CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 12,910Psychological Well-being and Life SatisfactionOptimism, Hope, and Well-beingAging and Gerontology Research

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 257 of the 258 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress.

Diener, Ed, Suh, Eunkook M., Lucas, Richard E., Smith, Heidi L.·1999·Psychological Bulletin
DOI 10.1037/0033-2909.125.2.276
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

W. Wilson's (1967) review of the area of subjective well-being (SWB) advanced several conclusions regarding those who report high levels of A number of his conclusions have been overturned: youth and modest aspirations no longer are seen as prerequisites of SWB. E. Diener's (1984) review placed greater emphasis on theories that stressed psychological factors. In the current article, the authors review current evidence for Wilson's conclusions and discuss modern theories of SWB that stress dispositional influences, adaptation, goals, and coping strategies. The next steps in the evolution of the field are to comprehend the interaction of psychological factors with life circumstances in producing SWB, to understand the causal pathways leading to happiness, understand the processes underlying adaptation to events, and develop theories that explain why certain variables differentially influence the different components of SWB (life satisfaction, pleasant affect, and unpleasant affect). In 1967, Warner Wilson presented a broad review of subjective well-being (SWB) research entitled, Correlates of Avowed Happiness. Based on the limited data available at that time, Wilson concluded that the happy person is a young, healthy, welleducated, well-paid, extroverted, optimistic, worry-free, religious, married person with high self-esteem, job morale, modest aspirations, of either sex and of a wide range of intelligence (p. 294). In the three decades since Wilson's review, investigations into SWB have evolved. Although researchers now know a great deal more about the correlates of SWB, they are less interested in simply describing the demographic characteristics that correlate with it. Instead, they focus their effort on understanding the processes that underlie happiness. This trend represents a greater recognition of the central role played by people's goals, coping efforts, and dispositions. In this article, we review research on several major theoretical approaches to well-being and then indicate how these theories clarify the findings on demographic correlates of SWB. Throughout the review we suggest four directions that researchers should pursue in the decades ahead. These are by no means the only questions left to answer, but we believe they are the most interesting issues left to resolve. First, the causal direction of the correlates of happiness must be examined through more sophisticated methodologies. Although the causal priority of demographic factors such as marriage and income is intuitively appealing, it is by no means certain. Second, researchers must focus greater attention on the interaction between internal factors (such as personality traits) and external circumstances. As we shall see, demographic factors have surprisingly small effects on SWB, but these effects may depend on the personalities of those individuals being studied. Thus, future research must take Person X Situation interactions into account. Third, researchers must strive to understand the processes underlying adaptation. Considerable adaptation to both good and bad circumstances often occurs, yet the processes responsible for these effects are poorly understood. Research that examines how habituation, coping strategies, and changing goals influence adaptation will shed much light on the processes responsible for SWB. Finally, theories must be refined to make specific predictions about how input variables differentially influence the components of SWB. In the past, many researchers have treated SWB as a monolithic entity, but it is now clear that there are separable components that exhibit unique patterns of relations with different variables. In each section of this article we discuss progress and opportunities in these four areas.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1037/0033-2909.125.2.276

Cites

257 of 257 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 258 references

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 501–600 of 1,104

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Diener, E., Suh, E. M., Lucas, R. E., & Smith, H. L.
Affiliations
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
ORCID
Venue
Psychological Bulletin
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Published
1999-03
Volume
125
Issue
2
Pages
276-302
ISSN
  • 0033-2909 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-1455
DOI
10.1037/0033-2909.125.2.276
OpenAlex
W3126140319
Cited by
12,910
References
258
Citations by year
2026: 674 · 2025: 730 · 2024: 731 · 2023: 822 · 2022: 769 · 2021: 769 · 2020: 755 · 2019: 652 · 2018: 583 · 2017: 572 · 2016: 580 · 2015: 677 · 2014: 658 · 2013: 617 · 2012: 540
FWCI
143.27
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Psychological Bulletin (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Optimism, Hope, and Well-being
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Aging and Gerontology Research
Keywords
subjective well-being, happiness, life satisfaction, goals, coping strategies, personality traits, person-situation interaction, optimism, self-esteem, income and happiness, aspiration, well-being theory, subjective well-being measurement

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review