The document discusses hedonic well-being, highlighting its significance in understanding subjective experiences of happiness and their impact on physical health and social engagement. It covers concepts such as positive emotions, the broaden-and-build theory, and cultural differences in perceiving happiness, particularly between individualistic and collectivist societies. Additionally, it addresses the challenges in measuring hedonic experience due to adaptation and memory biases.

1. THE “GOOD LIFE” PART 2:
HEDONIC WELL-BEING
Pre class lecture

2. WHY IS UNDERSTANDING HEDONIC
WELL-BEING IMPORTANT?
• Aristotle thought the good life was a life of “virtue in action” –that pleasure, when not part of a thoughtfully
chosen virtuous action, was often a distraction (Thus, big proponent of the ‘meaning’ leg of the three legged stool
of well being –and of course, we saw that a meaning orientation contributes to life satisfaction more than a
pleasure orientation)
• BUT – the pleasure we derive from subjective experiences remains important – and most of us both value and
pursue feelings of happiness. Hedonic well-being also ripples outward –impacting physical health, cognitive
creativity, and social engagement.
• Today’s mini-lecture:
• Positive emotions function; adaptation across time; differences in importance across cultures
• In class lecture: positive emotions and health; why studying them is hard; but why boosting them is easy
• Aaaand, positive emotion boosting exercises!

3. WHAT IS HEDONIC WELL-
BEING?
• 1999 Daniel Kahneman proposed study of
hedonics as “what makes experiences and life and
pleasant or unpleasant”
• Hedonic well-being is thus subjective experience
of how one “feels” in the moment, or how one
feels in general about life as a whole
• These subjective experiences are important
because they *powerfully* impact physical health
(which we’ll talk about in class), as well as
happiness

4. POSITIVE EMOTIONS. . .MORE THAN JUST
HAPPINESS
• Happiness/Joy
• Contentment
• Amusement
• Wonder/Awe
• Love
• Hope
• Relief
• Gratitude
• Anticipation
• Pride
But what are they for?. . .

5. FUNCTIONAL THEORY OF EMOTIONS: EMOTIONS PREPARE US
FOR ACTION WITH SPECIFIC ACTION TENDENCIES
• Fear…………………………escape
• Anger………………………attack
• Disgust……………………...expel/reject
• Guilt………………………...make amends
• Etc…

6. IT is going to eat
me…
FEAR.
Freeze/Vigilant
attention to find
escape route
IT is going to eat
my child…
ANGER.
Body prepares to
fight off the attack

7. Tiger I’ve raised
from a baby cub
trusts me enough
to snuggle purring
in my lap. . .
??????

8. THE BROADEN-AND-BUILD THEORY
OF POSITIVE EMOTIONS
• Positive emotions increase
the breadth of the
momentary thought action
repertoire. . .and help build
psychological and social
resources, and undo the
effects of negative emotions.
Barbara Fredrickson
UNC-Chapel Hill

9. POSITIVE EMOTIONS BROADEN
THOUGHT-ACTION REPERTOIRES –ACROSS MAMMALS
• Joy……………………….play
Interest……………….....explore
• Contentment……….....savor
• Love…………………......all of the above

10. POSITIVE EMOTIONS BUILD
DURABLE PERSONAL RESOURCES
• Social resources (relationships)
• Intellectual resources (creativity)
• Psychological resources (resilience!)

11. • Contentment
• Joy
• Neutral
• Anger
• Fear
Between-
Participants
Emotion
Conditions:
random
assignment to a
movie inspiring:
• Global-LocalVisual
Processing
• Breadth ofThought-Action
Repertoire
Dependent
Measures:
BROADENING
STUDY

12. GLOBAL VS LOCAL

13. GLOBAL PREFERENCE
3 4 5 6
Fear
Anger
Neutral
Joy
Content

14. BREADTH OF THOUGHT ACTION
REPERTOIRE
• Asked participants to
• … take a moment to imagine being in a situation yourself in which this particular
emotion would arise (the one you wrote on the previous page that the movie
made you feel). Concentrate on all the emotion you would feel and live it as vividly
and as deeply as possible. Given this feeling, please list all the things you would like to
do right now.
• Coded for breadth/diversity of actions
• E,g,, eat a donut, eat an apple, buy a snack, eat a sandwich = 1
• BUT eat a donut, go for a run, play a game, call a friend = 4

