Well-being

Well-being is what is ultimately good for a person. Also called prudential value and welfare, it is a measure of how good a person's life is going for them, both in a positive and a negative sense.^[1] In its positive sense, well-being is sometimes contrasted with ill-being as its opposite.^[2] The term "subjective well-being" denotes how people experience and evaluate their lives, usually measured in relation to self-reported well-being obtained through questionnaires.^[3][4][5]

Well-being is what is ultimately good for a person or in their self-interest. It is a measure of how well a person's life is going for them.^[6] In the broadest sense, the term covers the whole spektrum of quality of life as the balance of all positive and negative things in a person's life. More narrowly, well-being refers specifically to positive degrees, while ill-being denotes negative degrees.^[7] Individual factors contributing to overall well-being are either benefits, if they increase it, or harms, if they decrease it.^[8]

As a person-specific^[a] value, well-being contrasts with impersonal value or value simpliciter. A thing has impersonal value if it is good for the world at large by making it a better place, without being restricted to one specific person. Well-being, by contrast, is what is good for or relative to someone.^[10] While personal and impersonal value often align, they can diverge, for example, if an individual seeks a personal gain that is bad from a wider perspective. The exact relation between these two types of value is disputed. According to one proposal, impersonal value is the sum of all personal values.^[11]

Well-being is typically understood as an intrinsic or final value, meaning that it is good in itself, independent of external factors. Things with instrumental value, by contrast, are only good as means leading to other good things, like the value of money.^[12] Well-being is further distinguished from moral, religious, and aesthetic values. For instance, donating money to a charity may be morally good, even if it does not increase the donor's well-being.^[13]

The terms quality of life, good life, welfare, prudential value, personal good, and individual utility are often used interchangably with well-being.^[14] Similarly, the words pleasure and happiness are employed in overlapping ways with well-being, although their precise meanings differ in technical contexts like philosophy and psychology. Pleasure and its opposite, pain, are experiences about what is attractive and aversive. They are sometimes limited to bodily sensations, but in their widest sense, they encompass any experience that feels good or bad.^[15] One perspective characterizes happiness as the balance of pleasure over pain.^[16] A different view understands happiness as a positive attitude a person has towards their life as a whole, termed life satisfaction.^[17] Pleasure, pain, and happiness are central to the subjective side of well-being, and some philosophers assert that they are the only components of well-being.^[18]

Well-being is a crucial goal of many human endeavors, both on individual and societal levels.^[19] Various attitudes and emotions are directed at well-being, like caring for someone or experiencing pity, envy, and ill will. Well-being is the state that egoists seek for themselves and altruists aim to increase for others.^[20] Many disciplines examine or are guided by considerations of well-being, including psychology, ethics, economics, medicine, and law.^[21]

The word well-being comes from the Italian term benessere. It entered the English language in the 16th century.^[22]

Different forms of well-being, such as mental, physical, economic, or emotional^[23] are often closely interlinked. For example, improved physical well-being (e.g., by reducing or ceasing an addiction) is associated with improved emotional well-being.^[24] And better economic well-being (e.g., possessing more wealth) tends to be associated with better emotional well-being even in adverse situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic.^[25][26] Well-being plays a central role in ethics since what a person ought to do depends, at least to some degree, on what would make someone's life get better or worse.^[23] According to welfarism, there are no other values besides well-being.^[1]

Theories of well-being try to determine what is essential to all forms of well-being. Hedonistic theories equate well-being with the balance of pleasure over pain. Desire theories hold that well-being consists in desire-satisfaction: the higher the number of satisfied desires, the higher the well-being. Objective list theories state that a person's well-being depends on a list of factors that may include both subjective and objective elements.^[27][28]

Well-being is also scientifically dependent on endogenous molecules that impact feelings of happiness such as dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin, cortisol and more^[29][30] "Well-being related markers" or "Well-being bio markers"^[31] play an important role in the regulation of an organism's metabolism, and when not working in proper order can lead to malfunction.^[30]

Well-being is the central subject of positive psychology, which aims to discover the factors that contribute to human well-being.^[32] Martin Seligman, for example, suggests that these factors consist in having positive emotions, being engaged in an activity, having good relationships with other people, finding meaning in one's life and a sense of accomplishment in the pursuit of one's goals.^[33]

