Well-being

Well-being, also known as wellness, "prudential value" or "quality of life", refers to what is intrinsically valuable relative "to" someone. So the well-being of a person is what is ultimately good "for" this person, what is in the self-interest of this person. Well-being can refer to both positive and negative well-being. In its positive sense, it is sometimes contrasted with ill-being as its opposite. The term "subjective well-being" denotes how people experience and evaluate their lives, usually measured in relation to self-reported well-being obtained through questionnaires. Sometimes different types of well-being are distinguished, like mental well-being, physical well-being, economic wellbeing or emotional well-being. The different forms of well-being are often closely interlinked. For example, improved physical well-being (e.g., by reducing or ceasing an addiction) is associated with improved emotional well-being. Well-being plays a central role in ethics since what we ought to do depends, at least to some degree, on what would make someone's life go better or worse. According to welfarism, there are no other values besides well-being.
The terms well-being, pleasure and happiness are used in overlapping ways in everyday language but their meanings tend to come apart in technical contexts like philosophy or psychology. Pleasure refers to experience that feels good and is usually seen as one constituent of well-being. But there may be other factors, such as health, virtue, knowledge or the fulfillment of desires. Happiness, often seen either as "the individual’s balance of pleasant over unpleasant experience" or as the state of being satisfied with one's life as a whole, is also commonly taken to be a constituent of well-being.
Theories of well-being try to determine what is essential to all forms of well-being. Hedonistic theories equate well-being with the balance of pleasure over pain. Desire theories hold that well-being consists in desire-satisfaction: the higher the number of satisfied desires, the higher the well-being. Objective list theories state that a person's well-being depends on a list of factors that may include both subjective and objective elements.
Well-being is the central subject of positive psychology, whose goal is to discover the factors that contribute to human well-being. Martin Seligman, for example, suggests that these factors consist in having "positive emotions", being "engaged" in an activity, having good "relationships" with other people, finding "meaning" in one's life and a sense of "accomplishment" in the pursuit of one's goals.
The Oxford English Dictionary traces the term "well-being" to a 16th-century calque of the Italian concept "benessere".
Theories of well-being.
The "well-being" of a person is what is good for this person. Theories of well-being try to determine which features of a state are responsible for this state contributing to the person's well-being. Theories of well-being are often classified into "hedonistic theories", "desire theories," and "objective list theories". Hedonistic theories and desire theories are "subjective" theories. According to them, the degree of well-being of a person depends on the subjective mental states and attitudes of this person. Objective list theories, on the other hand, allow that things can benefit a person "independent" of that person's subjective attitudes towards these things.
For "hedonistic theories", the mental states in question are experiences of pleasure and pain. One example of such an account can be found in Jeremy Bentham's works, where it is suggested that the value of experiences only depends on their duration and the intensity of pleasure or pain present in them. Various counterexamples have been formulated against this view. They usually involve cases in which common-sense suggests that options with a lower aggregate pleasure are preferable, for example, that the intellectual or aesthetic pleasures are superior to sensory pleasures or that it would be unwise to enter Robert Nozick's experience machine. These counter-examples are not knock-down arguments but the proponent of hedonistic theories faces the challenge of explaining why common-sense misleads us in the problematic cases.
"Desire theories" can avoid some of the problems of hedonistic theories by holding that well-being consists in desire-satisfaction: the higher the number of satisfied desires, the higher the well-being. One problem for some versions of desire theory is that not all desires are good: some desires may even have terrible consequences for the agent. Desire theorists have tried to avoid this objection by holding that what matters are not actual desires but the desires the agent would have if she was fully informed.
"Objective list theories" state that a person's well-being depends on a list of factors. This list may also include subjective factors like a pleasure-pain-balance or desire-satisfaction besides factors that are independent of the subject's attitudes, like friendship or having virtues. Objective list theories face the problem of explaining how subject-independent factors can determine a person's well-being even if this person doesn't care about these factors. Another objection concerns the selection of these factors. Different theorists have provided very different lists. These lists seem to constitute arbitrary selections unless a clear criterion could be provided why all and only the items on the list are relevant factors.
