POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Martin Seligman may have been the first

contemporary
psychologist to call this new perspective
“positive
psychology.” In his 1998 presidential
address to
the American Psychological Association,
Seligman
made a plea for a major shift in
psychology’s focus
(Seligman, l998), from studying and trying
to undo
the worst in human behavior to studying
and promoting
the best in human behavior. He asked his
audience why psychology shouldn’t study
things
like “joy and courage.” Seligman supported
his call
for positive psychology by noting the
imbalance in
psychology we discussed earlier: too much
attention
to weaknesses and reducing human misery,
and not enough attention to strengths and
promoting
health. Seligman’s hope was that positive
psychology would help expand the scope of
psychology
beyond the disease model to promote the
study and understanding of healthy human
functioning.
What is new about positive psychology,
however, is the amount of research and
theory it
has generated, and the scientific
respectability it
has achieved. Psychologists can now study
hope,
forgiveness, or the physical and emotional
benefits
of positive emotions without feeling that
they
are leaving their scientific sensibilities
behind,
and without being regarded as pop
psychologists. positive psychology draws
on
research and theory from established areas
of psychology.
Positive psychology is, in part, a mosaic of
research and theory from many different
areas of
psychology tied together by their focus on
positive
aspects of human behavior.
Health Psychology
Positive psychology and health psychology
share much in common (Taylor & Sherman,
2004).
Health psychologists have long suspected
that negative
emotions can make us sick and positive
emotions
can be beneficial. However, only recently
has
a scientific and biological foundation been
developed
for these long-standing assumptions. Our
understanding of the relationship between
body
and mind has advanced dramatically in the
last several
decades. Research findings affirm the
potential
health-threatening effects of stress, anger,
resentment,
anxiety, and worry (Cohen & Rodriguez,
1995;
Friedman & Booth-Kewley, 1987; Salovey,
Rothman,
& Rodin, 1998; Taylor, 1999; Vaillant, 1997,
2000).
The pathways and mechanisms involved are
complex
and are just beginning to be understood.
They
involve the brain, the nervous system, the
endocrine
system, and the immune system (Maier,
Watkins, &
Fleshner, 1994). A variety of research
shows that
people going through long periods of
extreme stress
are more vulnerable to illness (Cohen,
2002; Kiecolt-
Glaser & Glaser, 1987; Ray, 2004; Vaillant,
1997). One
reason that stress and negative emotions
are bad for
us is that they seem to suppress the
functioning of
the immune system and reduce our body’s
ability to
fight disease.
Positive psychologists are very interested
in the
most recent studies suggesting that
positive emotions
may have effects equal to negative
emotions, but in
the opposite direction. While negative
emotions
compromise our health, positive emotions
seem to
help restore or preserve the health of both
our minds
and our bodies. Positive emotions appear to
set in
motion a number of physical, psychological,
and social processes that enhance our
physical wellbeing,
emotional health, coping skills, and
intellectual
functioning.
Our increasing knowledge of the
physiological
processes underlying emotions provides a
biological
foundation for positive psychology. It
seems reasonable
to conclude that positive emotions have
every
bit as much biological and evolutionary
significance
as the negative emotions that have
attracted so
much research attention.

HEALTH and WELL BEING

Health
In 1946 the World Health Organisation defined health as a
“complete state of physical, social and mental well-being,
and not just the absence of disease or infirmity” (WHO
2009; p. 1), thus establishing a close relationship between
the two concepts. This definition has remained almost
unchanged over the last 7 decades, but has attracted
criticism since, especially in view of the fact that an ever-
larger proportion of the world’s population reach an age
at which multi-morbidity is the rule rather than the
exception (Barnett et al. 2012). As a consequence of our
aging societies, therefore, fewer and fewer people would be
considered “healthy” according to this definition, thereby
rendering it diagnostically obsolete and stigmatizing.
In contrast to the WHO definition of 1946 the focus has
shifted from health as a state of complete physical, mental
and social well-being to one of health as the capacity to
adapt and to self‐manage when facing physical, mental and
social challenges (Huber et al. 2011). This applies to us both
as individuals and as members of a community. Health in
general is increasingly understood as the ability of an
individual or community to adapt and to self-manage, even
in the face of adversity, e.g. chronic disease or disability.

