Everyday Understandings of Happiness, Good Life, and Satisfaction: Three Different Facets of Well-being

Abstract

The need for increasing conceptual clarity within well-being research has been stressed by social scientists as well as policymakers and international organizations. The present study aimed to identify and compare conceptual structures of the everyday terms happiness, a good life, and satisfaction, based on a semi-stratified sample of Norwegian adults. Findings indicate that these terms share certain conceptual similarities, as used in everyday Norwegian language. For each term, it was possible to identify an underlying structure of conceptual configuration, articulated into external life domain components and internal, psychological dimensions. Relationship themes were prominent among the external domains for all three terms. Findings indicated that in Norwegian participants' understanding, happiness and good life were highly inclusive of external life domains, whereas satisfaction primarily evoked associations to internal, psychological states and experiences. Latent class analyses highlighted differences among socio-demographic groups as concerns the degree to which different conceptualizations of the three terms were endorsed. Findings raise questions about the practice, relatively common in the applied social sciences, of treating happiness, good life and satisfaction as highly similar concepts, and the assumption that each term carries the same meaning for everyone. Response to Reviewers:

The Impact of Pro-environmental Preference on Consumers’ Perceived Well-being: The Mediating Role of Self-Determination Need Satisfaction

“…A large number of studies view both concepts of "happiness" and "well-being" as interchangeable without clear distinction. Strictly speaking, wellbeing is only related to the affective dimension, while happiness is related to both dimensions of affect and the evaluation [27]. According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's paradigm [28], a most important goal of positive psychology is to explore what behaviors lead to well-being.…”

Can I Sustain My Happiness? A Review, Critique and Research Agenda for Economics of Happiness

“…Luhmann et al [107] asserted the need for a more enhanced definition, theoretical foundation, and operationalization of happiness. Correspondingly, Carlquist et al [109] and Judge et al [18] opined that many social scientists and economists have highlighted on the need for conceptual clarity in well-being research, which can then provide significant insights for scientific developments and to formulate appropriate policies and programs. Additionally, from the number of papers focusing on the concepts of happiness or subjective well-being, there is a need for a well-designed and heightened definition of happiness…”

Using human-values as a guide for understanding worthy design directions in augmented reality

“…Attention has been drawn to the relative lack in studies focusing specifically on user acceptance, user expectations and user experience in this area [11,12,13,14]. Furthermore, when considering user studies, studies have mostly focused on specific devices and applications, to be used in particular use contexts, often with standard user groups (e.g., university student participants, ages [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. Many of these studies examine task performance, cognition, perception and other usability issues [12,15,16].…”

“…Most importantly, through especially focusing on the fit for life component, we isolated the life values of participants. These life values are seen as a means for determining indicators for predicting quality of life as participants perceive it [22]. Value in itself has been defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "[w]orth or quality as measured by a standard of equivalence [23].…”

“…That is, the education-based related scenario Talking Friend received an average rating of 4,4 (standard differentiation 0,9) out of 5, meaning that this was the most preferred out of the application concepts. Labels or the application of information overlaid onto the environment, specifically landmarks and infrastructural features, received an average of 4,06 (standard deviation 1,22). X-Ray Tourist received an average of 3,4 (standard deviation 1,37) and X-ray Wall received an average of 3,22 (standard deviation 1,54).…”