Happiness and Well-Being, (4 Volume Set)

Questions about the meaning, purpose, and pursuit of happiness and well-being have been addressed by thinkers since ancient times but over the past decade or so there has been a tremendous upsurge of scholarly interest in the subject. This renewed interest has come from a variety of academic disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, and economics. The field has, in particular, been galvanized by the advent of the positive psychology movement at the turn of the century. Especially in the United States, but also in the UK and on continental Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia, research and courses in positive psychology are thriving. Harvard University’s positive psychology course, for example, is currently the most popular offering in the college’s history.

Governments and international organizations are also increasingly engaged by notions of well-being and happiness. The World Health Organization has recently redefined ‘health’ to include ‘psychological well-being’ and many national policy-makers have begun to recognize that measuring a nation’s success by traditional economic values alone no longer suffices and that we need also urgently to understand how people experience the quality of their lives.

Beyond the academy and government, there is also immense interest in the promotion and examination of happiness and well-being in many professional disciplines such as coaching, education, clinical psychology, and community-building.

As work on happiness and well-being flourishes as never before, this new title in Psychology Press’s Major Works series, Critical Concepts in Psychology, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subject’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Co-edited by two leading scholars, Happiness and Well-being is a four-volume collection of classic and contemporary contributions. Together, the four volumes provide a one-stop resource for all interested researchers, students, and policy-makers to gain a thorough understanding of the field, the variety of approaches, and where thinking on happiness and well-being is today. With comprehensive introductions to each volume, newly written by the editors, which place the collected material in its historical, intellectual, and practical context, Happiness and Well-being is an essential work of reference and a vital research tool.

Volume I

Part 1 : Concepts : What is Meant by Happiness and Well-being?

Hedonic Approaches : The Pursuit of Pleasure
Chapter 1 : Maximise your Pleasure’, The Secrets of Happiness
Chapter 2 : Subjective Well-being’, Psychological Bulletin
Chapter 3 : Subjective Well-being : Three Decades of Progress’, Psychological Bulletin
Chapter 4 : Objective Happiness, Well-being : The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology

Eudaimonic Approaches : Pursuing The Good Life
Chapter 5 : The Concept of The Fully Functioning Person’, PsychoTherapy : Theory, Research, and Practice
Chapter 6 : Happiness is Everything, or is it? Explorations on The Meaning of Psychological Well-being’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Hedonic–Eudaimonic Comparisons
Chapter 7 : Two Conceptions of Happiness : Contrasts of Personal Expressiveness (Eudaimonia) and Hedonic Enjoyment’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 8 : Personal Projects, Happiness, and Meaning : On Doing Well and Being Yourself’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 9 : Positive Psychology : An Introduction’, American Psychologist
Chapter 10 : On Happiness and Human Potentials : A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-being’, Annual Review of Psychology
Chapter 11 : Reconsidering Happiness : The Costs of Distinguishing Between Hedonics and Eudaimonia’, Journal of Positive Psychology

Other Approaches
Chapter 12 : Happiness : A Survey of Research’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology
Chapter 13 : The Four Qualities of Life : Ordering Concepts and Measures of The Good Life’, Journal of Happiness Studies
Chapter 14 : What does Religion Tell Us About Happiness?’, Dialogue : A Journal of Religion and Philosophy, Nov : 2007

Part 2 : Measurement : Approaches, Challenges, Issues

Approaches to The Assessment of Happiness and Well-being
Chapter 15 : Happiness in Everyday Life : The Uses of Experience Sampling’, Journal of Happiness Studies
Chapter 16 : A Survey Method for Characterizing Daily Life Experience : The Day Reconstruction Method’, Science

Specific Measures for The Assessment of Happiness and Well-being
Chapter 17 : The Satisfaction with Life Scale’, Journal of Personality Assessment
Chapter 18 : Development and Validation of Brief Measures of Positive and Negative Affect : The PANAS Scales’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 19 : The Structure of Psychological Well-being Revisited’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 21 : The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale; Development and UK Validation', Health Quality of Life Outcomes
Chapter 22 : Youth Life Satisfaction Measures : A Review’, Journal of Positive Psychology

Structural Aspects of Happiness and Well-being Measures
Chapter 23 : Most People are Happy’, Psychological Science
Chapter 24 : Optimizing Well-being : The Empirical Encounter of Two Traditions’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 25 : Evidence for The Independence of Positive and Negative Well-being : Implications for The Quality of Life Assessment’, British Journal of Health Psychology
Chapter 26 : Positive Affect and The Complex Dynamics of Human Flourishing’, American Psychologist

Volume II

Part 3 : Causes and Correlates of Happiness and Well-being : What Makes Us happy?