Support for this view comes from a number of studies

suggesting that most people, including seniors living with
multiple chronic diseases, consider themselves to be
healthy. third consequence of this paradigm shift concerns
the (re-)organization and (new) focus of health care
systems. As a result of the dramatic increase in life
expectancy in the 20th century, there is a shift towards
chronic, incurable diseases, which now account for most of
the morbidity and mortality worldwide. With the rising
prevalence of multiple chronic diseases, challenges for
health care systems rise that are much more than the sum
of the consequences of each of the individual conditions.
The needs of those with multiple conditions cannot be met
through diagnostic tests, curative interventions, or health
care services that are focused on individual organs (e.g.,
cardiology), systems (e.g., gastroenterology) or diseases
(e.g., cancer). Instead, services are required that enable a
holistic view of people, that are responsive to the culture
context, and that are sensitive to unique individual needs
and, therefore, deliver personalized care at the individual
level (Phillips and Vögele 2015). Responsible and integrated
services are needed that take into account not only physical,
but also mental, spiritual and social needs. There is an
urgent need for sustainable support systems that enable a
full life. The increasing number of people worldwide who
live with multimorbid conditions emphasizes the realization
that it is not enough to put more years into lives, but that it
is essential, and perhaps even more important, to put more
life into years.

Well-being
While individual well-being seems to be included in these
conceptualisations of health, it is widely acknowledged
that the two constructs are related but distinct. Even if
health is conceptualised as the ability to self-manage and
adapt, it can be assessed at the physiological, emotional,
cognitive and behavioural level. In contrast, well-being
emphasises the experiential aspect, which describes a
feeling that is often referred to as “subjective well-being”
(SWB). SWB is, therefore, primarily a psychological
construct as it is concerned with people’s evaluation of
their lives; however, it includes a wide range of notions,
from momentary moods to global life satisfaction
judgments.
Well-being is also of increasing importance as a concept in
public health (Dooris et al. 2018; La Plaza and Knight 2014).
This perspective not only considers well-being as a matter of
individual lifestyle and its subjective experience, but also its
wider contextual determinants (Aked and Thompson 2011;
Huppert, 2009). McNaught (2011), for example, considers
health as only one component of well-being, and proposes a
definitional framework comprising individual, family,
community and society levels. He defines well-being as a
“macro concept concerned with the objective and
subjective assessment of how human beings survive, thrive
and function” (p. 11).

ILLNESS-WELLNESS CONTINUUM

Most of us think of wellness in terms of illness; we assume

that the absence of illness indicates wellness. There are
actually many degrees of wellness, just as there are many
degrees of illness. The Illness-Wellness Continuum
illustrates the relationship of the treatment paradigm to the
wellness paradigm.

Moving from the center to the left shows a progressively

worsening state of health. Moving to the right of center
indicates increasing levels of health and wellbeing. The
treatment paradigm (drugs, herbs, surgery,
psychotherapy, acupuncture, and so on) can bring you up
to the neutral point, where the symptoms of disease have
been alleviated. The wellness paradigm, which can be
utilized at any point on the continuum, helps you move
toward higher levels of wellness. The wellness paradigm
directs you beyond neutral and encourages you to move as
far to the right as possible. It is not meant to replace the
treatment paradigm on the left side of the continuum, but
to work in harmony with it. If you are ill, then treatment is
important, but don't stop at the neutral point. Use the
wellness paradigm to move toward high-level wellness.
Even though people often lack physical symptoms, they
may still be bored, depressed, tense, anxious, or simply
unhappy with their lives. Such emotional states often set
the stage for physical and mental disease. Even cancer can
be brought on by excessive stress that weakens the
immune system. Negative emotional states can also lead to
abuse of the body through smoking, overdrinking alcohol,
and overeating - attempts to substitute for other more
basic human needs such as acknowledgment and respect, a
stimulating and supportive environment, and a sense of
purpose and meaning.
Wellness is not a static state. High-level wellness involves
giving good care to your physical self, using your mind
constructively, expressing your emotions effectively, being
creatively involved with those around you, and being
concerned about your physical, psychological, and
spiritual environments. In fact, it's not so much where you
are on the continuum, but which direction you're facing.
High-level wellness does not preclude periods of illness
and weakness, nor does it attempt to deny that death is a
natural part of life. Awareness of this paradox eventually
led us to expand the model, but first a little background.
The Illness-Wellness Continuum was first envisioned by
John in 1972, late one evening after everyone else at his
office in the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in
Baltimore, Maryland, had gone home. It was a melding of
the health risk continuum created by Lewis Robbins
(creator of the Health Risk Appraisal) and Abraham
Maslow's concept of self-actualization.
Once it was published in 1975, the continuum became an
immediate success, an easy way to illustrate what this
newly emerging wellness concept was all about. Health
practitioners and educators began using it; soon it was
appearing in books, journals, and slide presentations
everywhere around the world.
However, a simple model cannot always convey a complex
concept. For a number of years we had recognized that the
continuum could be misleading in one very significant
area. We knew it is possible to be physically ill yet oriented
toward wellness, or to be physically healthy yet
functioning from an illness mentality. Our one-
dimensional model simply couldn't show this distinction.
For example, imagine disabled, sick, or dying people who
are taking responsibility for their lives and are consciously
engaged in the experience. If only the physical dimension
were considered, they would fall on the left side of the
continuum, but if emotional, intellectual, and spiritual
dimensions are taken into account they would definitely be
on the right side of the continuum.
Defining the Mental Health Continuum

