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Ed Diener New Papers on Subjective Well-Being (SWB)

Most of the papers are available on Ed Dieners website, and come to you via email whenrequested.

1. High SWB Causally Benefits Health and Longevity

Reviews seven types of data that suggest that high SWB contributes to health and

longevity. From longitudinal prospective studies to experimental mood inductionswhere physiological outcomes are assessed, the data are clear and convincing that types

of SWB such as high positive affect and low negative affect are beneficial to health and

longevity. Studies on animals and intervention studies confirm the conclusion thatSWB can causally influence health and longevity. The data are compelling, but not

beyond a reasonable doubt.

Diener, E., & Chan, M. (2010). Happy people live longer: Subjective well-being

contributes to health and longevity. Paper being revised.

2. Income Predicts Life Evaluations, Psychosocial Wealth Predicts Enjoying Life

A study of world shows that income influences life satisfaction, but less so affect.Positive feelings such as enjoying life were more strongly predicted by psychosocial

wealth, factors such as social support and learning new things.

Diener, E., Ng, W., Harter, J., & Arora , R. (2010). Wealth and happiness across theworld: Material prosperity predicts life evaluation, whereas psychosocial prosperity

predicts positive feeling.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 52-61.

3. Why Danes are Happier than Americans

We examined Gallup World Poll data to explore why Danes consistently outscore

other nations on subjective well-being, by comparing them to the richest nation in the

world, the USA. We found that although Danes are higher in life satisfaction,Americans are higher in positive and negative affectthey are more emotional. The

Danes outscored Americans in enjoying life, and on Cantrils Ladder of life evaluation.

It appears that while rich Americans and Danes are equally happy, poor Danes are

happier than their American counterparts, and this is part of the explanation for the highscores of Denmark on subjective well-being.

Biswas-Diener, R., Vitterso, J., & Diener, E. (2010). The Danish effect: Beginning toexplore high well-being in Denmark. Social Indicators Research, 97, 229-246.

4. Universal Needs and SWB across Cultures

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Study shows that across the world the fulfillment of universal needs predicts SWB.

For example, across cultural regions, life satisfaction was predicted by basic physicalneeds, positive feelings by respect and mastery needs, and negative feelings by both

lack of basic needs and lack of autonomy. The effects of needs were relatively

independent of one another, so that psychosocial needs contribute to subjective well-being even if basic needs were unmet. The poorest people in the world were unlikely to

have their needs met, but were able to enjoy life as much as rich people in those rare

circumstances when their basic and psychosocial needs were met. However, even whentheir needs were met the happy peasants reported lower life satisfaction, which

appears to be influenced by acquired desires that are not based on universal needs.

Societies strongly influenced whether basic needs were met, but psychosocial need

fulfillment was due more to individual differences. Finally, the ownership of modernconveniences seemed to raise life satisfaction but not enjoyment of life.

Diener, E., & Tay, L. (2010). Needs and subjective well-being around the world. Paperunder revision forJournal of Personality and Social Psychology.

5. Korean Unhappiness and the Lessons for Economic Development

South Koreans report low levels of SWB, especially when considered against thebackdrop of the economic successes of the nation. For example, levels of anger and

depression are high. The suicide rate is now the highest among OECD countries. The

nation is a case study for the fact that rapid economic development and success do notguarantee high SWB. Several possible causes of low SWB are considered. For

example, one culprit may be social relationships. A significant number of Koreans

feel they have no one to count on, almost half do not feel respected, and levels of

corruptions are high for an economically developed country. A number of possiblesociety-wide interventions to raise SWB are described.

Diener, E., Suh, E. M., Kim-Prieto, C., Biswas-Diener, R., & Tay, L. (2010, August).Unhappiness in South Korea: Why it is high and what might be done about it.

Proceedings of Korean Psychological Associations, August 2010, Seoul, South

Korea. Unpublished conference proceedings.

6. Societal Social Support and Helping Related to SWB.

We found that societies that are strong in social relationships have higher SWB.

