Diener on Well-Being: Beyond Money

Context

Diener's research program defined well-being as subjective well-being: a person's own assessment of life satisfaction plus the balance of positive and negative feelings. "Beyond Money" summarized three decades of that research for a policy audience.

The paradox at the center of the report was not entirely new — Richard Easterlin had described it in the 1970s — but the scale of the evidence and the clarity of the presentation made it impossible to ignore. The sentence is the report's thesis in one line.

Significance

The sentence undercuts the assumption that economic growth is the same thing as human progress. If the goal of policy and of life is well-being, then the instruments must change: measure satisfaction, not just output.

For the individual, the finding is a license to question the arithmetic of acquisition — to ask what actually moves well-being rather than what merely raises income. Explore the theme in can money buy happiness, how to escape the hedonic treadmill, and what is subjective well-being.

Related Learning

• Explore the evidence in can money buy happiness and what is subjective well-being.
• Read the companion insight in Gilbert on happiness forecasting and Lyubomirsky on happiness.
• Continue with well-being, satisfaction, and the Happiness & The Good Life learning path.

Sources

1. Diener, E., and Seligman, M. E. P. "Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being." Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5(1), 2004.
2. "Well-Being." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being/