15. BREADTH OF
THOUGHT-ACTION REPERTOIRE
5 10 15
Fear
Anger
Neutral
Joy
Content

16. • Context: Cognitive Flexibility
• 18-25 years old (n = 65)
• 60– 85 years old (n = 62)
• Between-Ps Manipulation:
• Positive mood
• Neutral
• Dependent Measure:
• Creative problem solving
Alice Isen
Cornell University
BROADENING AND AGING

17. THE CANDLE PROBLEM
Using only the objects shown in the
picture, mount the candle on the wall.

18. THE CANDLE PROBLEM

19. THE CANDLE PROBLEM

20. UNDOING STUDY:
CAN POSITIVE
EMOTIONS REDUCE
THE STRESS OF
SPEECH ANXIETY?
• Contentment
• Joy
• Neutral
• Sadness
Between-
Participants
Emotion
Conditions:
random
assignment to a
movie inspiring:
• Speed of
Cardiovascular
Recovery (HR, BP)
Dependent
Measures:

21. 0 20 40 60
Sadness
Neutral
Joy
Content
Time in seconds
DURATION OF CARDIOVASCULAR REACTIVITY

22. COULD HELP EXPLAIN WHY
POS EMO IS GOOD FOR
HEALTH
• Find out in class! And find out what nuns
have to do with our knowledge base on
this question ☺

23. OK, SO FEELING GOOD = GOOD.
• But . . .
• Do we become “accustomed” to feeling good, and constantly need more?
• Are positive feelings equally important in determining life satisfaction across cultures?
• Your other two readings focused on these topics.

24. ADAPTATION AND THE HEDONIC
TREADMILL
• Does positivity fade? Do we constantly need more? Is this one reason why
we’re bad a predicting what will make us happy?
• “If I get a fellowship to attend my dream grad school I’ll be so happy!”
• “When I get my PhD, I’ll be so happy!”
• “When I get my dream job, I’ll be so happy!”
• “When I get tenure, I’ll be so happy!”
• Hedonic treadmill theory:We adapt to our present (positive or negative)
circumstances…
• When positive, it also means we have a tendency to then strive for more, feel
like we “need” more because we become adapted to the current positive
situation

25. CLASSIC STUDY IN HEDONICS, BRICKMAN ET AL 1978
Lottery and controls –equally happy in the present –lottery and paraplegics –equally
hopeful about the future – lottery winners –lower then controls in pleasure they take
from mundane things.

26. ADAPTATION LEVEL THEORY –
THE HEDONIC TREADMILL
• Not just for lottery winners and paraplegics
(first study, but very very small number of
participants) –on average, humans adapt to
all good and bad things, and then return to
baseline (their genetic happiness “set
point”).
• Over 65,000 respondents, measured
annually over 20 years –self-reported life
satisfaction time lagged to important events
–like promotion versus job loss, marriage
versus widowhood, etc.

27. POSITIVE EMOTIONS MATTER LESS TO
OVERALL LIFE SATISFACTION IN
COLLECTIVIST CULTURES
• In individualistic cultures, the individual self (and
subjective feelings) are weighted more heavily than in
collectivist cultures (where a focus on others, duties
and responsibilities are weighted more)
• A study with 55,000 participants in WorldValues
Survey looked at how much positive affect/emotion
was related to overall life satisfaction
0.38
0.45
0.14
0.09
US W Germany Japan India
Correlation size between pos affect and life
satisfaction

28. SUH ET AL (1998),
STUDY 2
• Follow up study
• 6780 college students around the world
• Emotions vs norms in predicting life satisfaction. . .
• Its not that emotions don’t matter in collectivist cultures, it
is just more balanced in terms of both emotions and living
up to cultural norms being weighted in life satisfaction
judgments, whereas in individualistic cultures, emotion
dominated
• I look forward to discussing this more in class –and whether
it made you rethink whether you think this might represent
an “advantage” for members of collectivist cultures in terms
of better balance in the three-legged stool of well-being
(assuming living up to cultural and social and relationship
norms are often what offer meaning –at least according to
your Baumeister reading from last class) ☺

29. HEDONIC EXPERIENCE: IMPORTANT,
BUT HARD TO MEASURE
• Massively important for wellbeing –including even how long we live (we’ll talk about the positive emotion –mortality
association in class)
• Massively important to study – but challenging --not only because adaptation (hedonic treadmill) means people are bad at
forecasting what will make us happy….but also because of memory tricks that mean we can’t even remember what made us
happy in the past! (we’ll talk more about this in class too!)
• See you soon! ☺