Lecture2

• Hedonic


  The primary function of human life is to experience pleasure, the main goal of human existence is to maximise one's hedonic moments
• Wellbeing within the "hedonic school"

  • Centered on exploring what makes life pleasant versus unpleasant
  • Increased positive and reduced negative emotions
• Positive affect (PA)


  High levels of PA does not mean low levels of NA, they have independent effects on our wellbeing
• Negative affect (NA)


  High levels of NA has been linked to lower levels of wellbeing
• Measuring hedonic wellbeing


  • Positive & negative affect
  • Positive and negative affect are independent constructs
  • Higher positive affect has been linked to positive adaptation and higher wellbeing
  • Higher negative affect has been linked to lower levels of wellbeing
• Valence


  Dimension of affect (PA and NA)
• Arousal


  Dimension of affect (amount of activation associated with the particular state)
• Emotions


  • Excitement (high arousal positive)
  • Calm (low arousal positive)
• High PA


  State of high energy, full concentration, and pleasurable engagement
• Low PA


  Characterized by sadness and lethargy
• High NA


  Levels of subjective distress and unpleasurable engagement that underlie various negative states such as anger, fear, and nervousness
• Low NA


  State of calmness and serenity
• PANAS (Watson et al., 1998)


  • One of the most used measures of PA and NA
  • Participants indicate the extent to which they experience the various emotions on a scale of 1 to 5
  • Includes high arousal feelings and negative states, excludes low arousal emotions like calmness or sadness
  • Includes items that are not often experienced or have to do with motivations rather than emotions
• SPANE (Diener et al., 2009)

  • Developed to handle the limitations of PANAS
  • Assesses emotions across all levels of arousal for both positive and negative feelings
  • Includes specific feelings that may have unique labels in particular cultures
  • Has high reliability and temporal stability
• Some categories of emotions within SPANE are represented by antonym adjectives, which artificially increases the consistency of the instrument due to highly correlated error terms
• Some SPANE items again do not express affect but instead reflect cognitive and meta-cognitive processes of affect, not assessing your actual experience of the emotions
• Life satisfaction


  The cognitive dimension of subjective wellbeing, a conscious cognitive judgement of one's life in relation to a self-imposed standard or set of standards
• Measuring life satisfaction


  • Focus is generally on evaluating broad life domains, as what "success" looks like in these areas may vary across individuals
  • Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, 1985) has shown strong internal reliability and moderate temporal stability
  • Temporal Satisfaction with Life Scale (Pavot & Diener, 1998) assesses satisfaction with one's past, present, and future lives
  • Riverside Life Satisfaction Scale (Margolis et al., 2018) includes reverse-scored items and indirect items to control for method effects and assess important elements of life satisfaction
• Cantril Wellbeing Ladder


  One of the most used measures, uses a single question to reduce the variation caused by individual emotional factors and enhance objectivity
• Happiness


  Measure of wellbeing with high face validity, as we tend to automatically describe happy people as having high wellbeing and unhappy people as having low wellbeing
• The Happiness Measure (Fordyce, 1972)

  • Includes an 11-point happiness/unhappiness scale and a question asking for the time spent in "happy", "unhappy", and "neutral" moods
  • Adds a quantitative measure to complement the qualitative scale, and an index of unhappy mood
• Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky and Lepper, 1997)


  • Simpler measure compared to the Happiness Measure
• Wellbeing


  Having high wellbeing means consistently happy despite adversity, having low wellbeing means consistently unhappy despite the best of circumstances
• The Happiness Measure (Fordyce, 1972)


  A measure of intensity/quality of happiness generating percentage estimates that assess its frequency (or quantity)
• The Happiness Measure


  1. 11-point happiness/unhappiness scale

  2. Question asking for time spent in "happy", "unhappy", and "neutral" moods
• The Happiness Measure


  • Adds a quantitative measure to complement the qualitative scale
  • Includes an index of unhappy mood which plays a somewhat independent role in the overall assessment of subjective well-being
  • High reliability
  • Only has 2 items
• Subjective Happiness Scale (Lyubomirsky and Lepper, 1997)


  A simpler measure of happiness compared to the Happiness Measure
• Subjective Happiness Scale


  • "Some people are generally very happy"
  • "Compared to most of my peers"
• Subjective Happiness Scale


  • Demonstrates comparability across samples of varying ages, occupations, languages, and cultures
  • Alphas ranged from 0.79 to 0.94 (M = 0.86)
  • Test-retest reliability ranged from 0.55 to 0.90 (M = 0.72)
  • Criticisms: Happiness is not just about experiencing positive emotions, when you're really not happy your entire body feels it, emotional transfer across items in a questionnaire is possible
• Previous measures acknowledge that happiness is not just the presence of a number of positive emotional states, but also the absence of depression
• Previous measures ignore the fact that happiness is a complex concept characterised by not just positive emotions, but also positive cognitions and bodily sensations
• Depression-Happiness Scale


  A 25-item measure where 12 items ask about positive thoughts, feelings, and bodily experiences
• Short Depression–Happiness Scale


  A shortened version of the Depression-Happiness Scale, including 6 of the original 25 items
• Short Depression–Happiness Scale


  • Alphas range from .77 to .92 across a range of studies
  • Quite intense, short but could affect emotions across questions
  • No bodily sensations included
  • Reads like a life satisfaction scale
• Eudaimonic wellbeing


  • The primary function of human life is to exercise conscious choice of action in the pursuit of eudaimonia (the "good life")
  • The main goal of human existence is thriving (Aristotle, 350BCE)
• Approaches to wellbeing within the "eudaimonic school"


  • How people handle life challenges across the lifespan
  • What is necessary for the full growth and development of the individual, need satisfaction
  • How can one find meaning in challenging experiences
• Measuring wellbeing through handling of life challenges

  • As we develop, we experience several crises or turning points which lead either to psychological health or psychological maladjustment
  • Extent to which what is needed for full growth and development
  • How this integrates into our development
  • Do our childhood experiences influence your current levels of wellbeing? A lot of the research suggests yes, although it's not a complete picture
• Healthy psychological development


  • The predominant theory of core life challenges related to wellbeing is a life span psychosocial theory of human development that puts forth 8 developmental stages which everyone must face
  • Each stage entails coping with a central psychosocial problem or crisis
  • Resolution of each crisis leads to adaptive abilities (ego virtues), which aid us in adjusting to life's challenges, leading to positive wellbeing
  • A lot of this is about the caregiver. Their relationship to the caregiver in the early years
• Eriksonian psychosocial stages of human development

  • Infancy: basic trust versus mistrust (hope versus withdrawal)
  • Early childhood: autonomy versus shame / doubt (will versus compulsion)
  • Play age: initiative versus guilt (purpose versus inhibition)
  • School age: industry versus inferiority (competence versus passivity)
  • Adolescence: identity versus identity confusion (fidelity versus repudiation)
  • Young adulthood: intimacy versus isolation (love versus distantiation)
  • Adulthood: generativity versus stagnation (care versus rejectivity)
  • Old age: ego integrity versus despair (wisdom versus disdain)
• Inventory of Psychological Development (IPD)

  A 60-item measure which assesses successful versus unsuccessful resolution of Erikson's first 6 stages of psychosocial development