Hedonic Happiness
Probably most of us would hope first for a
long
life—one that does not end prematurely.
Suicide,
however, is a reminder that the quality of
life is more
important to many people than the quantity
of life.
As for quality of life, happiness might be
number
one on our list. Most people would likely
hope for
a happy and satisfying life, in which good
things
and pleasant experiences outnumber bad
ones.
Particularly in American culture, as we
noted earlier,
happiness seems to be an important part of
how people
define a good life. Defining the good life in
terms
of personal happiness is the general thrust
of the hedonic view of well-being.
While there are many varieties of
philosophical hedonism dating back to the
ancient
Greeks, a general version of hedonism
holds that the
chief goal of life is the pursuit of happiness
and
pleasure. Within psychology, this view of
well-being
is expressed in the study of SWB (Diener,
1984;
Diener et al., 1999). Subjective well-being
takes a
broad view of happiness, beyond the
pursuit of
short-term or physical pleasures defining a
narrow
hedonism. Subjective well-being is defined
as life
satisfaction, the presence of positive affect,
and a relative
absence of negative affect. Together, the
three
components are often referred to as
happiness.
Research based on the SWB model has
burgeoned in
the last 5 years (Ryan & Deci, 2001).
Studies have
delineated a variety of personality
characteristics and
life experiences that help answer questions
about
who is happy and what makes people
happy.

Eudaimonic Happiness
Consider a hypothetical example suggested
by
Seligman (2002a). What if you could be
hooked to
an “experience machine” that would keep
you in a
constant state of cheerful happiness, or
whatever
positive emotion you desired, no matter
what happened
in your life. Fitting the hedonic view, you
would experience an abundance of
happiness all
the time. Would you choose to be hooked
up?
We
might like it for awhile, but to experience
only one
of our many emotions, and to have the
same cheerful
reaction to the diversity of life events and
challenges
might actually impoverish the experience of
life. And some of what we would lose might
be
extremely valuable. For example, negative
emotions
like fear help us make choices that avoid
threats to
our well-being. Without fear and other
negative
emotions we might make very bad choices.

We’d be
happy, but we might not live very long.
Seligman
(2002a) argues that we would likely also
reject the
experience machine because we want to
feel we are
entitled to our positive emotions, and to
believe
they reflect our “real” positive qualities
and behaviors.
Pleasure, disconnected from reality, does
not
affirm or express our identity as
individuals.
Above all, most of us would probably reject
the experience machine because we believe
that
there is more to life than happiness and
subjective
pleasure. Or as Seligman (2002a) describes
it, there
is a deeper and more “authentic
happiness.”

Much of classical Greek philosophy was

concerned with
these deeper meanings of happiness and
the good
life. Waterman (1990, 1993) describes two
psychological
views of happiness distilled from classical
philosophy. Hedonic conceptions of
happiness, discussed
above, define happiness as the enjoyment
of
life and its pleasures. The hedonic view
captures a
major element of what we mean by
happiness in
everyday terms: We enjoy life; we are
satisfied with
how our lives are going; and good events
outnumber
bad events.

