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

What is this article about?

The hedonic treadmill model is a model that supposes that good and bad events can only temporarily affect happiness. According to this model, everyone always adapts back to hedonic neutrality. This leads to the conclusion that it is pointless to try and increase happiness. The poorest diseased beggar with no social connections could be just as happy as the healthy billionaire with a lot of close and supportive relationships. But is this really true? This article will make five important revisions to the hedonic

What is this article about?

This articles is a critique on the view that the study of happiness is not a worthy scientific pursuit. It sets out to prove that the happiness set point and hedonic treadmill theories denote the complexity of increasing happiness levels due to genetic limitations and adaption. There is mounting evidence to suggest that happiness can be improved with the use of appropriate measures and specific interventions aimed at fostering strengths and virtues. Approaching human needs from a top down or holistic standpoint where individuals can use their strengths to overcome life's challenges is beneficial to health and well-being and

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 article explains what the three crucial turning points or revolutions have been in the world history of happiness. All these revolutions have had a significant impact in how people experience and understand happiness. 

It is always difficult to measure happiness. There will never be a perfectly reliable instrument that allows us to measure another person's well-being with complete and total certainty. But there are a lot of tools that can be used to come close to measuring someone's happiness, such as scales, questionnaires, experience sampling and

What is this article about?

Aristotle had already introduced the concept of eudaimonia to reflect human flourishing as a reflection of virtue and the development of one's full potential, in contrast to the pleasure-centered hedonic theories of well-being. In the science of happiness, the definition of subjective well-being has also been expanded to include eudaimonia. This article is an exploration of eudaimonia or eudaimonic well-being.

What is eudaimonia?

Aristotle's conception of eudaimonia can be explained as a reflection of virtue, excellence, and the development of one's full potential. Eudaimonia is an

What is this article about?

This article explains affective forecasting and the impact bias. People often base their decisions on affective forecasts. Affective forecasts are predictions about their emotional reactions to future events.

In this affective forecasting, they often display an impact bias, meaning they overestimate the intensity and duration of their emotional reactions to such events. People routinely mispredict how much pleasure or displeasure future events will bring and, as a result, sometimes work to bring about events that do not maximize their happiness.

One cause of this is focalism. Focalism is the tendency to underestimate the extent to which other events will influence our thoughts and feelings. Another cause

What is this article about?

There has been a lot of research that has proven why the pursuit of happiness is good. There is no doubt that happiness is often beneficial. On the basis of the robust benefits of happiness, it is tempting to conclude that happiness is always beneficial and that people should aim to enhance their happiness in any way possible. This article is a review of the other, "dark side" of happiness. Four questions will be answered in this article:

1. Is there

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 a research report of research examining the relationship between satisfaction in one's country, called national satisfaction, and subjective well-being utilizing data from a representative worldwide poll. The findings of this research invite new research directions and can inform quality-of-life therapies.

What method was used in the experiment?

The sample consisted of 132,516 individuals from 128 countries. The aim was to represent 95% of the world's adult population. Life satisfaction was assessed with Cantril's Self-Anchoring Striving Scale,

What is this article about?

This article reviews the reasons for including indicators of subjective well-being in national accounts of quality of life in nations, next to economic and social indicators, as Diener proposed in 2000. The policies that subjective well-being measures could influence, will be described. There will also be a response to some common objections towards implementing indicators of subjective well-being in national accounts.

What is this article about?

This is a review of recent findings concerning the role of affect and emotion in climate change perceptions and judgment as well as their potential as drivers of sustainable action. The affective responses people experience toward climate change are found to be strong predictors of risk perceptions, mitigation behavior, adaptation behavior, policy support, and technology acceptance. Communication and intervention studies show that inducing both positive and negative emotions may under certain conditions promote sustainable behavior. This follows from accumulating research in the affective sciences. The field of behavioral sciences could benefit from incorporation of these concepts and

What is this article about?

This article is an exploration of the question whether individuals need relationships with others to thrive. This has been researched a lot so there is a lot of evidence that can be reviewed. This evidence suggests that people do need social bonds, not only to thrive but even to just survive. How relationships might contribute to well-being, will be explained after the review of the research of the relationship between social bonds and well-being.

What is this article about?

Marriage and parenthood are thought of as opportunities for people to experience great joy, but also incredible disappointment. This article is a review of the current understanding of the relationship between the social structures marriage and parenthood to well-being. Well-being is understood here as including both cognitive and affective components, so high life satisfaction and frequent positive emotions and infrequent negative emotions.

Various methodological approaches have been implemented to better understand how family relationships are related to well-beings. The question of causality may not be directly answered, but there is interesting information we can draw from