Culture and Subjective Well-Being (Well Being and Quality of Life) (Hardcover)

~ (Editor), Eunkook M. Suh (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"this volume marks an important step..."
— Neil Levy, Metapsychology

Product Description

The question of what constitutes the good life has been pondered for millennia. Yet only in the last decades has the study of well-being become a scientific endeavor. This book is based on the idea that we can empirically study quality of life and make cross-society comparisons of subjective well-being (SWB). A potential problem in studying SWB across societies is that of cultural relativism: if societies have different values, the members of those societies will use different criteria in evaluating the success of their society. By examining, however, such aspects of SWB as whether people believe they are living correctly, whether they enjoy their lives, and whether others important to them believe they are living well, SWB can represent the degree to which people in a society are achieving the values they hold dear. The contributors analyze SWB in relation to money, age, gender, democracy, and other factors. Among the interesting findings is that although wealthy nations are on average happier than poor ones, people do not get happier as a wealthy nation grows wealthier.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 367 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (September 18, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262041820
• ISBN-13: 978-0262041829
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,015,427 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Toward a new discipline of psychology: Hedonic psychology, February 5, 2001

By	Unsal Yetim - See all my reviews

Ý think subjective well-being is the most important problem of individuals and societies. Nowadays, people are more expressive for shaping their own life. Besides these improvement, cultures are interacting themselves and the definete features of some cultures become the common elements of whole societies. For example outonomy in individualistic societies is found as a important value of social life by collectivistic societies. Similarly the social support and relatedness in collectivistic societies are being given high priorities by individualistic societies. As a result Ý found this book is very valuable for academicians and people.

3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Go buy it!, August 4, 2001

By	Royce A. Hernandez "earnest_richmond" (Quezon City, NCR Philippines) - See all my reviews

The book is very informative and helpful to researchers who are into SWB and the like.