Scientific approaches.
Three subdisciplines in psychology are critical for the study of psychological well-being:
There are two approaches typically taken to understand psychological well-being:
According to Guttman and Levy (1982) well-being is "...a special case of attitude". This approach serves two purposes in the study of well-being: "developing and testing a [systematic] theory for the structure of [interrelationships] among varieties of well-being, and integration of well-being theory with the ongoing cumulative theory development in the fields of attitude of related research".
Models and components of well-being.
Many different models have been developed.
Causal Network Models of Well-being (and Ill-being).
Philosopher Michael Bishop developed a causal network account of well-being in "The Good Life: Unifying The Philosophy And Psychology Of Well-being". The causal network account holds that well-being is the product of many factors—feelings, beliefs, motivations, habits, resources, etc.—that are causally related in ways that explain increases in well-being or ill-being. More recently causal network theories of ill-being have been applied to depression and digital technology. Network approaches have also been applied to mental health more generally.
Diener: tripartite model of subjective well-being.
Diener's tripartite model of subjective well-being is one of the most comprehensive models of well-being in psychology. It was synthesized by Diener in 1984, positing "three distinct but often related components of wellbeing: frequent positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and cognitive evaluations such as life satisfaction".
Cognitive, affective and contextual factors contribute to subjective well-being. According to Diener and Suh, subjective well-being is "...based on the idea that how each person thinks and feels about his or her life is important".
Six-factor Model of Psychological Well-being.
Carol Ryff's multidimensional model of psychological well-being postulated six factors which are key for well-being:
Corey Keyes: flourishing.
According to Corey Keyes, who collaborated with Carol Ryff, mental well-being has three components, namely emotional or subjective well-being (also called "hedonic" well-being), psychological well-being, and social well-being (together also called "eudaimonic" well-being). Emotional well-being concerns subjective aspects of well-being, in concreto, "feeling" well, whereas psychological and social well-being concerns skills, abilities, and psychological and social functioning.
Keyes model of mental well-being has received extensive empirical support across cultures.
Seligman: positive psychology.
Well-being is a central concept in positive psychology. Positive psychology is concerned with eudaimonia, "the good life", reflection about what holds the greatest value in life – the factors that contribute the most to a well-lived and fulfilling life. While not attempting a strict definition of the good life, positive psychologists agree that one must live a happy, engaged, and meaningful life in order to experience "the good life". Martin Seligman referred to "the good life" as "using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification".
PERMA-theory.
In "Flourish" (2011) Seligman argued that "meaningful life" can be considered as 3 different categories. The resulting acronym is PERMA: Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and purpose, and Accomplishments. It is a mnemonic for the five elements of Martin Seligman's well-being theory:
Biopsychosocial model of wellbeing.
The biopsychosocial model of wellbeing emphasises the modifiable components needed for an individual to have a sense of wellbeing. These are:
UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) definition.
The UK ONS defines wellbeing ""as having 10 broad dimensions which have been shown to matter most to people in the UK as identified through a national debate. The dimensions are: 
"Personal well-being is a particularly important dimension which we define as how satisfied we are with our lives, our sense that what we do in life is worthwhile, our day to day emotional experiences (happiness and anxiety) and our wider mental wellbeing.""
The ONS then introduced four questions pertaining to wellbeing in their 2011 national survey of the UK population, relating to evaluative well-being, eudemonic well-being, and positive and negative affect. They later switched to referring to the construct being measured as "personal well-being".
Global studies.
Research on positive psychology, well-being, eudaimonia and happiness, and the theories of Diener, Ryff, Keyes and Seligmann covers a broad range of levels and topics, including "the biological, personal, relational, institutional, cultural, and global dimensions of life". The World Happiness Report series provide annual updates on the global status of subjective well-being. A global study using data from 166 nations, provided a country ranking of psycho-social well-being. The latter study showed that subjective well-being and psycho-social well-being (i.e. eudaimonia) measures capture distinct constructs and are both needed for a comprehensive understanding of mental well-being.
Well-being as a political goal.
Both the UK and New Zealand have begun to focus on population well-being within their political aims.