Study Guide with article summaries for Science of Happiness at the University of Utrecht

What is this article about?

Well-being is subjective and because of that, all ways of evaluating well-being are subjective. The subjective nature of the construct makes self-report a natural method for assessing well-being. But there are problems with self-report measures. These problems will be reviewed in this article.

What is subjective well-being and how is it measured?

Subjective well-being (SWB) is a construct that focuses explicitly on subjective evaluations of

What is this article about?

Well-being is a broad, complex, multifaceted construct. This article is a review of different ways of defining and measuring well-being and the implications that this has for understanding the correlates and causes of well-being. Different conceptions of well-being and specific components of them will be discussed.

What different conceptions of well-being are there?

There are different ideas on what

What is this article about?

This is a research report of an experiment where 222 undergraduates were screened for high happiness. The upper 10% of consistently very happy people were compared with average people and very unhappy people. This study has tried to find out what some factor might be that influence high happiness: social relationships, personality and psychopathology, and variables that have been related to subjective well-being in correlational studies. It also examined whether there was a variable that was sufficient for happiness and a variable that was necessary for happiness (sufficient: everyone with the variable is happy, necessary: every happy person has the variable).

What is this article about?

This article is about the Sustainable Happiness Model (SHM). This is an influential model in positive psychology and the science of happiness. However, the 'pie chart of this model has received some valid critiques. This article agrees with many of these critiques, even though research also supports the most important premise of the SHM. This basic premise is that individuals can boost their well-being via their intentional behaviors, and maintain that boost in the long term. But such effects may be weaker than researchers initially believe. Three contemporary models that have descended from the thinking embodied in the SHM, will also be described.

What is this article about?

This article is a research review about how public policies affect life satisfaction across the industrial democracies. Government spending, the size and generosity of the welfare state, and the degree of labor market regulation are considered as indicators of policy. There is evidence for the idea that citizens find life more satisfying as the degree of government intervention in the economy increases. This result is inelastic to changes in income.

What is examined?

Capitalism has come to structure not only economic production

What is this article about?

This is an introduction to the science of happiness. It provides a catalogue of the main questions that have been posed about happiness across millennia. By doing this, it can explain why we look at happiness from a scientifical standpoint, not just from a philosophical standpoint. First, it will be explained what happiness is and how it can be measured. After that, the possibility, desirability, and justifiability of happiness will be explored. Lastly, this article will try to answer the question of how to be happy.

What is this article about?

This is an explanation of well-being from the view of normative ethics. It tries to answer the question of what exactly "well-being" is and what it means for someone's life to go better or worse. Hedonism will be explained in all its forms and the most important rejections of it will be dealt with. This article is not an exploration of the causes of happiness, but of the definition of happiness. 

What is well-being?

An important answer is that well-being consists in the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. A lot of