Happiness research has an equivalence problem: towards an integrated theory

I've had this up as a working paper on SSRN for a while without posting a link here. Thought I'd rectify that.

Abstract

The contention of this paper is that happiness research has an equivalence problem. There are presently several different approaches to defining happiness. These include distinguishing between happiness in the psychological sense and happiness in the wellbeing sense; defining happiness hedonistically, subjectively or objectively; and focusing on either the hedonic, eudaimonic or normative dimension of happiness. The advocates of these various perspectives often appear to be engaged in a paradigm battle. That is, they each seek to demonstrate that their understanding of happiness is the correct one, while the others are false. The contention of this paper is instead that each understanding represents a simplification of the phenomenon of happiness, typically for the sake of parsimony, and that the correct understanding is instead a combination of the existing understandings into one integrated theory. The paper sketches this integrated theory. It includes an analysis of the very rarely discussed praxis of happiness. That is, how you get it as opposed to just what it is. This analysis reveals that there are substantial overlaps and interdependencies between each of the major ways of understanding happiness. These relationships are overlooked if scholarship focuses exclusively on the ends of happiness without considering the means.

Keywords: happiness, wellbeing, self-actualization, eudaimonia, hedonia, life satisaction

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3040632