Abstract
The field of subjective well-being (SWB) is primarily concerned with people’s evaluation of their lives; however, it includes a wide range of concepts, from momentary moods to global life satisfaction judgments. We propose a framework that integrates these diverse constructs. Our sequential temporal framework of subjective well-being describes experiences of well-being from the events and circumstances that cause evaluative reactions, through the emotional reactions to these events, to recall of these reactions, and finally to global judgments of well-being based on the previous stages. The hypothesized processes that translate the various steps in the sequence into one another are described, and supporting evidence is reviewed. We outline the implications of our framework for understanding subjective well-being, and discuss the research that is needed to further explore the proposed framework.
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Notes
- 1.
It might be, however, that there is a universal tendency to weight negative events more heavily than positive ones, based on the idea that negative information in general is more salient than positive information (Ito and Cacioppo 1999; Rozin and Royzman 2001). Future research is needed to better understand this tendency and its relevance to SWB.
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Kim-Prieto, C., Diener, E., Tamir, M., Scollon, C., Diener, M. (2013). Integrating the Diverse Definitions of Happiness: A Time-Sequential Framework of Subjective Well-Being. In: Delle Fave, A. (eds) The Exploration of Happiness. Happiness Studies Book Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5702-8_4
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