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What is happiness?Is it important?

+What is well-being? Is it good health? Is it utility or welfare (e.g. access to

economic resources, healthcare, family and community support)?

Is it a feeling of happiness, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment?

+While we have a good of idea of what suffering looks like…

+…but what about flourishing?

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+Well-being

The UK’s Sustainable Development Strategy defines well-being as a positive physical, social and mental state requiring:basic needs are metindividuals have a sense of purposethey feel able to achieve important personal goals and participate in society

+A taxonomy of well-being?

Different types of well-being include:

(1)Basic needs (necessary prerequisites for human well-being; e.g. health, income, education, freedom)(2)Psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) (3)Flourishing (living the ‘good life’ – being able to reach your full potential)(4)Hedonic (an optimal positive affect balance)(5)Evaluative (a subjective appraisal of aspects of life and how it is going; that is, judgment about feelings)

+Why should I care about flourishing?

Gallup reported that lost productivity due to employee disengagement costs more than $300 billion .

James Harter and his colleagues found that business sales and profits are predicted by employees’ feelings about the organization.

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Social Rewards

Better Work Performance

Better Health

More Creativity

Benefits of Happiness

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Learn about your happiness.

BeyondThePurchase.Org helps people understand their own happiness. Your responses will also help researchers understand how happy people think and behave. 

+Discussion Questions

Were your results on the Satisfaction with Life Scale what you expected? If not, why might that be the case?

Which measure of well-being was your favorite? Which do you think is most accurate?

What activities could you do to improve your well-being?