Customer Reviews

The Science of Subjective Well-Being

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First off, potential readers need to know that this is basically an academic book and not written for the popular read. People looking for a general book about happiness that discusses ways to increase long-term happiness might want to check out books more for the lay-person, such as "Finding Happiness in a Frustrating World".

Secondly, if you're confused by the term "subjective well-being", feel free to substitute it with the word "happiness." Although a lot of happiness researchers study "subjective well-being" and not "happiness", I can tell you that most researchers use the two interchangeably in their writing for clarity's sake. For those wondering, studying subjective well-being is preferred by researchers because it taps into several aspects of happiness such as life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect.

Having said that, this is just a great book that looks at cutting edge happiness research. As with most academic texts, it is written by not one, but many experts in the field, each contributing a chapter or two to the book- and then the whole thing being edited by one or two prominent experts.

Briefly, the book is divided up into VI sections:

Section I covers some history and philosophy.

Section II discusses how researchers measure subjective well-being.

Section II talks about "the happy person".

Section IV looks at the subjective well-being research in specific areas such as young people, job satisfaction, in other cultures and nations and so on.

Section V discusses the various interventions that have been shown to increase happiness (goal setting, expressing gratitude, etc.)

And lastly, Section VI covers a few of the common myths in the science of happiness and talks about future directions. 7 myths are presented and address some pretty misunderstood issues, such as why you can't understand the causes of well-being by looking at a pie chart of influences (ex. 50% of your happiness is determined by your genetics, 10% by demographics, and so on).

No doubt parts of this book will become obsolete in 10 years or so as new research continues to pour in from the flourishing field of positive psychology. But for now, its just a great up-to-date look at the latest and greatest findings.