Types of well-being can be categorized by how they are measured, who they belong to, and which domain of life they affect. Some researchers limit their inquiry to one specific type while others investigate the interrelations between different types.^[34]

Subjective well-being is the measure of how people feel about and evaluate their own lives. It encompasses both affective and cognitive components. A person has high affective well-being if they have many pleasant experiences and few unpleasant ones. High cognitive well-being occurs when a person evaluate their life positively, making a global assessment that things are going well.^[35]

Subjective well-being is measured using questionnaires in which individuals report the quality of their experiences. Single-item measures provide the most simple approach, focusing on a single scale, like asking participants to rate how content they are with their lives on a scale from 1 to 10. Multi-item scales include questions for distinct aspects of subjective well-being, with the advantage of reducing the influence of the wording of any single question. They have separate questions for domains such as the presence of positive affects, the absence of negative affects, and overall life satisfaction, which they combine into a comprehensive index.^[36]

Objective well-being encompasses objective factors that a person's life is going well. Unlike subjective well-being, these factors can be assessed and quantified from an external perspective. They include personal, social, economic, and environmental aspects such as health, education, income, housing, leisure, and security.^[37]

By relying on objective data, measures of objective well-being are less affected by cultural and personal biases influencing self-reports.^[38] However, it is not universally accepted that objective well-being is a form of well-being in the strictest sense. This doubt is based on the idea that well-being is essentially a subjective phenomenon tied to a person's experience. According to this view, objective factors influence and indicate well-being but are not themselves forms of well-being.^[39]

Some researchers focus only on subjective or objective well-being. Others combine both perspectives in their inquiry, including questions about how the two are related. It is possible for subjective and objective well-being to diverge. For example, a person may feel subjectively happy despite scoring low on objective measures, like low income and frail health.^[40]

Individual well-being concerns the quality of life of a particular person and is the main focus of disciplines like psychology and philosophy. Community well-being applies the concept of well-being to the state of a group of people. It encompasses a broad range of economic, social, environmental, and cultural aspects that influence how the community functions and thrives while ensuring that the community's needs are fulfilled.^[41]

One view sees community well-being as the sum of individual well-beings while others emphasize that the relation between the two is more complex. Individual and community well-being often support each other. For instance, high subjective well-being can lead a person to contribute more to their community, and a well-functioning community can make its members happy. However, there can also be tensions, like when changes necessary for community well-being conflict with the individual well-being of certain members.^[42]

Closely related to community well-being are categories of well-being defined for specific demographic groups. For instance, child well-being emphasizes health, education, material security, and social development in a loving and nurturing environment. Other examples include women’s, elderly, student, and employee well-being.^[43]

Various types of well-being are categorized based on the domain of life to which they belong. Physical well-being concerns the domain of the body as the capacity to engage in physical activities and the absence of illness and bodily pain. It includes general health considerations and the ability to perform one's social role without being hindered by physical limitations.^[44]

Psychological well-being, also called mental health, is a state of mind characterized by internal balance.^[b] It involves the absence of disorders and disturbances, together with the abilities to cope with challenging situations, maintain positive relationships, and cultivate personal growth.^[46] It is closely linked to intellectual, spiritual, and emotional well-being. Intellectual well-being encompasses well-functioning cognitive abilities and traits, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and curiosity.^[47] Spiritual well-being is a state in which people find purpose in life and have inner peace, self-confidence, and a sense of identity.^[48] Emotional well-being involves the capacities to comprehend, articulate, and regulate emotions, together with an overall positive mood.^[49][c]

Hedonic well-being refers to a life rich in pleasurable experiences and devoid of suffering. Eudamonic well-being is a form of personal fulfillment in which an individual flourishes by striving for excellence and actualizing their innate potentials.^[51]

Social well-being concerns the quality and number of interpersonal connections, including how well a person functions in their social environment and the level of social support available to them.^[52] Economic well-being refers to the economic situation of a person, such as the resources and skills they have in regard to income, job opportunities, and financial stability.^[53] Further types of well-being include financial, cultural, political, and environmental well-being.^[54]

