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Policy Points Several intergovernmental organizations (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Health Organization, United Nations) are urging countries to use well-being indicators (e.g., life satisfaction) in addition to traditional economic indicators when making important policy decisions. As the number of governments implementing this new approach grows, so does the need to continue evaluating the health and well-being outcomes we might observe from policies aimed at improving life satisfaction. The results of this study suggest that life satisfaction is a valuable target for policies aiming to enhance several indicators of psychosocial well-being, health behaviors, and physical health outcomes. CONTEXT: Several intergovernmental organizations (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Health Organization, United Nations) are urging countries to use well-being indicators (e.g., life satisfaction) in addition to traditional economic indicators when making important policy decisions. As the number of governments implementing this new approach grows, so does the need to continue evaluating the health and well-being outcomes we might observe from policies aimed at improving life satisfaction. METHODS: We evaluated whether positive change in life satisfaction (between t0 ;2006/2008 and t1 ;2010/2012) was associated with better outcomes on 35 indicators of physical, behavioral, and psychosocial health and well-being (in t2 ;2014/2016). Data were from 12,998 participants in the University of Michigan's Health and Retirement Study-a prospective and nationally representative cohort of US adults over age 50. FINDINGS: Participants with the highest (versus lowest) life satisfaction had better subsequent outcomes on some physical health indicators (lower risk of pain, physical functioning limitations, and mortality; lower number of chronic conditions; and higher self-rated health) and health behaviors (lower risk of sleep problems and more frequent physical activity), and nearly all psychosocial indicators (higher positive affect, optimism, purpose in life, mastery, health mastery, financial mastery, and likelihood of living with spouse/partner; and lower depression, depressive symptoms, hopelessness, negative affect, perceived constraints, and loneliness) over the 4-year follow-up period. However, life satisfaction was not subsequently associated with many specific health conditions (i.e., diabetes, hypertension, stroke, cancer, heart disease, lung disease, arthritis, overweight/obesity, or cognitive impairment), other health behaviors (i.e., binge drinking or smoking), or frequency of contact with children, family, or friends. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that life satisfaction is a valuable target for policies aiming to enhance several indicators of psychosocial well-being, health behaviors, and physical health outcomes.

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Most people hold beliefs about personality characteristics typical of members of their own and others' cultures. These perceptions of national character may be generalizations from personal experience, stereotypes with a "kernel of truth," or inaccurate stereotypes. We obtained national character ratings of 3989 people from 49 cultures and compared them with the average personality scores of culture members assessed by observer ratings and self-reports. National character ratings were reliable but did not converge with assessed traits. Perceptions of national character thus appear to be unfounded stereotypes that may serve the function of maintaining a national identity.

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Within- and between-nations differences in norms for experiencing emotions were analyzed in a cross-cultural study with 1,846 respondents from 2 individualistic (United States, Australia) and 2 collectivistic (China, Taiwan) countries. A multigroup latent class analysis revealed that there were both universal and culture-specific types of norms for experiencing emotions. Moreover, strong intranational variability in norms for affect could be detected, particularly for collectivistic nations. Unexpectedly, individualistic nations were most uniform in norms, particularly with regard to pleasant affect. Individualistic and collectivistic nations differed most strongly in norms for self-reflective emotions (e.g., pride and guilt). Norms for emotions were related to emotional experiences within nations. Furthermore, there were strong national differences in reported emotional experiences, even when norms were held constant.

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Three studies were conducted to examine the role of global life satisfaction in the discrepancy between specific and global domain satisfaction. Participants rated both global (e.g., education) and the corresponding, specific domain (e.g., professors, textbooks) satisfactions. In 3 studies, we found that individuals with higher life satisfaction evaluated global domain as a whole as more satisfying than those with lower life satisfaction, given the same level of satisfaction with specific domains. In Study 3, we also found that, given the same level of satisfaction during the previous 2 weeks, individuals with higher life satisfaction rated the global domains in general as more satisfying than those with lower life satisfaction. Overall, the association between globallife satisfaction and evaluative enhancement of global domains was most consistent in "self" and "social relationships." Finally, the effect of global life satisfaction on evaluative enhancement remained significant, controlling for extraversion and neuroticism.

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Extraversion is a broad, multifaceted trait, yet researchers are still unsure of its defining characteristics. One possibility is that the essential feature of extraversion is the tendency to enjoy social situations. An alternative possibility is that extraversion represents sensitivity to rewards and the tendency to experience pleasant affect. In three studies, participants rated situations that varied on two dimensions: (a) whether they were social or nonsocial and (b) whether they were very pleasant, moderately pleasant, moderately unpleasant, or very unpleasant. Extraverts only rated social situations more positively than introverts did when the situations were pleasant, and extraverts also rated nonsocial situations more positively than introverts did if the situations were pleasant. Thus, the pleasantness of situations was more important than whether they were social or nonsocial in determining extraverts' and introverts' enjoyment.

