Everyday Understandings of Happiness, Good Life, and Satisfaction: Three Different Facets of Well-being

The need for increasing conceptual clarity within well-being research has been stressed by social scientists as well as policymakers and international organizations. The present study aimed to identify and compare conceptual structures of the everyday terms happiness, a good life, and satisfaction, based on a semi-stratified sample of Norwegian adults. Findings indicate that these terms share certain conceptual similarities, as used in everyday Norwegian language. For each term, it was possible to identify an underlying structure of conceptual configuration, articulated into external life domain components and internal, psychological dimensions. Relationship themes were prominent among the external domains for all three terms. Findings indicated that in Norwegian participants’ understanding, happiness and good life were highly inclusive of external life domains, whereas satisfaction primarily evoked associations to internal, psychological states and experiences. Latent class analyses highlighted differences among socio-demographic groups as concerns the degree to which different conceptualizations of the three terms were endorsed. Findings raise questions about the practice, relatively common in the applied social sciences, of treating happiness, good life and satisfaction as highly similar concepts, and the assumption that each term carries the same meaning for everyone.

[1]  G. Fraser,et al.  Conceptual Domains Included in Wellbeing and Life Satisfaction Instruments: A Review , 2015 .

[2]  Gerben J. Westerhof,et al.  Beyond Life Satisfaction: Lay Conceptions of Well-Being among Middle-Aged and Elderly Adults , 2001 .

[3]  Richard A. Easterlin,et al.  Explaining happiness , 2003, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[4]  Douglas G. Altman,et al.  Practical statistics for medical research , 1990 .

[5]  R. Veenhoven.  Greater Happiness for a Greater Number , 2010 .

[6]  J. Twenge,et al.  A good life is a personal life: Relationship fulfillment and work fulfillment in judgments of life quality☆ , 2005 .

[7]  Shinobu Kitayama,et al.  Cultural constructions of happiness: theory and emprical evidence , 2004 .

[8]  GREATER HAPPINESS FOR A GREATER NUMBER Is that possible? If so, how? , 2011 .

[9]  E. Diener,et al.  Comparing Typological Structures Across Cultures By Multigroup Latent Class Analysis , 2003 .

[10]  J. Bruner.  Acts of meaning , 1990 .

[11]  Regional office for Europe.  The European Health Report 2012: Charting the Way to Well-being , 2013 .

[12]  Rocío Fernández-Ballesteros,et al.  Quality of Life in Old Age: Problematic Issues , 2011 .

[13]  A. Delle Fave,et al.  The Eudaimonic and Hedonic Components of Happiness: Qualitative and Quantitative Findings , 2011 .

[14]  Kimberly A. Neuendorf,et al.  The Content Analysis Guidebook , 2001 .

[15]  Stephanie T. Lanza,et al.  Eliminating Bias in Classify-Analyze Approaches for Latent Class Analysis , 2015, Structural equation modeling : a multidisciplinary journal.

[16]  K. Vohs,et al.  Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life , 2013, The Journal of Positive Psychology.

[17]  A. Wierzbicka.  Language and Metalanguage: Key Issues in Emotion Research , 2009 .

[18]  C. Scollon,et al.  What People Really Want in Life and Why It Matters: Contributions from Research on Folk Theories of the Good Life , 2011 .

[19]  R. Veenhoven.  Cross-national differences in happiness: Cultural measurement bias or effect of culture? , 2012 .

[20]  C. Ryff.  In the eye of the beholder: views of psychological well-being among middle-aged and older adults. , 1989, Psychology and aging.

[21]  J. Maltby,et al.  Forgiveness and happiness. the differing contexts of forgiveness using the distinction between hedonic and eudaimonic happiness , 2005 .

[22]  Ethan A. McMahan,et al.  Age-Related Differences in Lay Conceptions of Well-Being and Experienced Well-Being , 2012 .

