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Cited by 1,202

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 34 of the 34 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Most People Are Happy

Diener, Ed, Diener, Carol·1996·Psychological Science

Abstract

Myers and Diener (1995) asked “Who is happy?” but examined the question of who is more and who is less happy In fact, most people report a positive level of subjective well-being (SWB), and say that they are satisfied with domains such as marriage, work, and leisure People in disadvantaged groups on average report positive well-being, and measurement methods in addition to self-report indicate that most people's affect is primarily pleasant Cross-national data suggest that there is a positive level of SWB throughout the world, with the possible exception of very poor societies In 86% of the 43 nations for which nationally representative samples are available the mean SWB response was above neutral Several hypotheses to explain the positive levels of SWB are discussed

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Citations

Cites

Show all 34 references

Research works printed but not linked: 17

  1. Allman A., 1990, Subjective well-being of people with disabilities, Measurement issues
  2. Brandstatter H., 1991, Subjective well-being, An interdisciplinary perspective, 173
  3. 10.1037/0022-3514.54.5.820 · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.54.5.820
  4. Diener E., 1994, Proceedings of the 8th Meeting of the International Society for Research on Emotion, 30
  5. 10.1037/0022-3514.47.3.580 · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.47.3.580 · Paper page
  6. Hellmich N., 1995, USA Today, 4D
  7. Jackson J.S., 1986, Research on the quality of life, 193
  8. Schwarz N., 1991, Subjective well-being. An interdisciplinary perspective, 27
  9. Seidlitz L., 1993, The organization and retrieval of valenced life events by happy and unhappy persons
  10. 10.1037/0022-3514.64.4.654 · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.64.4.654
  11. Silver R.L., 1982, Coping with an undesirable life event. A study of early reactions to physical disability
  12. Sophocles, 1959, The complete Greek tragedies
  13. 10.1037/0022-3514.59.2.291 · DOI · Paper page
  14. Tiger L., 1979, Optimism. The biology of hope
  15. Veenhoven R., 1993, Happiness in nations
  16. 10.1111/j.1469-8749.1983.tb13822.x · doi:10.1111/j.1469-8749.1983.tb13822.x
  17. 10.1037/0021-9010.76.5.664 · doi:10.1037/0021-9010.76.5.664 · Paper page

Cited by

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Metadata

Authors
Diener, E., & Diener, C.
Venue
Psychological Science
Published
1996-05
Volume
7
Issue
3
Pages
181-185
ISSN
  • 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
  • 1467-9280
OpenAlex
W2138490691
Cited by
1,202
References
34
FWCI
26.84
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Most People Are Happy. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00354.x
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Diener, E., & Diener, C. (1996). Most People Are Happy. Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00354.x

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.