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In three studies, we explored how the ending of a life influences the perceived desirability of that life. We consistently observed that participants neglected duration in judging the global quality of life. Across all the studies, the end of life was weighted heavily, producing ratings that contradict a simple hedonic calculus in which years of pleasure and pain are summed. Respondents rated a wonderful life that ended abruptly as better than one with additional mildly pleasant years (the "James Dean Effect"). Similarly, a terrible life with additional moderately bad years was rated as more desirable than one ending abruptly without those unpleasant years (the "Alexander Solzhenitsyn Effect"). Finally, embedding moderately intense years in the middle of life did not produce effects as strong as adding those years to the end of life, suggesting that a life's ending is weighted especially heavily in judging quality of life.

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OBJECTIVES: Data from a cross-sectional survey of the Swiss general population were used in an explorative attempt to apply the transtheoretical model of behavioural change to perceived stress. METHODS: The sample comprised 575 respondents who reported having experienced stressful situations in the previous month. Other variables assessed included gender, age, education, reported symptoms, and three constructs representing stages and processes of change as well as self-efficacy. RESULTS: Findings indicated that (1) about one third of respondents appeared to cope successfully with the stressful situations they experienced, one third intended to do so, while one quarter appeared to have no intention of managing their stress more effectively. (2) There was no difference in stage of change distribution by gender or age, while those with higher education were more frequently represented in the latter stages than those with lower education. (3) Those in the maintenance stage reported significantly less symptoms than others. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that the assessment of readiness to change could be of valuable support in designing stage-specific interventions in the area of stress management.

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Psychologists have not determined the defining characteristics of extraversion. In four studies, the authors tested the hypothesis that extraversion facets are linked by reward sensitivity. According to this hypothesis, only facets that reflect reward sensitivity should load on a higher order extraversion factor. This model was tested against a model in which sociability links the facets. The authors also tested the generalizability of the model in a diverse sample of participants from 39 nations, and they tested the model using widely used extraversion scales. Results of all studies indicate that only facets that reflect reward sensitivity load on a higher order extraversion factor and that this factor correlates strongly with pleasant affect. Although sociability is undoubtedly an important part of extraversion, these results suggest that extraverts' sociability may be a by-product of reward sensitivity, rather than the core feature of the trait.

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One area of positive psychology analyzes subjective well-being (SWB), people's cognitive and affective evaluations of their lives. Progress has been made in understanding the components of SWB, the importance of adaptation and goals to feelings of well-being, the temperament underpinnings of SWB, and the cultural influences on well-being. Representative selection of respondents, naturalistic experience sampling measures, and other methodological refinements are now used to study SWB and could be used to produce national indicators of happiness.

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This section is devoted to articles about the structure of affect, the patterned interrelations of moods and emotions. Structural features of affect, such as a bipolar pleasantness-unpleasantness dimension, a circumplex ordering, prototypical discrete emotions, and separable positive and negative emotion clusters, are discussed. It is proposed that positive and negative affect systems create the conditions for the co-occurrence of discrete positive emotions with each other and of discrete negative emotions with each other. The experience of affect tends to be felt along a bipolar pleasantness-unpleasantness dimension because pleasant emotions and unpleasant emotions tend not to be experienced together at intense levels. To move beyond current knowledge, future research in the area must more often use non-self-report measures, more sophisticated statistical and measurement methods, dynamic as well as static data, systematically varied response formats, and experimental manipulations.

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Three studies tested hypotheses for sex differences in the recall of life events: differences in (a) affect intensity at encoding, (b) affect intensity at retrieval, (c) rehearsal, (d) detail of encoding, and (e) artifacts such as motivation or verbal ability. In Study 1 (N = 419), women recalled more positive (p < .01) and more negative (p < .05) life events than men. Differences in retrieval mood were not found. Study 2 (N = 55) replicated the recall differences and showed that neither rehearsal nor artifacts were responsible. Sex differences in recalling neutral everyday events also were obtained (p < .05), suggesting that affect intensity was not responsible. In Study 3 (N = 132), affective reactions to events were unrelated to recall, but sex differences in the detail of encoding (p < .001) were related to recall (p < .05). Sex differences in autobiographical memory are reliable and may be due to differences in the detail of encoding.

