LA1020: Psychology of Well-being

LA1020: Assessment of Well being

Research on:
 Indicators of happiness
 Are they measurable

Objective and Subjective Indicators

 Popular objective indicators: income, literacy rate, mortality rate
 Earlier wellbeing was measured through Gross Domestic Product
 However, all the aspects of human life are not covered through GDP; new indicators are needed
to provide a comprehensive assessment
 1972, suggestion by King of Bhutan: “the nations objective should be to maximize gross national
happiness”
 These indicators are: life satisfaction, personal achievements, health outcomes

Subjective well being (SWB): SWB helps reveal the quality of life over a period of time and high SWB
indirectly benefits societies – health, longevity, prosperity, and peace. SWB is people’s evaluations of
their lives – in both thoughts and feelings.

For example:
 Overall life satisfaction
 Specific areas such as relationships, work, and health satisfaction
 Experiencing more instances of positive emotions, e.g. joy, affection, and trust
 Experiencing less instances of negative emotions, e.g., sadness, anger and jealousy

Why is it difficult to assess happiness?

 Difficult to define and therefore difficult to assess
 Researchers have attempted to clarify the notion of well being
 It still remains an ambiguous concept, lacking a universally acceptable definition and often faced
with competing interpretations

Happiness is generally viewed as a description of the state of people’s life situation (McGillivray, 2007,
p. 3). Concepts such as “quality of life, welfare, well-living, living standards, utility, life satisfaction,
prosperity, needs fulfillment, development, empowerment, capability expansion, human development,
poverty, human poverty, land and, more recently, happiness are often used interchangeability with well-
being without explicit discussion as to their distinctiveness” --- McGillivray and Clarke (2006, p. 3)

Assessment Techniques
 Self report measures such as:
 Day reconstruction method
 Autobiographical method
 Standardized questionnaires
 Biological markers

Day reconstruction method: Example

Kahneman, D., Krueger, A. B., Schkade, D. A., Schwarz, N., & Stone, A. A. (2004). A survey method for
characterizing daily life experience: the day reconstruction method. Science, 306, 1776-80.

1
 LA1020: Psychology of Well-being

 N = 909 employed women in Texas

 Participants were asked to divide the previous day into 15 episodes
 They were then asked what they were doing in each episode, who they were with, how they felt in
each episodes along 12 dimensions
 Analysis revealed information about women’s sources of happiness from various aspects of their
daily lives

Autobiographical method: Example: The Nun Study

Danner, D., Snowdon, D., Friesen, W. (2001). Positive emotions in early life and longevity: Findings
from the nun study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(5), 804-813.
 Mean age of participants: 22 years
 N = 180 Catholic nuns who joined the congregation in the 1930s
 Happy and less happy nuns living in a controlled environment i.e. same circumstances throughout
their lifespan –food, daily schedule, environment, people around
 Positive emotional content in early-life autobiographies strongly associated with longevity six
decades later
 Conclusion: Underlying mechanisms of balanced emotional states are important

Commonly used questionnaires

 Oxford Happiness Questionnaire - Hills and Argyle (2002)
 Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988)
 Approaches to Happiness Questionnaire (Peterson, 2003)
 Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, 2002)

Can we rely on self-reports?

Psychologists believe that self-report measures can be reliable. They may be:
 Correlated with others’ reports (friends/family/colleagues)
 Person’s recall of good and bad events at a later time
 Heart rate, blood pressure and other physiological measures in response to stress

There is evidence to suggest that positive and negative feelings correspond to activities in different parts
of the brain. For instance: positive affect is associated with the pre-frontal cortex

Happiness Correlated with Smile

 Not all smiles are genuine expressions of happiness
 Paul Ekman described 18 types of smiles in his 1985 book, Telling Lies
 A smile has been referred to as “the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities” - smile when
embarrassed. frightened, low on confidence, nervous, confused
 Important to distinguish between a smile that reflects happiness and a courtesy smile

Genuine smile/ Duchenne smile

 Only two facial muscles that are involved in a genuine smile:
 (a) Zygomatic major: from ear – cheekbone –lips (raising the corners of the mouth)
 (b) Orbicularis oculi: around the eyes (raising the cheeks and producing crow's feet around the
eyes)
 The Duchenne smile arises from the limbic system or emotion center and occurs when these two
muscles contract involuntarily
 It is impossible for the combination of these muscles to contract if the positive emotion center in
the brain has not been activated
2
 LA1020: Psychology of Well-being

 The entire event is short — typically lasting from two-thirds of a second to four seconds

Link between Positive Emotions and the True Duchenne Smile

Self-rated happiness scores are associated positively with the duration of authentic or genuine smile
Ekman, P., Davidson, R. J., & Friesen, W. V. (1990). The Duchenne smile: emotional expression and
brain physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(2), 342-353: Facial expression, EEG,
and self-report of subjective emotional experience were recorded while subjects individually watched
both pleasant and unpleasant films. As predicted, the Duchenne smile was related to enjoyment in terms
of occurring more often during the pleasant than the unpleasant films, in measures of cerebral asymmetry,
and in relation to subjective reports of positive emotions, while the other smiling was not.

Genuine smile versus fake smile

Emotional Outcome:
 LeeAnne Harker & Dacher Keltner (2001)’s 30-year longitudinal study; photos from college –
smiles categorized into fake and genuine smiles using FACS; the latter positively correlated with
level of well being and satisfaction at age 52
 Keltner & George Bonanno (1997) studied the facial expressions of people who were discussing a
recently deceased relative. Lower levels of distress were found in those who displayed
genuine, smiles during the discussion, compared to those who did not.
Biological Outcome:
 Ernest Abel & Michael Kruger’s - smiles of professional baseball players dating back to the
1950’s with age at death. Those who expressed more positive emotions (more genuine smiles)
were only half as likely to die as those who had not.

Summary: It would be wrong to club all smiles together as a “single class of behaviour, since the
Duchenne smile is a genuine sign of enjoyment as compared to the other kinds of smiles” (Ekman,
Davidson, & Friesen, 1990, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)

The Pan-American Smile: There is no significant correlation between happiness and a professional or
“Pan American” smile (a smile involving only the zygomatus major muscle to show politeness)

The Pan-American Smile is not entirely unnecessary. It may not indicate genuine happiness, however
fake smiles serve many different social functions. They are a sign of courtesy or politeness. They may
also be used to send a false message of enjoyment or may be used to indicate agreement.

Research has shown that:

 Most people do not notice the difference between genuine smiles and fake smiles
 It is hard not to reciprocate a smile, including a fake smile

Conclusion: Assessment of well being

 Findings from self report questionnaires corroborated by reports from significant others and
biological markers; have been accepted as valid and reliable by social scientists
 Since well being research is still at a nascent stage, it is believed that further investigations will
provide more clarity with regard to overlapping concepts and domain-specific and culture specific
measures in the area
 Future attempts at assessing well being must take into account specific components such as social
and cultural factors