[23]  Ragnar Rommetveit,et al.  On the Role of "a Psychology of the Second Person" in Studies of Meaning, Language, and Mind , 2003, Mind, Culture, and Activity: An International Journal.

[24]  E. Diener,et al.  Subjective well-being. The science of happiness and a proposal for a national index. , 2000, The American psychologist.

[25]  Mariano Rojas.  A Conceptual-Referent Theory of Happiness: Heterogeneity and its Consequences , 2005 .

[26]  D. Healy.  Shaping the Intimate: , 2004, Social studies of science.

[27]  L. King,et al.  What makes a life good? , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[28]  Sube Banerjee,et al.  Concepts and causation of depression: a cross-cultural study of the beliefs of older adults. , 2006, The Gerontologist.

[29]  C. Scollon,et al.  Money, materialism, and the good life: Cultural perspectives , 2014 .

[30]  Wolfgang Wagner,et al.  Vernacular science knowledge: its role in everyday life communication , 2007 .

[31]  Robert A. Cummins,et al.  Objective and Subjective Auality of Life: an Interactive Model , 2000 .

[32]  Ed Diener,et al.  The Satisfaction With Life Scale and the emerging construct of life satisfaction , 2008 .

[33]  T. Kashdan,et al.  Challenges, Pitfalls, and Aspirations for Positive Psychology , 2011 .

[34]  Jan Pflug.  Folk Theories of Happiness: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Conceptions of Happiness in Germany and South Africa , 2009 .

[35]  R. M. Blakar,et al.  Ideology and power: the influence of current neo‐liberalism in society , 2007 .

[36]  Sara B. Algoe,et al.  The Future of Emotions Research within Positive Psychology , 2011 .

[37]  A. Ehrenberg.  The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age , 2009 .

[38]  A. Waterman.  Reconsidering happiness: a eudaimonist's perspective , 2008 .

[39]  M. Billig.  Writing social psychology: fictional things and unpopulated texts. , 2011, The British journal of social psychology.

[40]  S. Saxena,et al.  The World Health Organization Quality of Life Assessment (WHOQOL): development and general psychometric properties. , 1998, Social science & medicine.

[41]  P. Dolan,et al.  Measuring Subjective Wellbeing: Recommendations on Measures for use by National Governments , 2012, Journal of Social Policy.

[42]  L. W. Sumner.  Welfare, happiness, and ethics , 1996 .

[43]  Shinobu Kitayama,et al.  Happiness and unhappiness in east and west: themes and variations. , 2009, Emotion.

[44]  I. Brdar,et al.  Cross-cultural perceptions of meaning and goals in adulthood: their roots and relations with happiness , 2013 .

[45]  B. Brülde.  Happiness and the Good Life. Introduction and Conceptual Framework , 2007 .

[46]  Stephanie T. Lanza,et al.  Latent Class Analysis: An Alternative Perspective on Subgroup Analysis in Prevention and Treatment , 2013, Prevention Science.

[47]  A. Michalos.  Education, Happiness and Wellbeing , 2008 .

[48]  M. Joseph Sirgy,et al.  The psychology of quality of life , 2002 .

[49]  Shaunna L. Clark,et al.  Latent Class Analysis Results to Variables not Included in the Analysis , 2009 .

[50]  MyoungSo Kim,et al.  What Makes Koreans Happy?: Exploration on the Structure of Happy Life among Korean Adults , 2007 .

[51]  Joar Vittersø,et al.  The Divergent Meanings of Life Satisfaction: Item Response Modeling of the Satisfaction with Life Scale in Greenland and Norway , 2005 .

[52]  S. Skevington,et al.  Can we identify the poorest quality of life? Assessing the importance of quality of life using the WHOQOL-100 , 2004, Quality of Life Research.

[53]  S. Sikström,et al.  The Harmony in Life Scale Complements the Satisfaction with Life Scale: Expanding the Conceptualization of the Cognitive Component of Subjective Well-Being , 2016 .