The well-being of a person is what is good for the person.^[55] Theories of well-being try to determine which features of a state are responsible for this state contributing to the person's well-being. Theories of well-being are often classified into hedonistic theories, desire theories, and objective list theories.^[1][56][57] Hedonistic theories and desire theories are subjective theories. According to them, the degree of well-being of a person depends on the subjective mental states and attitudes of this person. Objective list theories, on the other hand, allow that things can benefit a person independent of that person's subjective attitudes towards these things.^[27][58]

For hedonistic theories, the relevant mental states are experiences of pleasure and pain. One example of such an account can be found in Jeremy Bentham's works, where it is suggested that the value of experiences only depends on their duration and the intensity of pleasure or pain present in them.^[59] Various counterexamples have been formulated against this view. They usually involve cases where lower aggregate pleasure are intuitively preferable, for example, that the intellectual or aesthetic pleasures are superior to sensory pleasures^[60] or that it would be unwise to enter Robert Nozick's experience machine.^[61] These counter-examples are not necessarily conclusive, yet the proponent of hedonistic theories faces the challenge of explaining why common-sense misleads us in the problematic cases.^{[citation needed]}

Desire theories can avoid some of the problems of hedonistic theories by holding that well-being consists in desire-satisfaction: the higher the number of satisfied desires, the higher the well-being. One problem for some versions of desire theory is that not all desires are good: some desires may even have terrible consequences for the agent. Desire theorists have tried to avoid this objection by holding that what matters are not actual desires but the desires the agent would have if she was fully informed.^[1] Thus, desire theories can incorporate what is plausible about subjective theories of well-being with the lack of personal bias of objective list theories.

Objective list theories state that a person's well-being depends on many different basic objective goods. These goods often include subjective factors like a pleasure-pain-balance or desire-satisfaction besides factors that are independent of the subject's attitudes, like friendship or having virtues.^[56] Objective list theories face the problem of explaining how subject-independent factors can determine a person's well-being even if this person does not care about these factors.^[1][57] Another objection concerns the selection of the specific factors included. Different theorists have provided very different combinations of basic objective goods. These groupings seem to constitute arbitrary selections unless a clear criterion could be provided why all and only the items within their selections are relevant factors.^{[citation needed]}

Three subdisciplines in psychology are critical for the study of psychological well-being:^[62]

1. Developmental psychology, in which psychological well-being may be analyzed in terms of a pattern of growth across the lifespan.
2. Personality psychology, in which it is possible to apply Maslow's concept of self-actualization, Rogers' concept of the fully functioning person, Jung's concept of individuation, and Allport's concept of maturity to account for psychological well-being.^[63]
3. Clinical psychology, in which well-being consists of biological, psychological and social needs being met.

According to Corey Keyes' five-component model, social well-being is constituted by the following factors:

1. social integration,
2. social contribution,
3. social coherence,
4. social actualization,
5. social acceptance.^[64]

There are two approaches typically taken to understand psychological well-being:

1. Distinguishing positive and negative effects and defining optimal psychological well-being and happiness as a balance between the two.^[65]
2. Emphasizes life satisfaction as the key indicator of psychological well-being.^[63]

According to Guttman and Levy (1982) well-being is "...a special case of attitude".^[66] This approach serves two purposes in the study of well-being: "developing and testing a [systematic] theory for the structure of [interrelationships] among varieties of well-being, and integration of well-being theory with the ongoing^[when?] cumulative theory ^{[clarification needed]} development in the fields of attitude of related research".^[66]

Many different models have been developed.^[67]

Philosopher Michael Bishop developed a causal network account of well-being in The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-being.^[68] The causal network account holds that well-being is the product of many factors—feelings, beliefs, motivations, habits, resources, etc.—that are causally related in ways that explain increases in well-being or ill-being. More recently causal network theories of ill-being have been applied to depression^[69] and digital technology.^[70] Network approaches have also been applied to mental health more generally.^[71]

Diener's tripartite model of subjective well-being is one of the most comprehensive models of well-being in psychology. It was synthesized by Diener in 1984, positing "three distinct but often related components of wellbeing: frequent positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and cognitive evaluations such as life satisfaction".^[72]

Cognitive, affective and contextual factors contribute to subjective well-being.^[73] According to Diener and Suh, subjective well-being is "...based on the idea that how each person thinks and feels about his or her life is important".^[74]

Carol Ryff's multidimensional model of psychological well-being has philosophical foundation based on Aristotle's eudaimonia.^[5] It postulates six factors which are key for well-being with smaller subsections for each minor school of thought:^{[web 1]}

