Subjective Well-Being

The Science of Happiness and a Proposal for a National Index

Diener, Ed

¹Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

²Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ed Diener, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, 603 E. Daniel Street, Champaign, IL, 61821. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].

My sincere thanks are extended to the following individuals for their perceptive comments: Frederick Kanfer, Eva Pomerantz, Harry C. Triandis, Alexander Grob, Larry Seidlitz, Andrew Clark, M. Joseph Sirgy, Howard Berenbaum, Ulrich Schimmack, Robert Biswas-Diener, Carol Diener, Eunkook Suh, Jonathan Lavav, and Daniel Kahneman.

American Psychologist 55(1):p 34-43, January 2000.

One area of positive psychology analyzes subjective well-being (SWB), people's cognitive and affective evaluations of their lives. Progress has been made in understanding the components of SWB, the importance of adaptation and goals to feelings of well-being, the temperament underpinnings of SWB, and the cultural influences on well-being. Representative selection of respondents, naturalistic experience sampling measures, and other methodological refinements are now used to study SWB and could be used to produce national indicators of happiness.