Introduction—The Science of Well-Being: Reviews and Theoretical Articles by Ed Diener

Abstract

I have been studying well-being for the past several decades. In this volume, I trace my thinking and research over the 25-year period from 1984 to 2008. In the articles in Volume 37, I describe several of the questions about happiness raised by thinkers over thousands of years, and I also address questions that seem to have arisen only recently. In both cases I review what scientific studies can tell us about the answers to these questions. Throughout this book I hope to show that "happiness" is even more deeply reflective of the well-being of societies than the utilitarian philosophers had imagined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)(chapter)