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Though the prevalence of cigarette smoking has declined it still remains the leading cause of premature death from chronic disease. In the prevention of tobacco associated disease the promotion of smoking cessation is a key strategy. This article presents a smoking cessation program based on the transtheoretical model, an empirical model distinguishing five stages of behavioral change. Specific interventions are matched to the current stage of change. Smokers in the intervention program repeatedly fill in questionnaires about their smoking habits, attitudes and strategies in the smoking cessation process. The individual questionnaires are analyzed by a computerized expert system which creates letters with comments on the smoking cessation process and suggestions for further steps from a pool of feedback paragraphs. A further component of the program are five stage-matched brochures. The efficacy of the expert system and its potential impact on Public Health are discussed.

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The convergent and discriminant validities of well-being concepts were examined using multitrait-multimethod matrix analyses (D. T. Campbell & D. W. Fiske, 1959) on 3 sets of data. In Study 1, participants completed measures of life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, self-esteem, and optimism on 2 occasions 4 weeks apart and also obtained 3 informant ratings. In Study 2, participants completed each of the 5 measures on 2 occasions 2 years apart and collected informant reports at Time 2. In Study 3, participants completed 2 different scales for each of the 5 constructs. Analyses showed that (a) life satisfaction is discriminable from positive and negative affect, (b) positive affect is discriminable from negative affect, (c) life satisfaction is discriminable from optimism and self-esteem, and (d) optimism is separable from trait measures of negative affect.

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New research uncovers some anti-intuitive insights into how many people are happy--and why.

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The effect of life events on subjective well-being (SWB) was explored in a 2-year longitudinal study of 115 participants. It was found that only life events during the previous 3 months influenced life satisfaction and positive and negative affect. Although recent life events influenced SWB even when personality at Time 1 was controlled, distal life events did not correlate with SWB. SWB and life events both showed a substantial degree of temporal stability. It was also found that good and bad life events tend to covary, both between individuals and across periods of the lives of individuals. Also, when events of the opposite valence were controlled, events correlated more strongly with SWB. The counterintuitive finding that good and bad events co-occur suggests an exciting avenue for explorations of the structure of life events.

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Subjective well-being (SWB) in 55 nations, reported in probability surveys and a large college student sample, was correlated with social, economic, and cultural characteristics of the nations. The SWB surveys, representing nations that include three fourths of the earth's population, showed strong convergence. Separate measures of the predictor variables also converged and formed scales with high reliability, with the exception of the comparison variables. High income, individualism, human rights, and societal equality correlated strongly with each other, and with SWB across surveys. Income correlated with SWB even after basic need fulfillment was controlled. Only individualism persistently correlated with SWB when other predictors were controlled. Cultural homogeneity, income growth, and income comparison showed either low or inconsistent relations with SWB.

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The covariation of resources such as money, family support, social skills, and intelligence with subjective well-being (SWB) was assessed in 195 college students. Informant ratings provided an index of resources. Self-reports, daily experience sampling, and informant reports were used to measure SWB. The authors concluded that resources taken together are moderately strong predictors of SWB. This conclusion, however, was qualified by the fact that life satisfaction was more closely related to resources than was affective well-being and that social and personal resources were in general more strongly related to SWB than were material resources. The findings also supported the hypothesis that resources correlate more strongly with SWB when they are relevant to an individual's idiographic personal strivings. A tendency was found for people to choose personal strivings for which they have relevant resources, and the degree of congruence of individuals' goals with resources was predictive of SWB.

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College students in 31 nations (N = 13,118) completed measures of self-esteem, life satisfaction, and satisfaction with specific domains (friends, family, and finances). The authors assessed whether cross-cultural variations in the strength of associations were related to societal dimensions including income and individualism. At the national level, individualism correlated -.24 (ns) with heterogeneity and .71 (p < .001) with wealth. At the individual level, self-esteem and life satisfaction were correlated .47 for the entire sample. This relation, however, was moderated by the individualism of the society. The associations of financial, friend, and family satisfactions with life satisfaction and with self-esteem also varied across nations. Financial satisfaction was a stronger correlate of life satisfaction in poorer countries. It was found that life satisfaction and self-esteem were clearly discriminable constructs. Satisfaction ratings, except for financial satisfaction, varied between slightly positive and fairly positive.

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Three studies examined the following hypotheses for the relation of subjective well-being (SWB) with memory for positive versus negative life events: (a) differences in retrieval mood, (b) the incidence of positive and negative events, (c) the interpretation of events, and (d) frequency of rehearsal. In Studies 1 (n = 420) and 2 (n = 94), the partial correlation of retrieval mood with recall, controlling for SWB, was trivial, suggesting that mood had little or no effect on recall. Endorsement frequencies of positive minus negative concrete events and interpretive events on checklists in Studies 2 and 3 each correlated with SWB (ps < .001), suggesting that both incidence and interpretation contributed to the recall differences. In Study 3, the recall of 55 Ss from Study 2 was retested after an 11-month interval. The lack of an interaction between SWB and recall change suggested that rehearsal did not contribute to the recall differences.

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