The effects were not just due to the fact that more individuals in such nations have

strong relationships and therefore higher SWB. In addition to this, people with strongrelationships were even happier in nations where such relationships are prevalent, and

people with weak social support were better off in societies with strong social support

compared to their counterparts in nations with weak social support. Furthermore,helping others was about as important as receiving social support, and society-wide

helping was beneficial to the subjective well-being even of non-helpers.

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Diener, E., & Tay, L. (2010). Social and societal support and subjective well-being.

Paper in revision.

7. A New Look at Religiosity and SWB

Difficult societal circumstances predict religiosity, which helps SWB primarily in

religious societies. We studied both states of the USA and nations of the world. Wefound that societies with difficult life circumstances are more religious, and in those

nations religious people have higher SWB. However, in the least religious nations,

which are usually more economically prosperous, both religious and nonreligious

people have high SWB, and religious people are, if anything, slightly lower in SWB. Inthe USA, which is a moderately religious nation, religious people have worse life

circumstances on average, but higher SWB. This occurred in both the most and least

religious states, but even the least religious states in the USA are quite religious

compared to the least religious nations of the world.

Diener, E., Tay, L., & Myers, D. (2010). Religiosity and subjective well-being acrossthe world and the USA. Paper in revision.

8. People are Happier When Their Personalities Match Their Cultures

The extent to which peoples personalities, for example traits of the Big-Five

personality theory, predict their subjective well-being and self-esteem, depends on thedegree of personality match to the dominant personality dimensions in the culture.

Fulmer, A. C., Gelfand, M J., Kruglanski, A. W., Kim-Prieto, C., Diener, E., Pierro, A.,& Higins, E. T. (in press). Feeling All Right in societal contexts: Person-culture

Trait match and its impact on self-esteem and subjective well-being.Psychological

Science.

9. New Scales for Measuring Well-Being

Two news scales are presented for measuring well-being one for assessing positive

and negative feelings, and one for assessing psychological flourishing. The Flourishing

Scale is a brief 8-item scale designed to measure the respondents perceptions of howthey are flourishing in major areas such as social relationships, optimism, purpose, and

self-esteem, and yields a single global score. The feelings scale approaches themeasurement of feelings with a new direction suggested by Ulrich Schimmack, which

assesses feelings at the most global level good versus bad, pleasant versus unpleasant,

and desirable versus undesirable in order to circumvent the problems encountered inthe sampling and weighting of emotions, and in assessing emotions cross-culturally.

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Diener, E., Wirtz, D., Tov, W., Kim-Prieto, C., Choi, DW., Oishi, S., & Biswas-Diener,

R. (2010). New well-being measures: Short scales to assess flourishing and positive

and negative feelings. Social Indicator Research, 97, 143-156.

10. National Accounts of Subjective Well-Being

National accounts of subjective well-being should be used to assess the various facets

of citizens well-being such as life satisfaction, trust in others, positive emotions,meaning and purpose in life, and engagement and interest. National measures of well-

being that are collected systematically at periodic intervals will not only help focus

attention on well-being as a major goal of societies, but can give information to leaders

about policy alternatives, and thus inform policy debates in a way that complementseconomic analyses. Although global well-being measures such as life satisfaction are

useful, measures that are focused on certain target populations, on current policy

questions, and on specific activities and life domains often will be most informative for

policy debates.

Diener, E., & Tov, W. (in press). National subjective well-being indices: Anassessment. In K. C. Land (Ed.),Encyclopedia of Social Indicators and Quality-of-

Life Studies. New York: Springer.

11. National Satisfaction Predicts Life Satisfaction Better for the Poor

National satisfaction predicted life satisfaction. More interestingly, these relationswere stronger for the poor and those living in poor nations, for those low in residential

mobility, and for those in non-Western nations. The reverse pattern was found for

satisfaction with job, standard of living, and health. People in wealthier and Westernnations more heavily weight these personal circumstances in evaluating their lifesatisfaction. For those living in bad circumstances and for those more tightly tied to

their group, how the nation seems to be faring has a greater impact on how the

individual thinks she or he is personally faring.

Morrison, M., Tay, L., & Diener, E. (2010). Subjective well-being and national

satisfaction: Findings from a worldwide survey. Submitted for publication.