In contrast, eudaimonic conceptions of

happiness,
given fullest expression in the writings of
Aristotle, define happiness as self-
realization, meaning
the expression and fulfillment of inner
potentials.
From this perspective, the good life results
from living
in accordance with your daimon (in other
words,
your true self). That is, happiness results
from striving
toward self-actualization—a process in
which our talents,
needs, and deeply held values direct the
way we
conduct our lives. “Eudaimonia” (or
happiness) results
from realization of our potentials. We are
happiest
when we follow and achieve our goals and
develop
our unique potentials. Eudaimonic
happiness has
much in common with humanistic
psychology’s
emphases on the concepts of self-
actualization
(Maslow, 1968) and the fully functioning
person
(Rogers, 1961) as criteria for healthy
development and
optimal functioning.

What kinds of experiences lead to

eudaimonic
happiness? Waterman (1993) argued that
eudaimonic
happiness results from experiences of
personal
expressiveness. Such experiences occur
when
we are fully engaged in life activities that
fit and
express our deeply held values and our
sense of
who we are. Under these circumstances we
experience
a feeling of fulfillment, of meaningfulness,
of
being intensely alive—a feeling that this is
who we
really are and who we were meant to be.

At this point, you might ask whether

hedonic
and eudaimonic views of happiness are very
different.
Aren’t activities that bring us pleasure also
generally
the ones that are meaningful because they
express our
talents and values? Waterman believes that
there are
many more activities that produce hedonic
enjoyment
than activities that provide eudaimonic
happiness
based on personal expression. Everything
from alcohol
consumption and eating chocolate, to a
warm
bath can bring us pleasure, but there are
fewer activities
that engage significant aspects of our
identity and
give a deeper meaning to our lives.

To evaluate the similarities and differences

between hedonic enjoyment and personal
expressiveness
(eudaimonic enjoyment), Waterman (1993)
asked a sample of college students to list
five activities
that addressed the following question: “If
you
wanted another person to know about who
you are
and what you are like as a person, what five
activities
of importance to you would you describe?”
(p. 681).
This question was meant to evoke activities
that
define and express a person’s personality,
talents,
and values. Each activity listed was then
rated on
scales describing personal expressiveness
and hedonic
enjoyment of the activity. Expressive items
included questions about whether the
activity gave
strong feelings of authenticity (who I really
am), fulfillment
and completion, intense involvement, and
self-activity-fit. Hedonic questions focused
on
whether the activity produced good
feelings such as a
warm glow, happiness, pleasure, or
enjoyment.
Waterman found substantial overlap in
expressive
and hedonic ratings. Half to two-thirds of
the time,
personally expressive activities also
generated a comparable
level of hedonic enjoyment. However, the
two
forms of happiness also diverged for some
activities.
Hedonic enjoyment was associated with
activities that
made people feel relaxed, excited, content
or happy,
and that led to losing track of time and
forgetting
personal problems. Feelings of personal
expressiveness
(eudaimonic happiness) were more strongly
related to activities that created feelings of
challenge,
competence, and effort, and that offered
the opportunity
for personal growth and skill development.
Ryan and Deci (2001) integrated and organized the field of
well-being into two
broad traditions: one dealing with happiness (hedonic
well-being), and the other
dealing with human potential (eudemonic well-being). The
hedonic approach
views well-being as the presence of positive mood and life
satisfaction - feeling
good more often than feeling bad. The second approach is
eudaimonic well-being
which is tied to personal growth and the cultivation of
one’s full potential.
SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING
Subjective well-being (SWB) is the personal perception
and experience of
positive and negative emotional responses and global and
(domain) specific
cognitive evaluations of satisfaction with life. It has been
defined as “a person’s
cognitive and affective evaluations of his or her life”
(Diener, Lucas, & Oishi,
2002, p. 63). Simply, SWB is the individual evaluation of
quality of life (QOL)
and therefore converges with the definition of QOL.
Subjective well-being has three components: life
satisfaction (LS), positive affect
(PA), and negative affect (NA) (Andrews & Withey, 1976).
Individuals are said
to have high SWB if they experience LS and frequent PA
(e.g., joy, optimism)
and infrequent NA (e.g., sadness, anger). Conversely,
individuals are said to have
low SWB if they are dissatisfied with life, experience little
joy, and frequently
feel negative emotions such as anger or anxiety.
The field covers the entire range of well-being from agony
to ecstasy and

