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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, youโ€™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 โ€œhappinessโ€ brings up just over 2 million results (as of January 6th, 2019). Further, a quick search for the same term in two of psychologyโ€™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, itโ€™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 likeโ€”being satisfied with life, in a good mood, feeling positive emotions, feeling enjoyment, etc.โ€”researchers have found it difficult to agree on the scope of happiness.
However, for our purposes in this piece, itโ€™s enough to work off of a basic definition that melds the Oxford Dictionaryโ€™s definition with that of positive psychologists: happiness is a state characterized by contentment and general satisfaction with oneโ€™s current situation.

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

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