Chapter 25: Life satisfaction and emotional wellbeing, psychological economic and social factors

Question 1

What is the economic view on wellbeing?

Answer 1

(1) Material wealth is positively related to utility (wellbeing).
(2) The more you possess the happier you are. Hence justifying economic national indicators such as GDP.
(3) Critique; economic indicators exclude many potential important factors
(4) Critique; surveys used are susceptible to various errors

Question 2

What is the psychological view on wellbeing?

Answer 2

(1) use social indicators to complement economic indicators
(2) Social indicators assess life circumstances important for wellbeing
(3) Human development index by UN
(4) Life satisfaction, happiness and domain satisfaction

Question 3

What are different types of measurement of subjective wellbeing? (2)

Answer 3

(1) Self-reported questionnaires (how frequent positive/negative, rate intensity or frequency/duration, add words for emotional state description and state affect balance by + and -
(2) Aggregation of recurrent reports for pos/neg feelings at a certain moment

Question 4

What is a critique on the term affect balance in subjective wellbeing?

Answer 4

It only taps into hedonic aspects of emotional wellbeing, whereas purpose and meaning in life are also very important (psychological flourishing)

Question 5

What are some of the individual factors of subjective wellbeing? (5, chronological order of impact)

Answer 5

(1) Personality traits such as extraversion and emotional suability
(2) stable life circumstances
(3) Engagement in intentional goal-directed activities
(4) Routineous out-of-home activities in your community (major problem with corona)
(5) Negatively: time pressure and stress

Question 6

What is the easterlin paradox and how can it be explained (4)?

Answer 6

(1) Relationship between material wealth and life satisfaction is not linear
(2) Reflective income effect: citizens compare themselves to others. If they grow, so do others, so no one grows
(3) Hedonic adaptation causes changing preferences, people get used to obtaining improvements thus the desire will always be there
(4) The pleasure of consumption does not buffer the burden of repayment on loans and credit

Question 7

What are social factors of subjective wellbeing? (6)

Answer 7

(1) Humans are social animals, we need that interaction
(2) Reversed causality: happy people find each other
(3) Emotional dividend from beloning and attachment
(4) social support in every way
(5) People providing social support are more happy
(6) Reciprocation: we think people will help us and the people who don’t help will become excluded