AP PSYCHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: –Myers and Diener’s (1955) ‘who is happy?’ is a literature review.-Happiness was studied through interviews, questionnaires, observations and meta-analyses.-This is a way of assessing happiness by considering someone’s own sense of their happiness-their subjective wellbeing (SWB).

Detailed explanation-2: -Myers and Diener selected the topic for their review (happiness) and searched the literature for relevant studies (secondary sources). These studies used a range of methods such as correlations and observations to investigate factors affecting subjective well-being.

Detailed explanation-3: -“Subjective well-being” is the label given by scientists to the various forms of happiness taken together. Although there are additional forms of SWB, the three in the table below have been studied extensively. The table also shows that the causes of the different types of happiness can be somewhat different.

Detailed explanation-4: -Diener contends, however, that in general people are happy if they think they are happy; or at least, each person is the best judge of whether they are in fact happy or not. If so, then we can arrive at some measure of happiness-he labels it “Subjective Well being” simply by asking someone: are you happy?