Individualisation and Wll-Being

What is well-being:
Well-being can be understood as how people feel and how they function,
both on a personal and a social level, and how they evaluate their lives
as a whole. To break this down, how people feel refers to emotions such
as happiness or anxiety. How people function refers to things such as
their sense of competence or their sense of being connected to those
around them. How people evaluate their life as a whole is captured in
their satisfaction with their lives, or how they rate their lives in
comparison with the best possible life.
One can think of someone as having high well-being if they function well,
have positive feelings day-to-day and overall and think their lives are
going well; we call this flourishing. Similarly, you can think of someone
as having low well-being if they do not function well and have negative
feelings day-to-day and overall.
It is worth pointing out that well-being is not exactly the same as
happiness. Happiness often refers to how people are feeling moment-tomoment and does not always tell us about how they evaluate their lives
as a whole (although it can do), or about how they function in the world.
Well-being is a much broader concept than moment-to-moment
happiness: it includes happiness but also other things such as how
satisfied people are with their lives as a whole, and things such as
autonomy (having a sense of control over your life), purpose (having a
sense of purpose in life).
In fact, the field has witnessed the formation of two relatively distinct, yet
overlapping, perspectives and paradigms. The first of these can be
broadly labelled hedonism (Kahneman et al 1999) and reflects the view

that wellbeing consists of pleasure or happiness. Psychologists who have

adopted the hedonic view have tended to focus on a broad conception of
hedonism that includes the preferences and pleasures of the mind as well
as the body (Kubovy 1999). Indeed, the predominant view among
hedonic psychologists is that well-being consists of subjective happiness
and concerns the experience of pleasure versus displeasure broadly
construed to include all judgments about the good/bad elements of life.
Happiness is thus not reducible to physical hedonism, for it can be derived
from attainment of goals or valued outcomes in varied realms (Diener et
al 1998).
Although there are many ways to evaluate the pleasure/pain continuum in
human experience, most research within the new hedonic psychology has
used assessment of subjective well-being (SWB) (Diener & Lucas 1999).
SWB consists of three components: life satisfaction, the presence of
positive mood, and the absence of negative mood, together often
summarized as happiness.
The second view, both as ancient and as current as the hedonic view, is
that well-being consists of more than just happiness. It lies instead in the
actualization

of

human

potentials.

This

view

has

been

called

eudaimonism (Waterman 1993), conveying the belief that well-being

consists of fulfilling or realizing ones daimon or true nature.

The term

eudaimonia is valuable because it refers to well-being as distinct from

happiness per se. Eudaimonic theories maintain that not all desiresnot
all outcomes that a person might valuewould yield well-being when
achieved. Even though they are pleasure producing, some outcomes are
not good for people and would not promote wellness. Thus, from the
eudaimonic perspective, subjective happiness cannot be equated with
well-being.

Waterman (1993) stated that, whereas happiness is hedonically defined,

the eudaimonic conception of well-being calls upon people to live in
accordance with their daimon, or true self. He suggested that eudaimonia
occurs when peoples life activities are most congruent or meshing with
deeply held values and are holistically or fully engaged. Under such
circumstances people would feel intensely alive and authentic, existing as
who they really area state Waterman labelled personal expressiveness
(PE).
Ryff & Singer (1998, 2000) have explored the question of well-being in
the context of developing a lifespan theory of human flourishing. Also
drawing from Aristotle, they describe well-being not simply as the
attaining of pleasure, but as the striving for perfection that represents
the realization of ones true potential (Ryff 1995, p. 100). Ryff & Keyes
(1995) thus spoke of psychological well-being (PWB) as distinct from SWB
and presented a multidimensional approach to the measurement of PWB
that taps six distinct aspects of human actualization: autonomy, personal
growth, self-acceptance, life purpose, mastery, and positive relatedness.
These six constructs define PWB both theoretically and operationally and
they specify what promotes emotional and physical health (Ryff & Singer
1998). They have presented evidence, for example, that eudaimonic
living, as represented by PWB, can influence specific physiological
systems relating to immunological functioning and health promotion.
The two traditionshedonism and eudaimonism (corresponding to them
SWB and PWB respectively) are founded on distinct views of human
nature and of what constitutes a good society. Accordingly, they ask
different questions concerning how developmental and social processes
relate to well-being, and they implicitly or explicitly prescribe different
approaches to the enterprise of living. Regardless of what is said about
this debate, SWB has reigned as the primary index of well-being during

the past decade and a half, and much of the research reviewed herein
employs SWB as a major outcome variable.
Things can be still gauged in a different perspective. Here, we look at
three main types of well-being: economic, social and subjective or
personal. Economic well-being refers to the amount of material or
financial resources available for individuals or societies to meet their
needs. Economic well-being is typically measured by the gross domestic
product (GDP) or an individuals disposable income. Social well-being, or
social welfare, refers to the redistribution of economic resources that
occurs with the development of the welfare state, which aims to provide
goods, services or income based on social criteria and not market criteria.
In other words, these resources are obtained or provided below the
market price provided that certain social conditions are met.
While these two conceptions of well-being describe objective realities that
societies control to help individuals achieve their life goals, personal or
subjective well-being refers to the perceptions people have of their
personal situation, not only their satisfaction with the resources they
have, but also regarding other dimensions, such as how they feel about
their goals and achievements.
As we have already seen above, subjective well-being (SWB) has no
single definition; on the contrary, its conceptualization depends on
disciplinary approaches and theories. According to Diener (cited by
Garcia, 2002), there are three main conceptualizations. On the one hand
we can conceive of well-being as satisfaction with ones life, referring to
overall satisfaction with life as well as to an assessment of satisfaction in
different spheres in ones life (income, work, family, etc.). A second
conception of well-being refers to a balance in which positive feelings
outweigh the negative. The third conception is moral or religious in nature
and refers to the attainment of happiness through living life according to

a particular set of values. Following Bohnke (2005), we consider

subjective well-being as it is manifested in satisfaction with life and in
feelings of happiness. While satisfaction with life consists of an individuals
cognitive evaluation of his/her life, happiness refers to a persons feelings
(Diener cit. by Garcia, 2002).