therefore not only concerns itself with the causes of

depression and anxiety but
also seeks to differentiate slight happiness from moderate
and extreme happiness
and determine what leads to happiness over time (i.e.,
interest is not in momentary
moods or fleeting emotions, but what produces long-term
positive SWB) (Diener
et al., 1997). Subjective well-being is defined by internal
experience and
measured from an individual’s own perspective (i.e., self-
reported), a
characteristic which differentiates the field from clinical
psychology (Diener et
al.).
Ryff’s Theory of Well-Being
psychological wellbeing is its own separate construct,
defined as comprising six core dimensions (adapted from
Ryff & Keyes, 1995):
 Self-acceptance
Positive attitude toward the self; acknowledgment and
acceptance of multiple aspects of self, including good
and bad qualities; positive feelings about one’s past
 Positive relations with others
Warm, satisfying, trusting relationships with others;
concern for the welfare of others; capacity for strong
empathy, affection, and intimacy; understanding of the
give-and-take of relationships
 Autonomy
Self-determination and independence; the ability to
resist social pressures to think and act in particular
ways, regulate behavior from within, and evaluate
oneself based on personal standards
 Environmental mastery
Sense of mastery and competence in one’s
environment; the ability to control a complex array of
 external activities and leverage opportunities; the
capacity to choose or create contexts that suit needs
and values
 Purpose in life
The possession of goals and a sense of direction; the
feeling that there is meaning to present and past life;
holding beliefs that give life purpose as well as aims
and objectives for living
 Personal growth
Feelings of continued development and the sense that
one is growing and expanding; openness to new
experiences; realization of one’s potential and
perceived improvement in self and behavior over time;
change that reflects greater self-knowledge and
effectiveness
Each of the definitions above describes someone scoring
high on the dimension of wellbeing. There are also six
definitions corresponding to low scorers. For instance, a
low score on the personal growth dimension indicates
feelings of personal stagnation, the sense that one is not
improving or expanding over time, feelings of boredom,
a lack of control, and a felt inability to develop new
attitudes and behaviors.
The most commonly used version of the Psychological
Wellbeing Scales comprises 42 items and includes a
combination of positively and negatively worded items.
An abbreviated, 18-item version of the measure is also
widely used.
PERMA MODEL
 Abraham Maslow (1962) was one of the first in the field
of psychology to describe “wellbeing,” with his
characteristics of a self-actualized person. The
description of self-actualization is a foreshadowing of
the PERMA model.
Seligman (2012) selected five components that people
pursue because they are intrinsically motivating and they
contribute to wellbeing. These elements are pursued for
their own sake and are defined and measured
independently of each other (Seligman, 2012).
Additionally, the five components include both
eudaimonic and hedonic components, setting WBT apart
from other theories of wellbeing.
These five elements or components (PERMA; Seligman,
2012) are
 Positive emotion
Engagement- According to Seligman (2012), engagement
is “being one with the music.” It is in line with
Csikszentmihalyi’s (1989) concept of “flow.” Flow includes
the loss of self-consciousness and complete absorption in
an activity. In other words, it is living in the present
moment and focusing entirely on the task at hand.
Flow, or this concept of engagement, occurs when the
perfect combination of challenge and skill/strength is
found (Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989).


 Relationships- Relationships in the PERMA model refer

to feeling supported, loved, and valued by others.
  Meaning- Another intrinsic human quality is the search
for meaning and the need to have a sense of value and
worth. Seligman (2012) discussed meaning as
belonging and/or serving something greater than
ourselves. Having a purpose in life helps individuals
focus on what is really important in the face of
significant challenge or adversity.
Accomplishments- Accomplishment in PERMA is also
known as achievement, mastery, or competence.
A sense of accomplishment is a result of working toward
and reaching goals, mastering an endeavor, and having
self-motivation to finish what you set out to do. This
contributes to wellbeing because individuals can look at
their lives with a sense of pride (Seligman, 2012).
Accomplishment includes the concepts of perseverance
and having a passion to attain goals.

The PERMA model makes up WBT, where each

dimension works in concert to give rise to a higher order
construct that predicts the flourishing of groups,
communities, organizations, and nations (Forgeard,
Jayawickreme, Kern, & Seligman, 2011).
Research has shown significant positive associations
between each of the PERMA components and physical
health, vitality, job satisfaction, life satisfaction, and
commitment within organizations (Kern, Waters, Alder,
& White, 2014).
PERMA is also a better predictor of psychological distress
than previous reports of distress (Forgeard et al., 2011).
This means that proactively working on the components of
PERMA not only increases aspects of wellbeing, but also
decreases psychological distress.

