Ed Diener and Martin E.P. Seligman

Volume 5, Number 1

July 2004

Project Editor: Stephen J. Ceci

Policy decisions at the organizational, corporate, and governmental levels should be more heavily influenced by issues related to well-being--people's evaluations and feelings about their lives. [...]

From the study: Well-being, which we define as peoples’ positive evaluations of their lives, includes positive emotion, engagement, satisfaction, and meaning (Seligman, 2002). Although economics currently plays a central role in policy decisions because it is assumed that money increases well-being, we propose that well-being needs to be assessed more directly, because there are distressingly large, measurable slippages between economic indicators and well-being. [...]

Although much more research is needed on the societal correlates of well-being, it is clear that rising income has yielded little additional benefit to wellbeing in prosperous nations, pointing to one limitation of economic indicators. We also review factors in the workplace that influence wellbeing at work, and show that well-being on the job in turn predicts positive work behaviors and perhaps profitability. Finally, we review evidence showing that supportive social relationships are essential to well-being. Well-being, in turn, has positive effects on social relationships, as well as mental and physical health.