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Summary of all the articles of the course science of happiness
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Summary of all the articles of the course science of happiness. The summary was made for the articles of the course in 2023/2024.
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Literature SOHWeek 1
Diener, E., Lucas, R.E., & Napa Scollon, C. (2006). Beyond the hedonic treadmill: Revising the
adaptation theory of well-being. American Psychologist, 61, 305-314.
Hedonic treadmill
- Processes similar to sensory adaptation occur when people experience emotional reactions
to life events, just as people’s noses quickly adapt to many scents and smells thereafter
disappear from awareness
- One’s emotion system adjusts to one’s current life circumstances and that all reactions are
relative to one’s prior experience
- People briefly react to good and bad events, but in a short time they return to neutrality
Hedonic treadmill is built on an Automatic habituation model:
- Our psychological systems automatically habituate to our current circumstances, allowing
us to focus on new and potentially more urgent stimuli
- Changes in circumstances, rather than the desirability of those circumstances, impact our
happiness
Research on hedonic treadmill model
- Lottery winners are not significantly happier than non-winners
- Individuals with significant resources may not be much happier than those with fewer
resources and that people facing severe problems can still experience happiness
- The theory of adaptation (suggesting that external conditions have a limited impact on
happiness) gained an acceptance among psychologists due to consistent supporting
evidence >> demographic factors, income, and objective health play a minimal role
Research on adaptation
Nonneutral setpoints
- Contrary to hedonic treadmill theory, people don’t consistently return to a neutral
emotional state after significant events. Instead, most people tend to be happy most of the
time
- If there is an adaptation, it leads to a positive baseline, rather than a neutral one
- Positive moods are shown to facilitate approach behaviors and positive outcomes
- The occurrence of a positive emotional set point, coupled with less frequent unpleasant
emotions, reflects the adaptive nature of experiencing frequent positivity
Individual set points
- If people have set points for well-being, they vary individually >> these individual
differences are influenced by inborn, and personality based factors
- An individual’s level of well-being remains stable over time
- Behavioral genetic studies indicate that well-being has a moderate heritability
- Personality factors may play a role in predisposing individuals to experience different
levels of well-being
Multiple set points
, - The global category of happiness is composed of separable well-being variables >> these
variables sometimes move in different directions over time
- The idea of a unitary set point is not tenable >> positive and negative emotions might
both decline in tandem, or life satisfaction might move upward while positive emotions
decrease
- Stable individual baselines might be more characteristic of negative affect than positive
affect
Happiness can change
- National well-being is strongly influenced by factors like gross domestic product per
person, life expectancy, political stability, and divorce rates >> the consistency of these
predictions suggests that people may not always fully adapt to their conditions
- The long-term level of wealth in a nation consistently influences subjective well-being,
contrary to the inconsistent effects of changes in wealth
- To determine whether adaptation has occurred, it is necessary to compare individuals who
have experienced an event or life circumstance with those who have not, ideally following
the same individuals over time
Individual differences in adaptation
- Research shows individual differences in the rate and extent of adaptation to the same
events
- Understanding individual differences in adaptation involves exploring when and why
adaptation occurs or doesn’t
- Research on marriage adaptation found that less satisfied individuals benefited more from
marriage in the long run
- It’s suggested that individuals with initially low satisfaction levels may experience more
significant positive changes in reaction to positive life events >> challenges the idea that
those wo are satisfied have less to gain from additional positive events
- Deviations from a person’s typical life events might have the most significant impact on
changes in happiness set points
- There are 2 research traditions in understanding adaptation to negative events:
1. Examining the effectiveness of coping strategies >> strategies like reappraisal lead to
positive emotions and fewer negative emotions compared to strategies like
suppression
2. Focusing on personality characteristics influencing preferred coping strategies
- Individual differences in personality play a role in coping strategies and adaptation to
stress >> neurotic people may choose less effective coping strategies, optimistic
individuals may choose active coping strategies
- Optimism is linked to problem-focused coping and faster recovery from challenging
events
- Research on individual differences in adaptation challenges the idea of a universal and
automatic habituation process
Implications of the revised model
- Newer adaptation theories focus on individuals’ attention to specific life circumstances to
explain changes in happiness >> people seek to explain and make sense of life events,
features of life that cannot be explained continue to draw attention and affect emotions
- Interventions to increase happiness can be effective according to the hedonic treadmill
model
, - Effective interventions must alter people’s baseline well-being, and measurement should
be conducted over an extended period to ensure long-term success
Lucas, R. E. (2018). Reevaluating the strengths and weaknesses of self-report measures of
subjective well-being. In E. Diener, S. Oishi, & L. Tay (Eds.), Handbook of well-being.
