ABSTRACT
Memorializes Ed Diener (1946-2021). Although academic articles on wellbeing are now commonplace, this has not always been the case. Ed Diener helped to establish this growing and important topic of research. Ed published the Psychological Bulletin article entitled "Subjective Well-Being" in 1984, launching subjective well-being (SWB) research. The following year, Ed and his students published the Satisfaction With Life Scale, one of the most widely used measures of well-being and a paper that has been cited more than 30,000 times. His impact on psychology lives on in the journals he helped found, the Journal of Happiness Studies and Perspectives on Psychological Science, as well as with his many collaborators, graduate students, and postdocs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Subject(s)
Happiness , Research Personnel , Male , Humans , StudentsABSTRACT
Which emotional experiences should people pursue to optimize happiness? According to traditional subjective well-being research, the more pleasant emotions we experience, the happier we are. According to Aristotle, the more we experience the emotions we want to experience, the happier we are. We tested both predictions in a cross-cultural sample of 2,324 participants from 8 countries around the world. We assessed experienced emotions, desired emotions, and indices of well-being and depressive symptoms. Across cultures, happier people were those who more often experienced emotions they wanted to experience, whether these were pleasant (e.g., love) or unpleasant (e.g., hatred). This pattern applied even to people who wanted to feel less pleasant or more unpleasant emotions than they actually felt. Controlling for differences in experienced and desired emotions left the pattern unchanged. These findings suggest that happiness involves experiencing emotions that feel right, whether they feel good or not. (PsycINFO Database Record
