Well-being
Well-being is what is ultimately good for a person. Also called "welfare" and "quality of life", it is a measure of how well life is going for someone. It is a central goal of many individual and societal endeavors.
Subjective well-being refers to how a person feels about and evaluates their life. Objective well-being encompasses factors that can be assessed from an external perspective, such as health, income, and security. Individual well-being concerns the quality of life of a particular person, whereas community well-being measures how well a group of people functions and thrives. Various types of well-being are categorized based on the domain of life to which they belong, such as physical, psychological, emotional, social, and economic well-being.
Theories of well-being aim to identify the essential features of well-being. Hedonism argues that the balance of pleasure over pain is the only factor. Desire theories assert that the satisfaction of desires is the sole source of well-being. According to objective list theories, a combination of diverse elements is responsible. Often-discussed contributing factors include feelings, emotions, life satisfaction, achievement, finding meaning, interpersonal relationships, and health.
Well-being is relevant to many fields of inquiry. Positive psychology studies the factors and conditions of optimal human functioning. Philosophy examines the nature and theoretical foundations of well-being and its role as a goal of human conduct. Other related disciplines include economics, sociology, anthropology, medicine, education, politics, and religion. Even though the philosophical study of well-being dates back millennia, research in the empirical sciences has only intensified since the second half of the 20th century.
Definition
Well-being is what is ultimately good for a person or in their self-interest. It is a measure of how well a person's life is going for them. In the broadest sense, the term covers the whole spectrum of quality of life as the balance of all positive and negative things in a person's life. More narrowly, well-being refers specifically to positive degrees, while ill-being denotes negative degrees. The precise definition of well-being is disputed and varies across disciplines and cultures. Some characterizations focus on a single element, like happiness, while others include multiple components, such as good physical and mental health, positive emotions, an engaged and flourishing lifestyle, inner harmony, and positive interpersonal relationships. Some definitions also include material conditions, such as income, safety, and low pollution. Although discussions of well-being usually focus on humans, the term also covers other animals in its widest sense.As a person-specific value, well-being contrasts with impersonal value or value simpliciter. A thing has impersonal value if it is good for the world at large by making it a better place, without being restricted to one specific person. Well-being, by contrast, is what is good for or relative to someone. While personal and impersonal values often align, they can diverge, for example, if an individual seeks a personal gain that is bad from a wider perspective. The exact relation between these two types of value is disputed. According to one proposal, impersonal value is the sum of all personal values.
Well-being is typically understood as an intrinsic or final value, meaning that it is good in itself, independent of external factors. Things with instrumental value, by contrast, are only good as means leading to other good things, like the value of money. Well-being is further distinguished from moral, religious, and aesthetic values. For instance, donating money to a charity may be morally good, even if it does not increase the donor's well-being.
The terms quality of life, good life, welfare, prudential value, personal good, and individual utility are often used as synonyms of well-being. Similarly, the words pleasure, life satisfaction, and happiness are employed in overlapping ways with well-being, although their precise meanings differ in technical contexts like philosophy and psychology. Pleasure refers to individual feelings about what is attractive. Life satisfaction is a positive attitude a person has towards their life as a whole. Happiness is sometimes identified with life satisfaction or understood as a positive balance of pleasure over pain.
Well-being is a crucial goal of many human endeavors, both on individual and societal levels. Various attitudes and emotions are directed at well-being, like caring for someone or experiencing pity, envy, and ill will. Well-being is the state that egoists seek for themselves and altruists aim to increase for others. Many disciplines examine or are guided by considerations of well-being, including ethics, psychology, sociology, economics, education, public policy, law, and medicine. The word well-being comes from the Italian term wikt:benessere. It entered the English language in the 16th century.
Types
Types of well-being can be categorized by how they are measured, who they belong to, and which domain of life they affect. Some researchers limit their inquiry to one specific type while others investigate the interrelations between different types.Subjective and objective well-being
is the measure of how people feel about and evaluate their own lives. It encompasses both affective and cognitive components. A person has high affective well-being if they have many pleasant experiences and few unpleasant ones. High cognitive well-being occurs when a person evaluates their life positively, making a global assessment that things are going well.Subjective well-being is measured using questionnaires in which individuals report the quality of their experiences. Single-item measures provide the most simple approach, focusing on a single scale, like asking participants to rate how content they are with their lives on a scale from 1 to 10. Multi-item scales include questions for distinct aspects of subjective well-being, with the advantage of reducing the influence of the wording of any single question. They have separate questions for domains such as the presence of positive affects, the absence of negative affects, and overall life satisfaction, which they combine into a comprehensive index.
Objective well-being encompasses objective factors indicating that a person's life is going well. Unlike subjective well-being, these factors can be assessed and quantified from an external perspective. They include personal, social, economic, and environmental aspects such as health, level of education, income, housing, amount of leisure time, and security.
By relying on objective data, measures of objective well-being are less affected by cultural and personal biases influencing self-reports. However, it is not universally accepted that objective well-being is a form of well-being in the strictest sense. This doubt is based on the idea that well-being is essentially a subjective phenomenon tied to a person's experience. According to this view, objective factors influence and indicate well-being but are not themselves forms of well-being.
Some inquiries focus only on subjective or objective well-being. Others combine both perspectives in their investigation, including questions about how the two are related. It is possible for subjective and objective well-being to diverge. For example, a person may feel subjectively happy despite scoring low on objective measures, like low income and frail health.
Individual and community well-being
Individual well-being concerns the quality of life of a particular person and is the main focus of disciplines like psychology and some schools of philosophy. Community well-being applies the concept of well-being to a group of people. It encompasses a broad range of economic, social, environmental, and cultural aspects that influence how the community functions and thrives while ensuring that the community's needs are fulfilled.One view sees community well-being as the sum of individual well-beings while others emphasize that the relation between the two is more complex. Individual and community well-being often support each other. For instance, high individual well-being can lead a person to contribute more to their community, and a well-functioning community can make its members happy. However, there can also be tensions, like when changes necessary for community well-being conflict with the individual well-being of certain members.
Closely related to community well-being are categories of well-being defined for specific demographic groups. For instance, child well-being emphasizes health, education, material security, and social development in a loving and nurturing environment. Other examples include women's, elderly, student, and employee well-being.
Other types
Various types of well-being are categorized based on the domain of life to which they belong. Physical well-being concerns the domain of the body as the capacity to engage in physical activities and the absence of illness and bodily pain. It includes general health considerations and the ability to perform one's social role without being hindered by physical limitations.Psychological well-being, also called mental health, is a state of mind characterized by internal balance. It involves the absence or successful management of disorders and disturbances, together with the abilities to cope with challenging situations, maintain positive relationships, and cultivate personal growth. It is closely linked to intellectual, spiritual, and emotional well-being. Intellectual well-being encompasses well-functioning cognitive abilities and traits, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and curiosity. Spiritual well-being is a state in which people find purpose in life and have inner peace, self-confidence, and a sense of identity. Emotional well-being involves the capacities to comprehend, articulate, and regulate emotions, together with an overall positive mood.
Hedonic well-being refers to a life rich in pleasurable experiences and devoid of suffering. Eudaimonic well-being is a form of personal fulfillment in which an individual flourishes by striving for excellence and actualizing their innate potentials.
Social well-being concerns the quality and number of interpersonal connections, including how well a person functions in their social environment and the level of social support available to them. Economic well-being refers to the economic situation of a person, such as the resources and skills they have in regard to income, job opportunities, and financial stability. Further types of well-being include financial, cultural, political, and environmental well-being.