Science of Happiness & Well Being Flashcards
Subjective well-being
A persons own assessment of their happiness and satisfaction with life.
What are the 3 common orientations to happiness
- Meaning - having a larger purpose
- Pleasure - pursuit of pleasure & excitement
- Engagement - Pursuit of engagement with tasks, time passing by quickly because you are enjoying what you are doing
Explanatory style
Ones habitual way of explaining life event, explains an event, what aspects the person focuses on (positive or negative aspects)
Negative explanatory style
Attributes failure to state stable, global & internal causes
Negative Stable cause
Issue that will last forever
Negative Global cause
Will only affect an area of one’s life/ will affect all of the persons life
Negative Internal cause
Situation, Context contributed to failure/self-blame
Gratitude as a means of improving well being (2005)
Results: Those in gratitude (wrote down what they were thankful for over a 10 week span) reported feeling better about their lives, greater optimism about the future & less physical complaints.
Broaden Build Theory (Fredrickson, 2002)
- Positive emotions:
(a) enable people to think of more solutions
(b) help you become more resilient
Aerobic exercise & subjective well-being (Babyak, 2000)
- Overcoming depression
- Results: people who just exercised (no medicine, or combo of both) were less likely to be depressed
Anticipation of future positive experiences & subjective well being (Macleod & Conway, 2005)
Results: The anticipation of positive experience & more anticipated positive experience was associated with better subjective well being.
Presentation, decision making & happiness (Hsee, 2008)
- Separate or spread out the positive news & combine the negative news (good news tell on different days, bad news all at once)
- Tell people about positive events in advance & but not at all for bad (taking a kid to the dentist, just put the kid in the car, don’t tell them before hand)
- Many choices are actually bad for desirable options & good for undesirable options (choosing many good options can be debilitating & can cause anxiety = limit options)
Problem focused coping
Cognitive & behavioral efforts to ALTER a stressful situation
Emotion focused coping
Cognitive & behavioral efforts to REDUCE the distress produced by a stressful situation.
Proactive coping
Upfront effort to get rid of or modify the beginning of a stressful situation.