Subjective well-being
主观幸福感
What is subjective well-being?
Subjective well-being is a person’s own evaluation of how life is going: a cognitive judgment such as life satisfaction, and feelings, with pleasant emotions outweighing unpleasant ones.[1] It is one facet of well-being; purpose in life and good relationships belong to eudaimonic well-being.[1]
What it goes with
Schematic. Numbers come from the cited studies, which use different samples and measures; do not compare them with one another.
Schematic. At the top, a card: subjective well-being, your own verdict on how life is going. Below it, two columns side by side. Left: the cognitive part, life satisfaction, with a card beneath it for the Satisfaction With Life Scale, five items rated 1 to 7. Right: the emotional part, more pleasant than unpleasant feelings, with a card beneath it on measuring emotions by recalling yesterday or sampling the moment. Spanning both columns, a card: the two parts can diverge, with correlations under 0.31. Further down, labeled what it goes with, two cards: income, correlations of about 0.15 to 0.25, and relationships, about 0.10 on objective measures. At the bottom, a dashed card: not all of well-being, since purpose and relationships are counted separately. The numbers come from different studies and should not be compared with one another.
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Key points
- The most widely used measure, the Satisfaction With Life Scale, has five items such as “I am satisfied with my life,” each rated 1–7, for totals of 5–35.[2]
- The two parts do not always move together. In more than 450,000 US survey responses, yesterday’s emotions correlated with life evaluations at under 0.31.[3]
- Income tracks life evaluation more closely than daily emotion, and evaluations rise steadily with log income.[3] In large samples, income correlates with subjective well-being at about 0.15–0.25.[1]
- Relationships are often called the strongest correlate, mostly on self-report. With objective measures, correlations are often near 0.10; an early meta-analysis put marital status at 0.14.[1]
An example
After a promotion and a raise, Ms. Wang gives “I am satisfied with my life” a 6 out of 7. Yet this month she works late every night, and when she looks back on each day, her feelings are mostly fatigue and irritation. In subjective well-being terms, her life satisfaction is high while the emotional part lags.
Misreadings and limits
The popular claim that happiness stops rising above about $75,000 a year is too strong. A 2023 adversarial collaboration found the plateau only among the least happy 15–20% of people; for most, momentary happiness keeps rising with income, though the link is weak (r = 0.09).[4]
Sources
- 1 Diener, E., Lucas, R. E., & Oishi, S. (2018). Advances and open questions in the science of subjective well-being. Collabra: Psychology, 4(1), 15. doi:10.1525/collabra.115
- 2 Diener, E. (n.d.). Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). Ed Diener’s lab website, University of Illinois (scale first published in Diener, Emmons, Larsen & Griffin, 1985, Journal of Personality Assessment, 49(1), 71–75). View source
- 3 Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A. (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(38), 16489–16493. doi:10.1073/pnas.1011492107
- 4 Killingsworth, M. A., Kahneman, D., & Mellers, B. (2023). Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(10), e2208661120. doi:10.1073/pnas.2208661120
Last checked against sources: October 28, 2026