HEDONIC ADAPTATION MODEL

Hedonic adaptation, also known as “the hedonic
treadmill,” is a concept studied by positive psychology
researchers and others who focus on happiness and well-
being that refers to people’s general tendency to return to
a set level of happiness despite life’s ups and downs.
Hedonic adaptation is an adaptation-level phenomenon,
which is a term that describes how humans become
insensitive to new stimuli, and quickly readjust to an
emotional baseline. Therefore, the stimulus needed to
create an emotion—like happiness or excitement—needs
to be more intense than the last stimulus in order for
someone to feel its effects.
The Hedonic Treadmill

Certain activities are more subject to hedonic adaptation

—the happiness that they bring dissipates more quickly.
Some of these activities are known by researchers and
psychologists as “pleasures,” which can bring quick bursts
of—you guessed it—pleasure.
Researcher Martin Seligman, one of the pioneers in this
field, explained pleasures this way:9
"The pleasures are delights that have clear sensory and
strong emotional components, what philosophers call 'raw
feels': ecstasy, thrills…delight, mirth, exuberance, and
comfort. They are evanescent, and they involve little, if
any, thinking."
Pleasures can lift your mood and leave you feeling
wonderful, but their effects can be relatively fleeting.
What’s more, we get used to them relatively quickly.
Gratifications

