Cited by 444Psychological Well-being and Life SatisfactionNeural and Behavioral Psychology StudiesNeurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior

A computational and neural model of momentary subjective well-being

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Rutledge, Robb B., Skandali, Nikolina, Dayan, Peter, Dolan, Raymond J.·2014·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Abstract

The subjective well-being or happiness of individuals is an important metric for societies. Although happiness is influenced by life circumstances and population demographics such as wealth, we know little about how the cumulative influence of daily life events are aggregated into subjective feelings. Using computational modeling, we show that emotional reactivity in the form of momentary happiness in response to outcomes of a probabilistic reward task is explained not by current task earnings, but by the combined influence of recent reward expectations and prediction errors arising from those expectations. The robustness of this account was evident in a large-scale replication involving 18,420 participants. Using functional MRI, we show that the very same influences account for task-dependent striatal activity in a manner akin to the influences underpinning changes in happiness.

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Crossref · 10.1073/pnas.1407535111

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  • The single-item measure of momentary affective well-being has high convergent validity, as evidenced by strong correlations with positive and negative affect.

    “Adolescents’ momentary affective well-being was defined as their current feelings of happiness, a commonly used question to measure well-being21, 22, which has high convergent validity, as evidenced by the strong correlations with the presence of positive affect and absence of negative affect.”

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Authors
Rutledge, R. B., Skandali, N., Dayan, P., & Dolan, R. J.
Affiliations
  • Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging (GB)
  • Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit (GB)
Venue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Published
2014-08-04
Volume
111
Issue
33
Pages
12252-12257
ISSN
  • 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
  • 1091-6490
OpenAlex
W1994312033
Cited by
444
References
57
Citations by year
2026: 36 · 2025: 43 · 2024: 46 · 2023: 54 · 2022: 51 · 2021: 45 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 37 · 2018: 25 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 32 · 2015: 20 · 2014: 3
FWCI
36.10
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
  • Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
Funders
Wellcome Trust (091593, 078865/Z/05/Z, 095844/Z/11/Z, 098362, 098362/Z/12/Z, 091593/Z/10/Z, 095844, 101252/Z/13/Z)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
Keywords
subjective well-being, emotional reactivity, reward anticipation, prediction error, probabilistic reward task, daily life events, replication
MeSH terms
Adult, Emotions, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Models, Psychological, Neurons, Probability, Reward, Computational Biology, Young Adult

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