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Concept
Life satisfaction
Summary
Life satisfaction is a measure of a person's overall well-being, assessed in terms of mood, relationship satisfaction, achieved goals, self-concepts, and self-perceived ability to cope with life. Life satisfaction involves a favorable attitude towards one's life—rather than an assessment of current feelings. Life satisfaction has been measured in relation to economic standing, degree of education, experiences, residence, and other factors.
Life satisfaction is a key part of subjective well-being. Many factors influence subjective well-being and life satisfaction. Socio-demographic factors include gender, age, marital status, income, and education. Psychosocial factors include health and illness, functional ability, activity level, and social relationships. People tend to gain life satisfaction as they get older.
A meta-analysis using the "Big Five" personality model found that, among the "Big Five", low neuroticism was the strongest predictor of life satisfaction. Other key factors include openness to experiences and socialization. Socially engaged people tend to be more satisfied with life.
Apart from the Big Five model, a person's chronotype correlates with life satisfaction; morning-oriented people ("larks") showed higher life satisfaction than evening-oriented individuals ("owls").
An individual's genes affect their life satisfaction, so life satisfaction is partly heritable. One study found no significant differences between males and females in terms of the heritability of life satisfaction.
Several studies have shown that self-esteem is a strong predictor of life satisfaction.
An individual's mood and outlook on life greatly influence the perception of their life satisfaction. Two correlating emotions that may influence how people perceive their lives are hope and optimism. Both of these emotions consist of cognitive processes that are usually oriented towards the perception and reaching of goals. Additionally, optimism is linked to higher life satisfaction, whereas pessimism is related to symptoms of depression.
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Ontological neighbourhood
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Well-being
Well-being, or wellbeing, also known as wellness, prudential value, prosperity or quality of life, refers to what is intrinsically valuable relative to someone. So the well-being of a person is what is ultimately good for this person, what is in the self-interest of this person. Well-being can refer to both positive and negative well-being. In its positive sense, it is sometimes contrasted with ill-being as its opposite.
Affective forecasting
Affective forecasting (also known as hedonic forecasting, or the hedonic forecasting mechanism) is the prediction of one's affect (emotional state) in the future. As a process that influences preferences, decisions, and behavior, affective forecasting is studied by both psychologists and economists, with broad applications. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Adam Smith observed the personal challenges, and social benefits, of hedonic forecasting errors: [Consider t]he poor man's son, whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition, when he begins to look around him, admires the condition of the rich .
Broad measures of economic progress
Although for many decades, it was customary to focus on GDP and other measures of national income, there has been growing interest in developing broad measures of economic well-being. National and international approaches include the Beyond GDP programme developed by the European Union, the Better Lives Compendium of Indicators developed by the OECD, as well as many alternative metrics of wellbeing or happiness.