Subjective well-being (SWB) focuses on personal evaluations of individual overall quality of life
- The concept considers life as a whole
- People may assess the same life circumstance differently
- Study of SWB relies on self-report measures
Self-report approaches to measuring subjective well-being
- Evaluations can be categorized into “cognitive” measures, which involve reflecting on life
as a whole and consciously selecting a response, which capture an individual’s emotional
experiences
- Cognitive and affective components of SWB have different causes
- Retrospective evaluations of affective experiences may not accurately reflect daily
experiences >> potential biases and inaccuracies in global evaluations
- Some researchers suggest distinguishing between retrospective evaluations and capturing
real-time emotional experiences
- The day reconstruction method: participants breaking their day into episodes, describing
each episode, and reporting the associated emotions
The reliability and validity of subjective well-being measures
- Psychometric properties, including reliability, are used to assess the quality of SWB
measures
- Multiple-item measures often show high internal consistency, while assessing the
reliability of single-item measures involves examining short-term stability coefficients
- Single-item measures of SWB have a reasonable degree of reliability
- Reliability is quantitative, so straightforward to assess
- Validity is more complex
>> it is an evaluative judgment based on empirical evidence and theoretical rationales
supporting the adequacy of interpretations
>> Four types of validity:
1. Face validity = captures is the intended construct
2. Content validity = covers the breadth of the construct without irrelevant content
3. Convergent and discriminant validity = whether a measure correlated strongly with
related measures and weakly with unrelated ones
4. Construct validity = examines whether a measure behaves as expected based on
theoretical constructs
- Evidence suggests that single- and multiple- item measures of life satisfaction perform
similarly in terms of validity
, The judgment model of subjective well-being
- Starts with the assumption that when asked about well-being, respondents do not have a
response stored in memory that can be simply accessed and reported. Instead, they must
construct a response at the time of judgment
- Individuals may use heuristics, with current mood acting as a quick proxy for overall life
satisfaction
- Contextual factors influence the sources of information people use for life satisfaction
judgments (making satisfaction with a specific domain salient can affect overall
evaluation of life)
Comparing the psychometric properties of global and experiential measures
- When comparing global measures and experiential measures of well-being, it’s essential
to consider their psychometric properties
- Experiential measures capture real-time affective reactions to avoid memory biases,
however, there may be psychometric issues with these >> the workload in these methods
limits assessment to a short time
- Psychometric issues refer to problems or limitations related to the measurement of
psychological constructs >> there might be specific challenges or drawbacks in how well
experiential measures measure well-being
- It appears that relatively stable, trait-like measures of well-being can be obtained even
from a single day’s worth of reports
- Global self-reports typically correlate as strongly with alternative measures and relevant
criteria as compared to experiential measures derived from the day construction method
- Additional research shows that asking respondents to repeatedly answer the same question
over and over again can change the interpretation of the questions
Norrish, J.M., & Vella-Brodrick, D.A. (2008). Is the study of happiness a worthy scientific
pursuit? Social Indicators Research, 87, 393-407
Defining happiness
- Subjective well-being includes a cognitive component assessing overall satisfaction with
life and an affective component which is further divided into the presence of positive
affect and the absence of negative affect
- Happiness from a hedonistic point of view concerns the maximization of pleasure and the
minimization of pain and occurs when pleasurable experiences and sensory gratifications
outweigh painful experiences
- Eudaimonic happiness results from the actualization of individual potential and from
fulfilling one’s true self
- Happiness is highest when people engage in activities that align with their core values >>
personal expressiveness
- There are six aspects of human actualization contributing to happiness >> autonomy,
personal growth, self-acceptance, purpose in life, environmental mastery, positive
relations with others
- Self-determination theory suggests that happiness and psychological growth come from
fulfilling autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs
- Authentic happiness theory of the pleasant life, the good life and the meaningful life:
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