Evolutionary Approaches
Chapter 27 : The Evolution of Happiness’, American Psychologist

General Approaches
Chapter 28 : Causes and Correlates of Happiness, Well-being : The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology
Chapter 29 : 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

Psychological Approaches
Chapter 35 : Lottery Winners and Accident Victims : Is Happiness Relative?’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 36 : Self-concordance, Goal-attainment, and The Pursuit of Happiness : Can There be an Upward Spiral?’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 37 : Maximizing Versus Satisficing : Happiness is a Matter of Choice’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 38 : Strengths of Character, Orientations to Happiness, and Life Satisfaction’, Journal of Positive Psychology

Social and Cultural Approaches
Chapter 39 : A Dark Side of The American Dream : Correlates of Financial Success as a Central Life Aspiration’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 40 : Factors Predicting The Subjective Well-being of Nations’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 41 : Cross-situational Consistency of Affective Experiences Across Cultures’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 42 : Dynamic Spread of Happiness in a Large Social Network : Longitudinal Analysis Over 20 Years in The Framingham Heart Study’, British Medical Journal

Economic Approaches
Chapter 43 : Rationality, Joy and Freedom’, Critical Review
Chapter 44 : Happiness, Economy and Institutions’, Economic Journal
Chapter 45 : Income and Happiness : Towards a Unified Theory’, Economic Journal

Biological Approaches
Chapter 46 : Making a Life Worth Living : Neural Correlates of Well-being’, Psychological Science
Chapter 47 : Understanding Well-being in The Evolutionary Context of Brain Development’, The Science of Well-being
Chapter 48 : Positive Affect and Health-related Neuroendocrine, Cardiovascular, and Inflammatory Responses’, Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, USA
Chapter 49 : Psychological Well-being and Ill-being : Do They Have Distinct or Mirrored Biological Correlates?’, PsychoTherapy and Psychosomatics

Volume III

Part 4 : Consequences of Happiness and Well-being

General Consequences
Chapter 50 : Expressions of Positive Emotion in Women’s College Yearbook Pictures and Their Relationship to Personality and Life Outcomes Across Adulthood’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 51 : The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect : Does Happiness Lead to Success?’, Psychological Bulletin

Biological Consequences
Chapter 52 : The Undoing Effect of Positive Emotions’, Motivation and Emotion

Psychological Consequences
Chapter 53 : Positive Affect, Cognitive Processes and Social Behaviour, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
Chapter 54 : Positive Emotions Broaden The Scope of Attention and Thought-Action Repertoires’, Cognition and Emotion

Social Consequences
Chapter 55 : Happiness and Economic Performance’, Economic Journal
Chapter 56 : The Job Satisfaction-Job Performance Relationship : A Qualitative and Quantitative Review’, Psychological Bulletin

Health Consequences
Chapter 57 : Positive Emotions in Early Life and Longevity : Findings from The Nun Study’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 58 : Emotional Style and Susceptibility to The Common Cold’, Psychosomatic Medicine
Chapter 59 : Happiness and Health : Environmental and Genetic Contributions to The Relationship Between Subjective Well-being, Perceived Health, and Somatic Illness’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 60 : Does Positive Affect Influence Health?’, Psychological Bulletin
Chapter 61 : Positive Psychological Well-being and Mortality : A Quantitative Review of Prospective Observational Studies’, Psychosomatic Medicine

Volume IV

Part 5 : Interventions and Enhancements
Chapter 62 : Development of a Program to Increase Personal Happiness’, Journal of Counseling Psychology
Chapter 63 : Increasing Happiness Through Cognitive Retraining’, New Zealand Psychologist
Chapter 64 : Counting Blessings Versus Burdens : An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-being in Daily Life’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Chapter 65 : Pursuing Happiness : The Architecture of Sustainable Change’, Review of General Psychology
Chapter 66 : Positive Psychology Progress : Empirical Validation of Interventions’, American Psychologist
Chapter 67 : Enhancing Well-Being and Alleviating Depressive Symptoms with Positive Psychology Interventions : A Practice-Friendly Meta-Analysis’

Part 6 : Public Policy
Chapter 68 : Human Satisfactions and Public Policy’, Economic Journal
Chapter 69 : Beyond Money : Toward an Economy of Well-being’, Psychological Science in The Public Interest
Chapter 70 : The Greatest Happiness Principle : Happiness as a Public Policy Aim, Positive Psychology in Practice
Chapter 71 : A Well-being Manifesto for a Flourishing Society, The Science of Well-being
Chapter 72 : Progress, Sustainability and Human Well-being : Is a New Worldview Emerging?’, International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development
Chapter 73 : A New Approach to Reducing Disorder and Improving Well-being’, Perspectives on Psychological Science