This volume examines the impact of wealth on quality of life and subjective well-being (SWB). As wealth is related to economic, environmental and social features of societies, this volume serves as an important resource in understanding economic and SWB. It further discusses a variety of experiences and consequences of inequalities of wealth. Through the availability of wealth data in recent international surveys, this volume explores the multiple relations between wealth and SWB. Structured around four main pillars the book presents analysis of the topic at various levels such as theoretical and conceptual, methodological and empirically, ending with a section on distribution and policies.

This comprehensive and updated new edition offers scholarly summaries of theory and research on the social psychological influences on subjective well-being and life satisfaction. Among the topics covered are types of relationships (e.g., romantic relationships, friendships, online relationships) and types of interactions with others (e.g., forgiveness, gratitude, helping behavior). It also examines broader social issues such as culture, socioeconomic status, religion, and well-being in the workplace. The latest edition includes new chapters on economic inequality, psychedelic social psychology, singlehood, social worth, and identity. Subjective Well-Being and Life Satisfaction: A Social Psychological Perspective is a rich and focused resource for graduate students, upper-level undergraduate students, and researchers in positive psychology and social psychology. It should also be of interest to social neuroscientists, mental health researchers, clinical and counselling psychologists, and anyone interested in the science of well-being.

The Psychological Wealth of Nations reviews the range of new scientific research related to individual and societal happiness. Presents a comprehensive review of happiness, from conceptual and measurement issues to an exploration of predictors and consequences of happiness Explores the psychology and economics of happiness and examines the correlations between societal wealth, productivity, and happiness in different countries Offers compelling insights into the ways individual happiness impacts the psychological wealth of overall society Features a highly interdisciplinary approach, with considerations of philosophy, sociology, economics, political sciences, as well as psychology

This comprehensive Encyclopedia delves into the underpinnings, approaches, and recent advancements in the dynamic global landscape of happiness and wellbeing research. Laying out the foundational concepts and disciplinary perspectives in the field, international leading and diverse authors survey the determinants and mechanisms which are associated with happiness, quality of life and subjective wellbeing. This title contains one or more Open Access entries.

The quality of people’s relationships with and interactions with other people are major influences on their feelings of well-being and their evaluations of life satisfaction. The goal of this volume is to offer scholarly summaries of theory and research on topics at the frontier of the study of these social psychological influences—both interpersonal and intrapersonal—on subjective well-being and life satisfaction. The chapters cover a variety of types of relationships (e.g., romantic relationships, friendships, online relationships) as well as a variety of types of interactions with others (e.g., forgiveness, gratitude, helping behavior, self-presentation). Also included are chapters on broader social issues such as materialism, sexual identity and orientation, aging, spirituality, and meaning in life. Subjective Well-Being and Life Satisfaction provides a rich and focused resource for graduate students, upper-level undergraduate students, and researchers in positive psychology and social psychology, as well as social neuroscientists, mental health researchers, clinical and counselling psychologists, and anyone interested in the science of well-being.

material boundaries capture cultural effects? The articles contained in this volume offer initial answers to most of these questions. The culture and well-being questions are of fundamental importance to understanding in the entire eld and to scienti c knowledge in the behavioral s- ences as a whole. Unless we understand what is universal and what is speci c, we cannot hope to understand the processes governing well-being. Unfortunately, our scienti c knowledge in most behavioral science elds, including the study of we- being, has been built on a narrow database drawn from westernized, industrialized nations. This means that we have only a little knowledge of whether our ndings are generalizable to all peoples of the globe and to universal human psychol- ical processes. Fortunately, during the last decade my students and I, as well as others working in this area, have rapidly expanded our knowledge of well-being vis-a-vis ` culture. The rst attempt to summarize the ndings in this area came in 1999 with Culture and Subjective Well-Being, a book edited by Eunkook Suh and Diener. The current volume represents a renewed effort to give a broad overview of major ndings in this area and to point to the important directions for future research. Composition of This Volume I am very pleased with the articles presented in this volume because I believe that they represent true advances in our fundamental understanding of subjective we- being.

This book provides a new generation of research in which scholars are investigating mental health and human development as not merely the absence of illness or dysfunction, but also the presence of subjective well-being. Subjective well-being is a fundamental facet of the quality of life. The quality of an individual’s life can be assessed externally and objectively or internally and subjectively. From an objective standpoint, other people measure and judge another’s life according to criteria such as wealth or income, educational attainment, occupational prestige, and health status or longevity. Nations, communities, or individuals who are wealthier, have more education, and live longer are considered to have higher quality of life or personal well-being. The subjective standpoint emerged during the 1950s as an important alternative to the objective approach to measuring individual’s well-being. Subjectively, individuals evaluate their own lives as evaluations made, in theory, after reviewing, summing, and weighing the substance of their lives in social context. Research has clearly shown that measures of subjective well-being, which are conceptualized as indicators of mental health (or ‘mental well-being’), are factorially distinct from but correlated with measures of symptoms of common mental disorders such as depression. Despite countless proclamations that health is not merely the absence of illness, there had been little or no empirical research to verify this assumption. Research now supports the hypothesis that health is not merely the absence of illness, it is also the presence of higher levels of subjective well-being. In turn, there is growing recognition of the personal and social utility of subjective well-being, both higher levels of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. Increased subjective well-being has been linked with higher personal and social ‘goods’: higher business profits, more worker productivity, greater employee retention; increased protection against mortality; increased protection against the onset and increase of physical disability with aging; improved cognitive and immune system functioning; and increased levels of social capital such as civic responsibility, generativity, community involvement and volunteering. This edited volume brings together for the first time the growing scientific literature on positive mental health that is now being conducted in many countries other than the USA and provides students and scholars with an invaluable source for teaching and for generating new ideas for furthering this important line of research.

The past decade has been characterized by a burgeoning interest in new concepts of individual and social well-being. The impetus for this new research has stemmed from increased demand from policy makers and civil society for measures of progress that go beyond the traditional measures of GDP, as well as improved datasets allowing individuals and households to be tracked over their life course. The aim of this Handbook is to chart these developments and provide extensive surveys of many of the recent themes that have emerged in the research literature. Some of the topics addressed include poverty. relative deprivation and satisfaction, economic insecurity, social exclusion and inequality, income and social polarization, and social fractionalization and diversity. Each topic is first analyzed from a theoretical perspective, followed by detailed empirical discussion.

This book is a welcome consolidation and extension of the recent expanding debates on happiness and economics. Happiness and economics, as a new field for research, is now of pivotal interest particularly to welfare economists and psychologists.

This book is concerned with the universality of wellbeing indicators. It provides contributions from international scholars in the field of quality of life and subjective well-being. The book provides substantial conceptual coverage on issues relating to the universality of subjective wellbeing including detailed discussion of central underlying mechanisms and processes involved in subjective wellbeing. The main topics covered include: the theoretical bases for the measurement of quality of life, the affective dimension in quality of life, the roles of homeostasis and personality in the processes of quality of life assessment and maintenance, the impact of factors including residential care, economic wealth, and work-related variables on subjective wellbeing. The book is of interest to all who want to develop their understanding of the universality, assessment, development and maintenance of subjective wellbeing.