Well-being contributing factors


is a multifaceted topic studied in psychology, especially positive psychology. Biologically, well-being is highly influenced by endogenous molecules that impact happiness and euphoria in organisms, often referred to as "well-being related markers". Related concepts are eudaimonia, happiness, flourishing, quality of life, contentment, and meaningful life.

Theories

Central theories are Diener's tripartite model of subjective well-being, Ryff's Six-factor Model of Psychological Well-being, Corey Keyes' work on flourishing, and Seligman's contributions to positive psychology and his theories on authentic happiness and P.E.R.M.A.
Positive psychology is concerned with eudaimonia, "the good life" or flourishing, living according to what holds the greatest value in life – the factors that contribute the most to a well-lived and fulfilling life. While not attempting a strict definition of the good life, positive psychologists agree that one must live a happy, engaged, and meaningful life in order to experience "the good life". Martin Seligman referred to "the good life" as "using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification". According to Christopher Peterson, "eudaimonia trumps hedonism".
Research on positive psychology, well-being, eudaimonia and happiness, and the theories of Diener, Ryff, Keyes and Seligmann cover a broad range of levels and topics, including "the biological, personal, relational, institutional, cultural, and global dimensions of life." Happiness was famously analyzed by Aristotle as being the sole ultimate goal of human existence, meaning that he viewed it the only thing important in its own right, not merely as a means to an end.
The pursuit of happiness predicts both positive emotions and less depressive symptoms. People who prioritize happiness are more psychologically able, all else held equal.

Methodology of study

Well-being measurement

Different ways of measuring well-being reveal different contributing factors. The correlation between two of these, life satisfaction and happiness, in the World Values Survey is only 0.47. These are different, but related concepts which are used interchangeably outside of academia. Typically, life satisfaction, or evaluative wellbeing is measured with Cantril's self-anchoring ladder, a questionnaire where wellbeing is rated on a scale from 1–10. Happiness or hedonic/Affective well-being measurement is measured with the positive and negative affect schedule, a more complex scale.

Limitations

The UK Government's Department of Health compiled a factsheet in 2014, in which it is stated that the key limitations to well-being, quality of life and life satisfaction research are that:
  • There are numerous associations and correlations in the body of evidence, but few causal relationships, since existing longitudinal datasets "do not use consistent wellbeing and predictor measures at different time points";
  • After controlling for mental health status, not many of the found associations are still significant;
  • Subgroup analyses are rare;
  • There are too few studies to conduct meta-analyses;
  • There are too few interventional studies.

    Major factors

For evaluative well-being (life satisfaction)

Mental health is the strongest individual predictor of life satisfaction. Mental illness is associated with poorer well-being. In fact, mental health is the strongest determinant of quality of life at a later age.
Studies have documented the relationship between anxiety and quality of life.
The VOXEU analysis of happiness showed the principal determinants of an adult's life satisfaction to be income, parenting, family break up, mother's mental health and schooling.
The factors that explain life satisfaction roughly map to those factors that explain misery. They are first and foremost diagnosed depression/anxiety, which explains twice as much as the next factor, physical health, that explains just as much variance in subjective well-being between people, as income and whether someone is partnered.
These factors count twice as much as each of whether someone is employed and whether they are a non-criminal, which in turn are 3 times as important as years of education.
Overall, the best predictor of an adult's life satisfaction is their emotional health as a child as reported by the mother and child. It trumps factors like the qualifications that someone gets and their behaviour at 16 as reported by the mother. A child and therefore an adult's emotional health is most affected itself by a mother's mental health, which is just over twice as important as family income.
2/3 as important as family income is parent's involvement, which is 0.1 partial correlation coefficients more important than aggressive parenting, father's unemployment, family conflict and whether the mother worked in the subject's 1st year of life.
Whether the mother worked thereafter has 0 correlation with well-being, however. In terms of non-family factors, the place where someone goes to secondary school matters a fair bit more than observed family background altogether, which in turn is slightly more important than the place where someone went to primary school.

