Across a sample of 123 countries, we examined the association between the fulfillment of needs and subjective well-being (SWB), including life evaluation, positive feelings, and negative feelings. Need fulfillment was consistently associated with SWB across world regions. Life evaluation was most associated with fulfilling basic needs; positive feelings were most associated with social and respect needs; and negative feelings were most associated with basic, respect, and autonomy needs. Societal need fulfillment predicted SWB, particularly for life evaluation, beyond individuals' fulfillment of their own needs, indicating the desirability of living in a flourishing society. In addition, the associations of SWB with the fulfillment of specific needs were largely independent of whether other needs were fulfilled. These trends persisted when household income was taken into account. The emergent ordering of need fulfillment for psychosocial needs were fairly consistent across country conditions, but the fulfillment of basic and safety needs were contingent on country membership.
As we estimate here, 68% of human beings--4.6 billion people--would say that religion is important in their daily lives. Past studies have found that the religious, on average, have higher subjective well-being (SWB). Yet, people are rapidly leaving organized religion in economically developed nations where religious freedom is high. Why would people leave religion if it enhances their happiness? After controlling for circumstances in both the United States and world samples, we found that religiosity is associated with slightly higher SWB, and similarly so across four major world religions. The associations of religiosity and SWB were mediated by social support, feeling respected, and purpose or meaning in life. However, there was an interaction underlying the general trend such that the association of religion and well-being is conditional on societal circumstances. Nations and states with more difficult life conditions (e.g., widespread hunger and low life expectancy) were much more likely to be highly religious. In these nations, religiosity was associated with greater social support, respect, purpose or meaning, and all three types of SWB. In societies with more favorable circumstances, religiosity is less prevalent and religious and nonreligious individuals experience similar levels of SWB. There was also a person-culture fit effect such that religious people had higher SWB in religious nations but not in nonreligious nations. Thus, it appears that the benefits of religion for social relationships and SWB depend on the characteristics of the society.
In this article we present the development and validation of two new measures of psychological well-being: the Comprehensive Inventory of Thriving (CIT) and the Brief Inventory of Thriving (BIT). These measures were developed with two specific goals in mind: (1) to measure a broad range of psychological well-being constructs and represent a holistic view of positive functioning; and (2) to predict important health outcomes that are useful for researchers and health practitioners. The CIT includes 18 subscales with 54 items in total, covering a broad range of well-being components. The BIT has 10 items in total and can serve as an indicator of psychological well-being and a brief screening tool of mental health. The new measures were evaluated in five samples of a total of 3,191 US participants with diverse demographics. The CIT and BIT had excellent psychometric properties and exhibited convergent validity with existing measures of psychological well-being and discriminant validity with measures of ill-being. Both measures contributed over and above existing measures of psychology well-being in predicting a variety of health outcomes, including self-reported and objective health status, physical functioning, and health behaviors. In addition, we showed the relative importance of thriving compared to ill-being for health outcomes and the benefits of assessing individuals' positive functioning beyond ill-being. Potential uses of the new measures are discussed.
Recent decades have seen rapid growth in the science of subjective well-being (SWB), with 14,000 publications a year now broaching the topic. The insights of this growing scholarly literature can be helpful to psychologists working both in research and applied areas. The authors describe 5 sets of recent findings on SWB: (a) the multidimensionality of SWB; (b) circumstances that influence long-term SWB; (c) cultural differences in SWB; (d) the beneficial effects of SWB on health and social relationships; and (e) interventions to increase SWB. In addition, they outline the implications of these findings for the helping professions, organizational psychology, and for researchers. Finally, they describe current developments in national accounts of well-being, which capture the quality of life in societies beyond economic indicators and point toward policies that can enhance societal well-being.
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