1. Self-acceptance
2. Personal growth
3. Purpose in life
4. Environmental mastery
5. Autonomy
6. Positive relations with others

According to Corey Keyes, who collaborated with Carol Ryff, mental well-being has three components, namely emotional or subjective well-being (also called hedonic well-being),^[75] psychological well-being, and social well-being (together also called eudaimonic well-being).^[76] Emotional well-being concerns subjective aspects of well-being, in concreto, feeling well, whereas psychological and social well-being concerns skills, abilities, and psychological and social functioning.^[77]

Keyes' model of mental well-being has received extensive empirical support across cultures.^{[77][75][78][79]}

Well-being is a central concept in positive psychology. Positive psychology is concerned with eudaimonia, "the good life", reflection about what holds the greatest value in life – the factors that contribute the most to a well-lived and fulfilling life. While not attempting a strict definition of the good life, positive psychologists agree that one must live a happy, engaged, and meaningful life in order to experience "the good life". Martin Seligman referred to "the good life" as "using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification".^[80]

In Flourish (2011) Seligman argued that "meaningful life" can be considered as five different categories. The resulting acronym is PERMA: Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and purpose, and Accomplishments. It is a mnemonic for the five elements of Martin Seligman's well-being theory:^[82][83]

• Positive emotions include a wide range of feelings, not just happiness and joy.^[84] Included are emotions like excitement, satisfaction, pride and awe, amongst others. These emotions are frequently seen as connected to positive outcomes, such as longer life and healthier social relationships.^[85]
• Engagement refers to involvement in activities that draws and builds upon one's interests. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains true engagement as flow, a feeling of intensity that leads to a sense of ecstasy and clarity.^[86] The task being done needs to call upon higher skill and be a bit difficult and challenging yet still possible. Engagement involves passion for and concentration on the task at hand and is assessed subjectively as to whether the person engaged was completely absorbed, losing self-consciousness.^[84]
• Relationships are all important in fueling positive emotions, whether they are work-related, familial, romantic, or platonic. As Christopher Peterson puts it simply, "Other people matter."^[87] Humans receive, share, and spread positivity to others through relationships. They are important not only in bad times, but good times as well. In fact, relationships can be strengthened by reacting to one another positively. It is typical that most positive things take place in the presence of other people.^[88][89]
• Meaning is also known as purpose, and prompts the question of "why". Discovering and figuring out a clear "why" puts everything into context from work to relationships to other parts of life.^[90] Finding meaning is learning that there is something greater than one's self. Despite potential challenges, working with meaning drives people to continue striving for a desirable goal.
• Accomplishments are the pursuit of success and mastery.^[84] Unlike the other parts of PERMA, they are sometimes pursued even when accomplishments do not result in positive emotions, meaning, or relationships. That being noted, accomplishments can activate the other elements of PERMA, such as pride, under positive emotion.^[91] Accomplishments can be individual or community-based, fun- or work-based.

The Biomedical approach was challenged by George Engel in 1977 as it gave little importance to various factors like beliefs, upbringing , trauma, etc. and put main emphasis on biology.^[92]

The biopsychosocial model replaces the Biomedical model of wellbeing. The Biopsychosocial model of well being emphasises the modifiable components needed for an individual to have a sense of wellbeing. These are:

• healthy environments (physical, social, cultural, and economic)
• developmental competencies (healthy identity, emotional and behavioural regulation, interpersonal skills, and problem-solving skills)
• sense of belonging
• healthy behaviours (sleep, nutrition, exercise, pleasurable and mastery activities)
• healthy coping
• resilience (recognition of one's innate resilience)
• treatment of illness (early evidence-based treatments of physical and psychological illnesses)

The UK ONS defines wellbeing:^[93]

as having 10 broad dimensions which have been shown to matter most to people in the UK as identified through a national debate. The dimensions are:

• the natural environment,
• personal well-being,
• our relationships,
• health,
• what we do,
• where we live,
• personal finance,
• the economy,
• education and skills, and
• governance.

Personal well-being is a particularly important dimension which we define as how satisfied we are with our lives, our sense that what we do in life is worthwhile, our day to day emotional experiences (happiness and anxiety) and our wider mental wellbeing.

