What is Happiness? Why is Happiness Important.- Happiness versus Preference.- Some Conceptual Mistakes about Happiness.- Happiness or Life Satisfaction.- Happiness as the Only Intrinsic Value.- The Measurement and Comparison of Happiness.

This open access book defines happiness intuitively and explores several common conceptual mistakes with regard to happiness. It then moves on to address topical issues including, but not limited to, whether money can buy you happiness, why happiness is ultimately the only thing of intrinsic value, and the various factors important for happiness. It also presents a more reliable and interpersonally comparable method for measuring happiness and discusses twelve factors, from A to L, that are crucial for individual happiness: attitude, balance, confidence, dignity, engagement, family/friends, gratitude, health, ideals, joyfulness, kindness and love. Further, it examines important public policy considerations, taking into account recent advances in economics, the environmental sciences, and happiness studies. Novel issues discussed include: an environmentally responsible happy nation index to supplement GDP, the East Asian happiness gap, a case for stimulating pleasure centres of the brain, and an argument for higher public spending.

Subjective well-being refers to how people experience and evaluate their lives and specific domains and activities in their lives. This information has already proven valuable to researchers, who have produced insights about the emotional states and experiences of people belonging to different groups, engaged in different activities, at different points in the life course, and involved in different family and community structures. Research has also revealed relationships between people's self-reported, subjectively assessed states and their behavior and decisions. Research on subjective well-being has been ongoing for decades, providing new information about the human condition. During the past decade, interest in the topic among policy makers, national statistical offices, academic researchers, the media, and the public has increased markedly because of its potential for shedding light on the economic, social, and health conditions of populations and for informing policy decisions across these domains. Subjective Well-Being: Measuring Happiness, Suffering, and Other Dimensions of Experience explores the use of this measure in population surveys. This report reviews the current state of research and evaluates methods for the measurement. In this report, a range of potential experienced well-being data applications are cited, from cost-benefit studies of health care delivery to commuting and transportation planning, environmental valuation, and outdoor recreation resource monitoring, and even to assessment of end-of-life treatment options. Subjective Well-Being finds that, whether used to assess the consequence of people's situations and policies that might affect them or to explore determinants of outcomes, contextual and covariate data are needed alongside the subjective well-being measures. This report offers guidance about adopting subjective well-being measures in official government surveys to inform social and economic policies and considers whether research has advanced to a point which warrants the federal government collecting data that allow aspects of the population's subjective well-being to be tracked and associated with changing conditions.

Fred Feldman presents a study of the nature and value of happiness. He offers critical discussions of the main philosophical and psychological theories of happiness, and a presentation and defense of his own theory of happiness.

This comprehensive Encyclopedia delves into the underpinnings, approaches, and recent advancements in the dynamic global landscape of happiness and wellbeing research. Laying out the foundational concepts and disciplinary perspectives in the field, international leading and diverse authors survey the determinants and mechanisms which are associated with happiness, quality of life and subjective wellbeing. This title contains one or more Open Access entries.

This thought-provoking book exposes the values, judgements, and hierarchies that underlie ageism in care settings. Destabilizing the assumption that biases like ageism are always bad, Buetow suggests that ageism is normatively neutral and that truly person-centred care requires situated acknowledgement of and responsiveness to its negative and positive aspects. Buetow contends that respecting meaningful age differences between persons as moral agents puts ageism on the radar of care environments, weakening barriers to engagement. His analysis moves from concern for age-friendliness to prudent ageism that enables person-centred care to apply practical wisdom in everyday, age-sensitive judgement and decision-making. Challenging political correctness and advocating for justice rather than social justice, Buetow discusses how prudent ageism may advantage some age groups over others in particular circumstances while providing a moral structure for managing real rather than socially constructed differences. Looking at how age-sensitive judgments combined with a person first approach can inform research, policy, and practice, this book will interest students and researchers from fields like health and social care, and disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, politics, and philosophy.

Remediating deficits and managing disabilities has been a central preoccupation for clinical psychologists. Positive Psychology, in contrast, is concerned with the enhancement of happiness and well-being, involving the scientific study of the role of personal strengths and positive social systems in the promotion of optimal wellbeing. Alan Carr's Positive Psychology has become essential reading for anyone requiring a thorough and accessible introduction to the field. This new edition retains all the features that made the first edition so popular, including: accounts of major theories and relevant research learning objectives chapter summaries research and personal development questions suggestions for further reading measures for use in research glossaries of new terms. The book has also been completely updated to take account of recent research and major advances, and includes a new chapter on Positive Psychotherapy, an extended account of research on character strengths and virtues, and a discussion of recent ground-breaking research on emotional intelligence. This new edition of Positive Psychology will prove a valuable resource for psychology students and lecturers, as well as those involved in postgraduate training in related areas such as clinical psychology, social work, counselling and psychotherapy.