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Meaning of happiness in positive psychology

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The meaning of happiness in Positive Psychology really depends on who you ask.
Happiness is often known by another name in positive psychology research: subjective well-being, or SWB. Some believe happiness is one of the core components of SWB, while others believe happiness is SWB. Regardless, you’ll frequently find SWB used as a shorthand for happiness in the literature.
And speaking of the literature, you will find references to SWB everywhere! A quick Google search for the word “happiness” brings up just over 2 million results (as of January 6th, 2019). Further, a quick search for the same term in two of psychology’s biggest online databases (PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES) returns 19,139 results from academic and other journals, books, dissertations, and more.

Is it Difficult to Define Scientifically?

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With so many takes on happiness, it’s no wonder that happiness is a little difficult to define scientifically; there is certainly disagreement about what, exactly, happiness is.

According to researchers Chu Kim-Prieto, Ed Diener, and their colleagues (2005), there are three main ways that happiness has been approached in positive psychology:

  1. Happiness as a global assessment of life and all its facets
  2. Happiness as a recollection of past emotional experiences
  3. Happiness as an aggregation of multiple emotional reactions across time (Kim-Prieto, Diener, Tamir, Scollon, & Diener, 2005)

Although they generally all agree on what happiness feels like—being satisfied with life, in a good mood, feeling positive emotions, feeling enjoyment, etc.—researchers have found it difficult to agree on the scope of happiness.
However, for our purposes in this piece, it’s enough to work off of a basic definition that melds the Oxford Dictionary’s definition with that of positive psychologists: happiness is a state characterized by contentment and general satisfaction with one’s current situation.

Image from google
https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/what-is-happiness/

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