The
way individuals feel about their life in general depends on their evaluation
about it. This evaluation determines how satisfied a person may be, how
positive they feel about themselves, how well they think they can cope with
threatening situations, etc., on the whole playing an important role in their
quality of life. Such an evaluation is based on current emotions, expectations,
and past experiences, and differ from person to person. These subjective
elements involved in the evaluation of an individual’s life has been referred
to as subjective wellbeing.
Subjective
wellbeing involves cognitive evaluation and positive affect, giving emphasis to
life satisfaction, relationship quality, meaning, and achievements, which have
been found to be significant when making an assessment of how one feels. Thus,
subjective wellbeing is about how people evaluate their life in a positive
manner.
The
idea of subjective wellbeing emerged from utilitarianism or the utilitarian
philosophy. Utilitarianism was a British political and ethical movement, and
the philosopher Jeremy Bentham was one of its major spokespersons. Bentham disagreed
with the metaphysical conceptions of social institutions. He was, instead,
influenced by the concept of hedonism – seeking pleasure and avoiding pain –
and applied it to his theory of politics and ethics. He defined human happiness
completely in terms of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, and suggested that
the same idea can be used with respect to ethics and politics.
For
ethics, Bentham suggested that calculations can be made in terms of pleasures
and pains involved, and thus determine the correct action. In the same way, for
politics, Bentham suggested that the best government is the one that brought
the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. Bentham was the first
to apply hedonism to the society as a whole. It turned out to be highly
influential and led to many social reforms.
The
term utility used by Bentham denotes all that “tends to produce benefit,
advantage, good, or happiness”. According to Bentham, the presence of pleasure
and the absence of pain are the defining characteristics of a good life. For him,
happiness is the greatest good, and that each person’s happiness is equal in
value to anybody else’s. It was this emphasis on happiness being the greatest
good, that makes utilitarianism as the forebearer of the concept of subjective
wellbeing, giving a good understanding of the concept.
The
evaluation of life with respect to subjective wellbeing gets a better
understanding when looking at the three domains of subject wellbeing. These
domains are emotional wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, and social wellbeing.
This indicates that individuals evaluate their life in terms of whether or not
they feel good about it, function well personally, and function well socially. Additionally,
emotional wellbeing is referred to as a positive feeling state, and
psychological and social wellbeing are referred to as a positive functioning state.
Emotional
wellbeing is the emotional quality of an individual’s life. It involves the
experience of a wide range of emotions that make a person feel pleasant or
unpleasant. It is an evaluation of life with respect to happiness and life
satisfaction. It involves cognitive as well as affective aspects.
Emotional
wellbeing is a subjective state involving a combination and balance of a wide
range of feelings like energy, openness, happiness, confidence, etc. Factors
like optimism, self-acceptance, positive relationships, playing to one’s
strengths, openness, passion, meaning in life, and being able to grow from
adversity, have been found to play a role in emotional wellbeing.
The
experience of emotional wellbeing does not mean that the person is always
happy. It rather means that the person is able to deal effectively with
psychological issues like stress, depression, and anxiety. Emotional wellbeing
is, thus, a state of managing feelings in a constructive manner, so that there
is not too much of distress, and that there is more of positivity.
The
evaluation of life with respect to positive functioning is represented in
psychological wellbeing, the second domain of subjective wellbeing. Psychological
wellbeing can be said to be the perception of proper psychological functioning.
It involves subjective experiences of positive feelings and cognitive
appraisals. It is a combination of positive affective states and optimal
effective functioning, that is, it is both feeling good and functioning effectively.
Psychological
wellbeing is a multifaceted concept. There are six dimensions of psychological wellbeing – self-acceptance,
positive relationships, personal growth, purpose in life, environmental
mastery, and autonomy – all of which play an important role in psychological
functioning and evaluation of life. Self-acceptance involves maintaining the
same level of self-esteem during various circumstances when things may seem uncertain,
complex, and unpleasant. An individual trying to be positive in varying
circumstances displays high self-acceptance. Positive relationships indicate
the ability to develop long-lasting, satisfying relationships. Autonomy involves
self-determination and being guided by self and internalized standards rather then
being guided by conformity and compliance.
Environmental
mastery involves actively molding the environment according to one’s needs. The
individual must first identify his or her needs and then be able to derive it
from within the surroundings. Purpose in life involves having direction, being
goal-oriented, despite circumstances being unsatisfactory. Having purpose in
life brings about high level of meaning, which makes evaluation of life to be positive. Personal growth involves enhancing skills, leading to personal
positive development. It also involves seeking opportunities for growth, and
being able to identify and overcome challenges in life. Clearly, on the basis
of these dimensions, a high level of psychological wellbeing will lead to more
positivity in life.
Along
with psychological wellbeing, another aspect of positive functioning of subjective
wellbeing is social wellbeing. Social wellbeing can be described with respect
to social challenges. It is about evaluation of life more with respect to the
societal level rather than personal criteria. Social wellbeing consists of five
dimensions – social integration, social contribution, social coherence, social
acceptance, and social actualization – all of which contribute significantly to
the evaluation of positive social functioning, and life on the whole.
Social
integration is the evaluation of life with respect to the relationship that an
individual has with the community and society. It is about how well an individual
belongs to the society and how well he or she sees others to be similar. Social
contribution is about how valuable an individual sees himself or herself within
the society, whether or not the individual feels that he or she could make some
useful contributions to the society. Social coherence is about how the social
world is perceived to be. It is about how the person sees the outside world
to be, that is, whether or not the society is organized and meaningful.
Social
acceptance is making an evaluation of the society in general, which determines
an evaluation of life. It is about how positive or negative does the person
view the society. A person high on social acceptance will view the world as a
favorable place to live. Social actualization is about an understanding of the
potential of the society. It is about the feeling of whether or not the
individual views the society as growing and evolving in a positive manner. In
general, it can be said that social wellbeing is about where the individual
sees himself or herself standing with respect to the society, based on these
five dimensions.
Therefore,
evaluation of life is done on a wide range of aspects like how good a person
feels, how well the person thinks he or she is functioning psychologically, and
how well a person thinks he or she is functioning socially. The former being a state of feeling and the latter two being a state of functioning. It is based on a
wide range of positive feelings, subjective experiences and cognitive appraisals,
and with respect to how the person feels about his or her standing in society.
All of this constitutes to subjective wellbeing. A high subjective wellbeing, that is, positive feeling and functioning, then indicates that the individual evaluates his or her life in a positive and favorable manner. It is this positive evaluation or high subjective wellbeing that makes an individual deal effectively with psychological issues, uncertainties, complexities, and adversities that keep occurring in life.
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