Abstract
Research on well-being has grown exponentially in the last 30 years, employing a variety of constructs and operational measures to produce a wealth of empirical research. This has led to a rich and high-impact, yet somewhat fragmented body of work. The target article by Park and colleagues initiates a valuable conversation aimed at converging on a shared conceptual definition of well-being. A rigorous program of further theoretical analysis and new research is needed to identify the boundaries as well as the core of well-being, and to document facets that are both statistically distinct and meaningful. The resulting conceptual clarity and measurement precision will facilitate mechanism-level research on causes and consequences of well-being, providing a strong foundation for scalable interventions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Diener, E., Pressman, S. D., Hunter, J., & Delgadillo-Chase, D. (2017). If, why, and when subjective well-being influences health, and future needed research. Applied Psychology. Health and Well-Being, 9(2), 133–167.
Diener, E., Suh, E. M., Lucas, R. E., & Smith, H. L. (1999). Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress. Psychological Bulletin, 125(2), 276–302.
Ekman, P. (2016). What scientists who study emotion agree about. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(1), 31–34.
Feller, S. C., Castillo, E. G., Greenberg, J. M., Abascal, P., Van Horn, R., Wells, K. B., & University of California, Los Angeles Community Translational Science Team. (2018). Emotional well-being and public health: Proposal for a model national initiative. Public Health Reports, 133(2), 136–141.
Frijters, P., Clark, A. E., Krekel, C., & Layard, R. (2020). A happy choice: Wellbeing as the goal of government. Behavioural Public Policy, 4(2), 126–165.
Gallagher, M. W., Lopez, S. J., & Preacher, K. J. (2009). The hierarchical structure of well-being. Journal of Personality, 77(4), 1025–1050.
Gigerenzer, G. (2017). A theory integration program. Decision, 4(3), 133–145.
Hawkley, L. C., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2010). Loneliness matters: A theoretical and empirical review of consequences and mechanisms. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 40(2), 218–227.
Howell, R. T., Kern, M. L., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2007). Health benefits: Meta-analytically determining the impact of well-being on objective health outcomes. Health Psychology Review, 1(1), 83–136.
Human, L. J., & Mendes, W. B. (2018). Cardiac vagal flexibility and accurate personality impressions: Examining a physiological correlate of the good judge. Journal of Personality, 86(6), 1065–1077.
Kogan, A., Gruber, J., Shallcross, A. J., Ford, B. Q., & Mauss, I. B. (2013). Too much of a good thing? Cardiac vagal tone’s nonlinear relationship with well-being. Emotion, 13(4), 599–604.
Koh, H. K., Blakey, C., & Ochiai, E. (2021). Flourishing after a pandemic: Healthy People 2030. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 27(6), S215–S217.
Mann, F. D., DeYoung, C. G., Tiberius, V., & Krueger, R. F. (2021). Stability and well-being: Associations among the Big Five domains, metatraits, and three kinds of well-being in a large sample. Journal of Personality, 89(4), 720–737.
Skinner, B. F. (1963). Behaviorism at Fifty: The rapid growth of a scientific analysis of behavior calls for a restatement of the philosophy of psychology. Science, 140(3570), 951–958.
Strauss, M. E., & Smith, G. T. (2009). Construct validity: Advances in theory and methodology. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 5, 1–25.
Uchino, B. N. (2009). Understanding the links between social support and physical health: A life-span perspective with emphasis on the separability of perceived and received support. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(3), 236–255.
Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070.
Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20(2), 158–177.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Funding
Not applicable
Conflict of interest
The author declares no competing interests.
Data availability
Not applicable
Code availability
Not applicable
Authors' Contribution
Not applicable
Ethics approval
Not applicable
Consent to participate
Not applicable
Consent for publication
Not applicable
Additional information
Handling Editor: Wendy Berry Mendes
A commentary on target article “Emotional well-being: What it is and why it matters”
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Shiota, M.N. Fulfilling the Promise of Well-Being Science: the Quest for Conceptual and Measurement Precision. Affec Sci 4, 32–35 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-022-00159-w
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-022-00159-w