The ONS then introduced four questions pertaining to wellbeing in their 2011 national survey of the UK population, relating to evaluative well-being, eudemonic well-being, and positive and negative affect. They later switched to referring to the construct being measured as "personal well-being".^[94]

Welfarism is a theory of value based on well-being. It states that well-being is the only thing that has intrinsic value, i.e. that is good in itself and not just good as a means to something else.^[95][96][97] On this view, the value of a situation or whether one alternative is better than another only depends on the degrees of well-being of each entity affected. All other factors are relevant to value only to the extent that they have an impact on someone's well-being.^[95][96] The well-being in question is usually not restricted to human well-being but includes animal well-being as well.^[97]

Different versions of welfarism offer different interpretations of the exact relation between well-being and value. Pure welfarists offer the simplest approach by holding that only the overall well-being matters, for example, as the sum total of everyone's well-being. This position has been criticized in various ways.^[95][98] On the one hand, it has been argued that some forms of well-being, like sensory pleasures, are less valuable than other forms of well-being, like intellectual pleasures.^{[99][100][101]} On the other hand, certain intuitions indicate that what matters is not just the sum total but also how the individual degrees of well-being are distributed. There is a tendency to prefer equal distributions where everyone has roughly the same degree instead of unequal distributions where there is a great divide between happy and unhappy people, even if the overall well-being is the same.^{[95][98][102]} Another intuition concerning the distribution is that people who deserve well-being, like the morally upright, should enjoy higher degrees of well-being than the undeserving.^[95][98]

These criticisms are addressed by another version of welfarism: impure welfarism. Impure welfarists agree with pure welfarists that all that matters is well-being. But they allow aspects of well-being other than its overall degree to have an impact on value, e.g. how well-being is distributed.^[95][98] Pure welfarists sometimes argue against this approach since it seems to stray away from the core principle of welfarism: that only well-being is intrinsically valuable. But the distribution of well-being is a relation between entities and therefore not intrinsic to any of them.^[98]

Some objections based on counterexamples are directed against all forms of welfarism. They often focus on the idea that there are things other than well-being that have intrinsic value. Putative examples include the value of beauty, virtue, or justice.^{[103][104][105][106]} Such arguments are often rejected by welfarists holding that the cited things would not be valuable if they had no relation to well-being. This is often extended to a positive argument in favor of welfarism based on the claim that nothing would be good or bad in a world without sentient beings.^[95][102] In this sense, welfarists may agree that the cited examples are valuable in some form but disagree that they are intrinsically valuable.^[102]

Some authors see welfarism as including the ethical thesis that morality fundamentally depends on well-being.^[97][98] On this view, welfarism is also committed to the consequentialist claim that actions, policies, or rules should be evaluated based on how their consequences affect everyone's well-being.^[107]

Research on positive psychology, well-being, eudaimonia and happiness, and the theories of Diener, Ryff, Keyes and Seligmann covers a broad range of levels and topics, including "the biological, personal, relational, institutional, cultural, and global dimensions of life".^[108] The World Happiness Report series provide annual updates on the global status of subjective well-being.^[109] A global study using data from 166 nations, provided a country ranking of psycho-social well-being.^[110] The latter study showed that subjective well-being and psycho-social well-being (i.e. eudaimonia) measures capture distinct constructs and are both needed for a comprehensive understanding of mental well-being.

Gallup's wellbeing research finds that 33% of workers globally are thriving, 55% struggling and 11% suffering.^[111]

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Focusing on wellbeing as a political goal involves prioritizing citizens' overall quality of life, encompassing factors like health, education, and social harmony. It emphasizes policies that enhance happiness and fulfillment for a more holistic approach to governance. Both the UK^[112] and New Zealand^[113] have begun to focus on population well-being within their political aims. The United States has taken actions designed to improve the health of citizens regarding issues with the COVID-19 pandemic and racism.^[114]

• Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being

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Look up well-being in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Theories of Well-Being, in William MacAskill & Richard Yetter-Chappell (2021), Introduction to Utilitarianism.
• PhilPapers: 'Well-being', 'Desire-satisfaction accounts', 'Objective accounts', 'Hedonistic accounts', 'Perfectionist accounts'
• EuroHealthNet Policy Paper: 'Achieving Wellbeing through EU decision-making processes'