[54]  L. A. Goodman.  Applied Latent Class Analysis: Latent Class Analysis: The Empirical Study of Latent Types, Latent Variables, and Latent Structures , 2002 .

[55]  Hubert J. M. Hermans,et al.  The Dialogical Self: Meaning as Movement , 1993 .

[56]  C. Scollon,et al.  Is the Good Life the Easy Life? , 2004 .

[57]  Katherine E. Masyn,et al.  New approaches to studying problem behaviors: a comparison of methods for modeling longitudinal, categorical adolescent drinking data. , 2009, Developmental psychology.

[58]  I. Shaw.  How Lay Are Lay Beliefs? , 2002 .

[59]  Luo Lu,et al.  Culture and conceptions of happiness: individual oriented and social oriented swb , 2004 .

[60]  Christian Geiser,et al.  Data Analysis with Mplus , 2012 .

[61]  Jesse Graham,et al.  Concepts of Happiness Across Time and Cultures , 2013, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[62]  P. Jose,et al.  Lay Definitions of Happiness across Nations: The Primacy of Inner Harmony and Relational Connectedness , 2016, Front. Psychol..

[63]  Suzanne M. Skevington,et al.  On Subjective Well-being and Quality of Life , 2008, Journal of health psychology.

[64]  K. Collins,et al.  The Meaning of ‘Satisfaction’ for People with Dermatological Problems: Reassessing Approaches to Qualitative Health Psychology Research , 2002, Journal of health psychology.

[65]  U. Staudinger,et al.  Self-Development at Midlife: Lifespan Perspectives on Adjustment and Growth , 2005 .

[66]  James K. Harter,et al.  INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS AND GROUP PROCESSES Wealth and Happiness Across the World : Material Prosperity Predicts Life Evaluation , Whereas Psychosocial Prosperity Predicts Positive Feeling , 2010 .

[67]  Bruno S. Frey,et al.  Happiness: A Revolution in Economics , 2008 .

[68]  Sepandar D. Kamvar,et al.  The Shifting Meaning of Happiness , 2010 .

[69]  I. Brdar,et al.  Sources and motives for personal meaning in adulthood , 2013 .

[70]  J. R. Landis,et al.  The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. , 1977, Biometrics.

[71]  I. Higginson,et al.  Using satisfaction to measure the quality of palliative care: a review of the literature. , 2003, Journal of advanced nursing.

[72]  R. Veenhoven.  Why Social Policy Needs Subjective Indicators , 2002 .

[73]  Tony Delamothe,et al.  Happiness , 2002, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[74]  Visualizing the Good Life: A Cross-Cultural Analysis , 2013 .

[75]  What Makes for a Good Life? A Four-Nation Study , 2012 .

[76]  Markus Hadler,et al.  How Social Relations and Structures can Produce Happiness and Unhappiness: An International Comparative Analysis , 2006 .

[77]  Daniel M. Haybron.  The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being , 2008 .

[78]  E. Deci,et al.  Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. , 2000, The American psychologist.

[79]  D. Gasper.  Understanding the diversity of conceptions of well-being and quality of life , 2010 .

[80]  V. Tiberius.  Recipes for a good life: Eudaimonism and the contribution of philosophy. , 2013 .

[81]  J. Smedslund.  The Mismatch between Current Research Methods and the Nature of Psychological Phenomena , 2009 .

[82]  I. Ajzen.  Attitudes, Personality and Behavior , 1988 .

[83]  María Teresa Muñoz Sastre,et al.  Lay Conceptions of Well-Being and Rules Used in Well-Being Judgments Among Young, Middle-Aged, and Elderly Adults , 1999 .

[84]  A. Waterman,et al.  Eudaimonia and Its Distinction from Hedonia: Developing a Classification and Terminology for Understanding Conceptual and Operational Definitions , 2014 .

[85]  B. Muthén,et al.  Deciding on the Number of Classes in Latent Class Analysis and Growth Mixture Modeling: A Monte Carlo Simulation Study , 2007 .