
of SWB. Researchers can also examine events such as natural
disasters and assess the effects on health and mortality in a
quasi-experimental way. Health and well-being researchers
can follow people over time and can also employ experiments
with animals where moods and emotions are likely altered as
well as conduct longitudinal studies with humans. Thus, in
studies on health and SWB, simple cross-sectional correlations are no longer sufficient, as is true in most areas of SWB
research.
Many studies report a positive correlation between income
and SWB, but are these associations due to the influence of
money on SWB or due to the fact that high-SWB individuals
November 2012 American Psychologist
Conclusions
There are many exciting research directions on SWB in
addition to those I have described here. For example, Lyubomirsky and Della Porta (2010) and Seligman et al. (2006)
have worked on interventions to increase happiness. Soto and
Luhmann (2012) found, as have many others (Steel, Schmidt,
& Shultz, 2008), that personality is a reliable predictor of
SWB. Importantly, they also found that personality can moderate the impact of life circumstances. Across three large and
representative samples, Soto and Luhmann found that the life
satisfaction of neurotics, compared with that of nonneurotics,
was more influenced by their incomes. These promising lines
of research, as well as many others in the field, demonstrate
that the field is vibrant and making progress.
Although I have described research on SWB by combining findings on the various types of SWB, there are different
processes involved in life satisfaction, positive feelings, and
negative feelings. These types of SWB can differ in terms of
their causes (e.g., Diener, Kahneman, Tov, & Arora, 2010;
595
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Schimmack, Schupp, & Wagner, 2008), consequences (Wiest, Schz, Webster, & Wurm, 2011), and stability over time
(Eid & Diener, 2004). Thus far there is only a rudimentary
understanding of the differences, and examining the overlap
and divergence of various forms of SWB is a critical task for
the future.
The three decades I have spent conducting research and
scholarship on SWB have been rewarding, with many scientists and practitioners entering the field and with the range of
questions being asked being greatly expanded. Governments
have grown interested in using SWB measures to help guide
policy.
The sophistication of the research methods used has been
improving, and many more multimethod and longitudinal
studies are needed. My hope is that young investigators will
analyze new questions arising in the field with sophisticated
methods. Although the past was often dominated by simple
correlational studies, the biggest promise for the future will
often come from experimental, longitudinal, and multimethod approaches. I am hopeful that in the future we will
know how much SWB is desirable for effective functioning
in various circumstances and know how best to achieve
sustainable SWB.
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