For affective well-being (happiness)

The main determinants of affective well-being, by correlation and effect size are:
  1. Corruption index
  2. Control of corruption
  3. Bureaucratic quality
  4. PPP-adjusted GDP per capita
  5. Economic freedom
  6. Human rights violations
  7. Political and ethnic violence
  8. Civil liberties
  9. Life expectancy at birth
  10. Satisfaction with standard of living

    Biological factors

Gender

Over the last 33 years, a significant decrease in women's happiness leads researchers to believe that men are happier than women. In contrast, a Pew Research Centre survey found that more women are satisfied with their lives than men, overall. Other research has found no gender gap in happiness.
Part of these findings could be due to the way men and women differ in calculating their happiness. Women calculate the positive self-esteem, closeness in their relationships and religion. Men calculate positive self-esteem, active leisure and mental control. Therefore, neither men nor women are at greater risk of being less happy than the other. Earlier in life, women are more likely than men to fulfill their goals, thereby increasing their life satisfaction and overall happiness. However, it is later in life that men fulfill their goals, are more satisfied with their family life and financial situation and, as a result, their overall happiness surpasses that of women. Possible explanations include the unequal division of labor within the household, or that women experience more variance in emotion but are generally happier. Effects of gender on well-being are paradoxical: men report feeling less happy than women, however, women are more susceptible to depression.
A study was conducted by Siamak Khodarahimi to determine the roles of gender and age on positive psychology constructs – psychological hardiness, emotional intelligence, self-efficacy and happiness – among 200 Iranian adolescents and 200 young adults who were questioned through various tests. The study found that the males of the sample showed significantly higher rates in psychological hardiness, emotional intelligence, self-efficacy and happiness than females, regardless of age.

Genetics

Happiness is partly genetically based. Based on twin studies, 50 percent of a given human's happiness level is genetically determined, 10 percent is affected by life circumstances and situation, and a remaining 40 percent of happiness is subject to self-control.
Whether emotions are genetically determined or not was studied by David Lykken and Auke Tellegen. They found that up to 80% of the variance in long-term sense of well-being among Minnesotan twins separated at birth was attributable to heredity. The remaining theoretical 20%, however, still leaves room for significant change in thoughts and behavior from environmental/learned sources that should not be understated, and the interpretation of variance in twin studies is controversial, even among clinical psychologists.
Individual differences in both overall Eudaimonia, identified loosely with self-control, and in the facets of eudaimonia are inheritable. Evidence from one study supports 5 independent genetic mechanisms underlying the Ryff facets of this trait, leading to a genetic construct of eudaimonia in terms of general self-control, and four subsidiary biological mechanisms enabling the psychological capabilities of purpose, agency, growth, and positive social relations.

Neurology

It is generally accepted that happiness is at least in part mediated through dopaminergic, adrenergic and serotonergic metabolism. A correlation has been found between hormone levels and happiness. SSRIs, such as Prozac, are used to adjust the levels of serotonin in the clinically unhappy. Researchers, such as Alexander, have indicated that many peoples usage of narcotics may be the unwitting result of attempts to readjust hormone levels to cope with situations that make them unhappy.
A positive relationship has been found between the volume of gray matter in the right precuneus area of the brain and the subject's subjective happiness score. Meditation based interventions, including mindfulness, have been found to correlate with a significant gray matter increase within the precuneus.

Neuroscience's findings

and brain imaging have shown increasing potential for helping science understand happiness and sadness, as parts of the brain have been identified as having a role in the control of happiness, specifically with regard to research in the field of neurotransmitters. Though it may be impossible to achieve any comprehensive objective measure of happiness, some physiological correlates to happiness can be measured. Stefan Klein, in his book The Science of Happiness, links the dynamics of neurobiological systems to the concepts and findings of positive psychology and social psychology.
Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel and researcher Cynthia Fu described very accurate diagnoses of depression just by looking at fMRI brain scans.
By identifying neural correlates for emotions, scientists may be able to use methods like brain scans to tell us more about the different ways of being "happy". Richard Davidson has conducted research to determine which parts of the brain are involved in positive emotions. He found that the left prefrontal cortex is more activated when we are happy and is also associated with greater ability to recover from negative emotions as well as enhanced ability to suppress negative emotions. Davidson found that people can train themselves to increase activation in this area of their brains. It is thought that our brain can change throughout our lives as a result of our experiences; this is known as neuroplasticity.
The evolutionary perspective offers an alternative approach to understanding happiness and quality of life. Key guiding questions are: What features are included in the brain that allow humans to distinguish between positive and negative states of mind? How do these features improve humans' ability to survive and reproduce? The evolutionary perspective claims that the answers to these questions point towards an understanding of what happiness is about and how to best exploit the capacities of the brain with which humans are endowed. This perspective is presented formally and in detail by the evolutionary biologist Bjørn Grinde in his 2002 book Darwinian Happiness.