Abstract
In this chapter we suggest that “happiness,” or high subjective wellbeing, is more strongly associated with the frequency and duration of people’s positive feelings, not with the intensity of those feelings. People who rarely or never feel euphoria, for instance, can nonetheless report very high levels of well-being. We hypothesize that there are several reasons that subjective well-being is more strongly associated with the amount of time people feel positive versus negative feelings rather than with the intensity of their positive feelings. Intense positive feelings often have costs, including a tendency to more intense negative feelings in negative situations. Another hypothesis is that it is more difficult to accurately measure the intensity of feelings than their time-course, and this makes the amount of time people feel positive more amenable to study with self-report methods. The intensity of people’s positive emotions should not be ignored, but should be studied in combination with the time-course (frequency and duration) of positive and negative feelings.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Andrews, F. M., & Withey, S. B. (1976). Social indicators of well-being: America’s perception of life quality. New York: P,enum Press.
Bradburn, N. M. (1969). The structure of psychological well-being. Chicago: Aldinc.
Brandstätter, H. (1987). Emotional responses to everyday life situations: An individual difference approach. Paper delivered at the Colloquium on Subjective Well-Being. Bad Homburg, \nobreak Germany.
Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 917–927.
Colvin, C. R. Pavot, W., & Diener, E. (1988). Emotional regulation: Affective amping and damping carryover. In preparation, University of Illinois.
Davis, P. J., & Schwartz, G. E. (1987). Repression and the inaccessibility of affective memories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 155–162.
Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 95, 542–575.
Diener, E., & Emmons, R. A. (1984). The independence of positive and negative affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 1105–1117.
Diener, E., & Iran-Nejad, A. (1986). The relationship in experience between various types of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 1031–1038.
Diener, E., Larsen, R. J., Levine, S., & Emmons, R. A. (1985). Intensity and frequency: Dimensions underlying positive and negative affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 1253–1265.
Diener, E., Sandvik, E., & Larsen, R. J. (1985). Age and sex effects for emotional intensity. Developmental Psychology, 21, 542–546.
Diener, E., Sandvik, E., Gallagher, D., & Pavot, W. (1988).The effects of response artifacts on measures of subjective well-being. In preparation, University of Illinois.
Diener, E., Smith, R. H., Allman, A., & Pavot, W. (1988). The costs of intense positive emotions. In preparation, University of Illinois.
Epictetus. The discourses. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 1952.
Flugel, J. C. (1925). A quantitative study of feeling and emotion in everyday life. British Journal of Psychology, 15, 318–355.
Fordyce, M. W. (1977). The happiness measures: A sixty-second index of emotional well-being and mental health. Unpublished manuscript, Edison Community College, St. Meyers, Florida.
Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and its discontents. London: The Hogarth Press.
Gorman, B. S., & Wessman, A. E. (1974). The relationship of cognitive style and moods. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 30, 18–25.
Hasher, L., & Zacks, R. T. (1979). Automatic and effortful processes in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 108, 356–388.
Hasher, L., & Zacks, R. T. (1984). Automatic processing of fundamental information: The case of frequency of occurrence. American Psychologist, 39, 1372–1388.
Larsen, R. J., & Diener, E. (1987). Emotional response intensity as an individual difference characteristic. Journal of Research in Personality, 21, 1–39.
Larsen, R. J., Diener, E., & Cropanzano, R. S. (1987). Cognitive operations associated with the characteristic of intense emotional responsiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 767–774.
Larsen, R. J., & Scheffer, S. (1987). The influence of cognitive operations on physiological response to emotion-provoking stimuli. Unpublished study, Purdue University.
Parducci, A. (1968). The relativism of absolute judgments. Scientific American, 219, 84–90.
Parducci, A. (1984). Value judgments: Toward a relational theory of happiness. In J. R. Eiser (Ed.), Attitudinal judgment. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Smith, R. H., Wedell, D., & Diener, E. (1989). Interpersonal and social comparison determinants of happiness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 317–325.
Solomon, R. L. (1980). The opponent-process theory of acquired motivation: The costs of pleasure and the benefits of pain. American Psychologist, 35, 691–712.
Thomas, D. (1987). Memory bias in the recall of emotions. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Illinois, 1987.
Thomas, D., & Diener, E. (1988). Memory accuracy in the recall of emotions. Paper submitted for publication.
Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1984). Cross-cultural convergence in the structure of mood: A Japanese replication and a comparison with US findings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 127–144.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Diener, E., Sandvik, E., Pavot, W. (2009). Happiness is the Frequency, Not the Intensity, of Positive Versus Negative Affect. In: Diener, E. (eds) Assessing Well-Being. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2354-4_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2354-4_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-2353-7
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-2354-4
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)