Affective Forcasting and Impact Bias

Predicting how life changes will affect our happiness.  People are not very good at anticipating the actual impact of life events.  The study of people's predictions about the emotional effects of future life events is called affective forecasting.  People consistently overestimate the impact of both positive and negative events.  To evaluate the accuracy of an affective forecast, an individual's predictions about the emotional impact of specific events are compared to the real life reactions of people who actually experience those events.  Predicted impact typically exaggerates both the intensity and duration of people's actual emotional reactions.  This exaggeration in the strength and duration of anticipated emotional reactions is called the impact bias (Baumgardner and Crothers, 2009).

Importance of Physical Health in Subjective Well Being

Happiness contribute to our health and health contributes to our happiness.  The impact of subjective well being on physical health is shown in associations between happiness and longer life, lower susceptibility to disease and better recovery from illnesses. The influence of positive and negative emotions on immune system functioning undoubtedly plays a role in these relationships.  The state of our physical health also affects our level of happiness.  Illness and injury involve pain and distress, and may limit our opportunities to engage in pleasurable activities.  Negative emotions may increase and positive emotions may decrease as a result of illness.  However, physical health does not seem to have a straightforward relationship with subjective well being.  People with poor health also may have high subjective well being.  How people interpret the meaning and significance of their physical health status has much to do with the influence of health on happiness.  

Subjective Well Being

Subjective well-being shares a common core of meaning with the more everyday term happiness.  It refers to a person's own assessment of his or her life, rather than an observer or evaluator.  The final judge of happiness is whoever lives inside the person's skin.  Subjective well being is the evaluation of people's own lives - both affective and cognitive.  People experience an abundance of Subjective Well Being when they feel many pleasant and few unpleasant emotions, when they are engaged in interesting activities, when they experience many pleasures and few pains, when they are satisfied with their lives.  A person with high subjective well being has a pervasive sense that life is good.

Positive Emotions: A Back Up for Well Being

Positive Emotions are the central components of the Social Well Being.  People who enjoy frequent positive emotions and experience few negative emotions, along with a judgment that their life is satisfying are considered happy.  People in a positive mood act quite differently than when they are in a bad mood or experiencing a distressing emotions.  Many of the behaviours we consider to be positive are enhanced by positive affect.  Happy people are more tolerant and less prejudicial, more compassionate, more focused on others rather than self focused, more helpful to others, and more enjoyable to be with.  Positive emotions contribute to more flexible, creative and resilient responses in the face of challenges.  Happiness is a desirable state in and of itself because it is linked to so many positive behaviours.  Negative emotions and unhappiness may cause us self absorbed, self centered, and focused on our own preoccupations.  Happiness seems to produce a more expansive view of the world around us (Baumgardner and Crothers, 2009).

What is Positive Psychology?

Positive Psychology is the study of what we might call life on the positive side of the zero, where zero is the line that divides illness from health and unhappiness from happiness.  It is all about personal qualities, life circumstances, individual choices, life activities, relationships with others, transcendent purposes, and socio-cultural conditions that foster and define good life.  Positive Psychology, thus is (can be) defined as the scientific study of the personal qualities, life choices, life circumstances and sociocultural conditions that promote a life well-lived, defined by criteria of happiness, physical and mental health, meaningfulness and virtue (Baumgardner and Crothers, 2009)