Seligman also researched gratifications, which are

activities that get us into a feeling of “flow” where we
don’t notice the passage of time, where we’re thoroughly
engaged in what we’re doing, and sort of lost in the
activity.9
This effect occurs most easily when we face a challenge
that’s both fun and the right kind of challenge for our
abilities: not too difficult lest we feel discouraged but just
difficult enough to keep us feeling challenged.
Gratifications, as well as activities that present a strong
sense of meaning to us, are more immune to the effects of
hedonic adaptation.
PAPER:
hedonic adaptation, which refers to the tendency for
people to become accustomed to positive life changes over
time, resulting in the diminishing impact of those changes
on their well-being. The authors proposed a Hedonic
Adaptation Prevention (HAP) model, which outlined two
pathways through which the well-being gains from
positive life changes are eroded and two moderators that
can forestall these processes. The authors tested the HAP
model in a three-month longitudinal study of 481 students
and found good support for the model.
Hedonic Adaptation and the HAP Model
The study revealed that strong positive life changes, such
as winning the lottery or getting married, may initially
increase happiness but individuals quickly adapt to these
changes. The model specifies that the eroding of well-being
gains results from declining positive emotions generated
by the positive change and increased aspirations for even
more positivity.
Preventing Hedonic Adaptation
The study also found that continued appreciation of the
original life change and continued variety in change-
related experiences can forestall the processes of hedonic
adaptation, thereby sustaining the initial happiness boost.
The results indicated that variety and surprise in positive
experiences and continued appreciation of positive life
changes can help maintain well-being gains over time.
Overall, the research suggests that people can maintain
and even increase their well-being by appreciating and
deriving varied experiences from positive life changes. The
findings have implications for the design of positive
interventions and highlight the importance of savoring
and gratitude in sustaining happiness. The study also
emphasizes the need to strike a balance between present-
oriented and forward-looking attitudes to achieve the
highest level of well-being.
that the more variable the small positive events that flow
from the initial change, the more likely they will continue
to produce positive emotions (see Moderator 1a); that the
more variable the resultant positive emotions, the more
likely they will sustain the initial boost in WB (see
Moderator 1b); and that the more variable the positive
events, the less they will create rising aspirations (see
Moderator 1c).
By definition, adaptation occurs only in response to
constant or repeated stimuli, not to dynamically varying
ones (Frederick & Loewenstein, 1999; see also Helson,
1964; Parducci, 1995). Thoughts and behaviors that are
varied and unexpected or surprising appear to be innately
stimulating and rewarding (Berlyne, 1970; Pronin &
Jacobs, 2008; Rolls et al., 1981; see Ebstein, Novick,
Umansky, Priel, & Osher, 1996; Suhara et al., 2001, for
links to dopamine activity). Stated differently, after an
individual completely understands and expects the
experiences that a change produces, the experiences will
no longer have the same emotional impact (Wilson &
Gilbert, 2008), and he or she will drift back toward his or
her initial WB (T1 WB). Maintaining the variability and
surprises inherent in the experiences and in the emotions
forestalls this process. Also, the more variable and
surprising the positive events deriving from the initial
change, the less likely it is that one will raise one’s
aspiration level.
AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS
The theory in Authentic Happiness is that happiness could
be analyzed into three different elements that we choose
for their own sakes: positive emotion, engagement, and
meaning. And each of these elements is better defined and
more measurable than happiness. The first is positive
emotion; what we feel: pleasure, rapture, ecstasy, warmth,
comfort, and the like. An entire life led successfully
around this element; I call the “pleasant life.”
The second element, engagement, is about flow: being one
with the music, time stopping, and the loss of self-
consciousness during an absorbing activity. I refer to a life
lived with these aims as the “engaged life.” Engagement is
different, even opposite, from positive emotion; for if you
ask people who are in flow what they are thinking and
feeling, they usually say, “nothing.” In flow we merge with
the object. I believe that the concentrated attention that
flow requires uses up all the cognitive and emotional
resources that make up thought and feeling.
There is yet a third element of happiness, which is
meaning. I go into flow playing bridge, but after a long
tournament, when I look in the mirror, I worry that I am
fidgeting until I die. The pursuit of engagement and the
pursuit of pleasure are often solitary, solipsistic endeavors.
Human beings, ineluctably, want meaning and purpose in
life. The Meaningful Life consists in belonging to and
serving something that you believe is bigger than the self,
and humanity creates all the positive institutions to allow
this: religion, political party, being Green, the Boy Scouts,
or the family.
In authentic happiness theory, happiness is the centerpiece
of positive psychology. It is a real thing that is defined by
the measurement of life satisfaction. Happiness has three
aspects: positive emotion, engagement, and meaning, each
of which feeds into life satisfaction and is measured
entirely by subjective report.
he Happiness and Meaning Orientation Model
Wong (2011) argued that there are four pathways to
happiness that together create a life that is worth living:
 • Hedonic happiness represents the sensory or
experiential route to happiness: being satisfied with
life and feeling good.
 • Prudential happiness is akin to Seligman’s “engaged
life” category.
It represents an active pathway to happiness, since it
involves performing optimally in activities that we are
genuinely interested in, resulting in a sense of folfilment
and achievement.
 • Eudaimonic happiness is a way of life characterised
by “the pursuit of virtue/excellence,meaning/purpose,
doing good/making a difference, and the resulting
sense of fulfillment or flourishing” (Wong, 2011, p.
 70). It is a conduit to happiness through the
expression of character and virtue.
 • Chaironic happiness is a spiritual pathway to
happiness. It is an attitude toward life that entails
being attuned to the transcendent aspects of reality. It
can manifest itself though meditation, peak
experiences, awe and spirituality.
Meaning in life is central in Wong’s approach to
wellbeing, and accordingly he defined eudaimonia as
“meaning plus virtue” and argued that “eudaimonia can
be understood from a meaning perspective because of its
emphasis on purpose, understanding, responsibility, and
enjoying the fruit of the good life. Eudaimonia can also be
viewed as rooted in both inner goodness and the common
good” (Wong,201 l,p. 75).
In line with this view,Wong clustered the four routes to
happiness into two categories:
• A happiness orientation which entails the hedonic and
prudential happiness categories.
Wong observed that people with a happiness orientation
tend to seek and optimise positive experiences. They focus
on pursuing success, feeling happy, experiencing
gratification and avoiding pain or discomfort. They often
exhibit high self-confidence, self-efficacy, achievement
motivation and competence. They are interested in
external sources of happiness, tend to put their self-
interests first, and may show at times low compassion or
altruism. When facing challenges or hardship they may
give up. They also tend to prioritise gain above moral
principles, and therefore are less likely to challenge other
people’s unethical behaviours.
• A meaning orientation which includes the eudaimonic
and chaironic happiness categories.
Wong found that people with a meaning orientation
display a drive to actualise their purpose, and are
interested in pursuing worthy ideals, even if these bear
personal costs.They are concerned with leading a good life,
and their focus lies in nurturing their inner life (inner
peace or joy or spirituality).They prioritise responsibility,
show high levels of compassion and altruism towards
others, and have a strong capacity to self-regulate, endure
and persevere. They are willing to sacrifice their own
desires for others, and show moral courage in speaking up
against unethical actions.