Definition
In a very broad sense, personal well-being is a good, satisfactory, and desirable state of personal existence or life. It represents a personal aspect of the quality of life. According to the results of the empirical multivariate research, personal well-being is a multifaceted construct, embracing emotional well-being, satisfying life, vitality, resilience and self-esteem, and positive functioning (Michaelson, Abdallah, Steuer, Thompson, & Marks, 2009). It is related to the concepts of subjective well-being, emotional well-being, psychological well-being, mental well-being, satisfaction with life, and happiness and to the notions of social well-being and spiritual well-being. From the psychological point of view, personal well-being is a crucial aspect of health in the psychological and physical sense.
Description
Since Democritus and Aristotle, well-being or happiness has been conceived as an inherent goal in the life of the individual human being. In a large literature on...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Andrews, F. M., & Withey, S. B. (1976). Social indicators of well-being. New York: Plenum Press.
Cummins, R. A., Gullone, E., & Lau, A. (2002). A model of subjective wellbeing homeostasis: The role of personality. In A. Michalos (Ed.), Social indicators research series (Vol. 16, pp. 7–46). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Diener, E. (2000). Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and a proposal for a national index. American Psychologist, 55, 34–43.
Dolan, P., Peasgood, T., & White, M. (2008). Do we really know what makes us happy? A review of the economic literature on the factors associated with subjective well-being. Journal of Economic Psychology, 29, 94–122.
Headey, B., & Wearing, A. (1992). Understanding happiness: A theory of subjective well-being. Melbourne: Lonman Cheshire.
International Wellbeing Group. (2006). Personal well-being index (4th ed.). Melbourne: Australian Centre on Quality of Life, Deakin University.
Kahneman, D., Diener, E., & Schwarz, N. (Eds.). (1999). Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology. New York: Russell Sage.
Michaelson, J., Abdallah, S., Steuer, N., Thompson, S., & Marks, N. (2009). http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/national-accounts-well-being. Accessed 25 May 2011.
Michalos, A. C. (Ed.). (2005). Citation classics from social indicators research: The most cited articles Edited and Introduced by Alex C. Michalos. Dordrecht: Springer.
Michalos, A. C., et al. (2010). An approach to the Canadian index of wellbeing. Toronto: Atkinson Charitable Foundation.
Musek, J. (2007). A general factor of personality: Evidence for the Big One in the five factor model. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 1213–1233.
Musek, J. (2010). Psihologija ?ivljenja (Psychology of Life). Ljubljana (Slovenia): Inštitut za psihologijo osebnosti (Institute of Personality Psychology).
Positive psychology questionnaires (2011). http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/ppquestionnaires.htm. Accessed 25 May 2011.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 141–166.
Ryff, C. D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 1069–1081.
Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Positive psychology, positive prevention, and positive therapy. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 3–9). New York: Oxford University Press.
Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5–14.
Snyder, C. R., & Lopez, S. J. (Eds.). (2002). Handbook of positive psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this entry
Cite this entry
Musek, J., Polic, M. (2014). Personal Well-Being. In: Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_2148
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_2148
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-0752-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-0753-5
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law