On Hedonic Well-Being: Part 1, The Pleasurable Life

For the second time I was able to teach a positive psychology class for our graduate program. Like every class you get to teach for a second time you make adjustments and improvements in response to your first go round.

For this second class I added a lecture on hedonic well-being. Across four posts I'll share the contents of that lecture.

A common date for the beginnings of positive psychology is Martin Seligman's 1998 APA Presidential Address where he called for "a new science and profession of positive psychology." As Seligman described: 

[We psychologists] have scant knowledge of what makes life worth living. For although psychology has come to understand quite a bit about how people survive and endure under conditions of adversity, we know very little about how normal people flourish under more benign conditions.

This is because since World War II, psychology has become a science largely about healing. It concentrates on repairing damage within a disease model of human functioning. Such almost exclusive attention to pathology neglects the flourishing individual and the thriving community. True, our emphasis on assessing and healing damage has been important and had its important victories...But these victories have come at a considerable cost. When we became solely a healing profession, we forgot our larger mission: that of making the lives of all people better.

Psychology, however, was a late arrival to this conversation. Every great religious, philosophical, spiritual, and wisdom tradition has meditated upon what makes life worth living. And there were precursors within psychology itself, especially from the humanistic tradition. Abraham Maslow, for example, talked about self-actualization and peak experiences. The work of Carl Rogers was also influential. But what Seligman called for was uniquely empirical in nature, a science of flourishing. Rogers and Maslow were theorists. And the great religious and wisdom traditions were metaphysical and philosophical. The data collection Seligman called for was the novelty. 

The scientists, however, immediately confronted a problem of operational definitions. What do we mean, precisely and empirically, by the "positive" in positive psychology? The wisdom traditions posed a contrast here between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. 

On the one had was hedonic well-being. "Hedonic" comes from the Greek word ἡδονή (hēdonē), meaning pleasure, delight, or sweetness. Hedonic well-being is the pleasurable life, the pleasant life, the happy life. 

Eudaimonic well-being, by contrast, as described by Aristotle, comes from the from the Greek εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia), eu (εὖ) meaning “good" or "well” and daimōn (δαίμων) meaning “spirit.” Eudaimonia means the "good life" and is often translated as "flourishing" or "living well." 

In contrast to hedonic well-being, eudiamonic well-being has normative overtones. Eudaimonic well-being describes artfulness, excellence, fittingness, and a general orientation toward the good. To achieve eudaimonic well-being one "ought" or "must" live a certain way. If life is like playing a violin, one could do that poorly or excellently. 

Hedonic well-being, by contrast, is descriptive rather than normative in nature. Hedonic well-being tracks experiences of pleasure, positive affect, and satisfaction as they are felt, without requiring a judgment about whether those pleasures are worthy, well-ordered, or conducive to a good life. One can coherently speak of high hedonic well-being in a life we might still judge as shallow, disordered, or even vicious. 

This hedonic versus eudaimonic contrast affects the issue of measurement in positive psychology, the way we operationalize "positive." Does positive mean pleasurable or does positive mean good? 

For the most part, positive psychology has focused upon hedonic well-being, the pleasurable life. For example, by far the most common measure of "positive psychology" in the research literature has been Diener et al.'s, (1985) Subjective Well-Being Scale. Rated on a 1-7 likert scale, the items are:

1. In most ways my life is close to my ideal.
2. The conditions of my life are excellent.
3. I am satisfied with my life.
4. So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.
5. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.

Notice how the measure assesses "satisfaction" unrelated to any normative good. This is a measure of hedonic well-being rather than eudaimonic well-being. For example, Elon Musk, I expect, would rate himself highly on this scale, as extremely satisfied with his life. As the richest man in the world, he's totally winning! But would we say that Elon Musk is the paradigm of the life well lived? Is Elon Musk living a good life? Is his life the life we should be aspiring toward? From a hedonic perspective, some might say so. But from a eudaimonic, normative perspective, other might demur. Good is different from pleasure and satisfaction

You get the point. When we talk about "the good life" are we talking about hedonic well-being? I don't think so, and in the posts to come I'll share why.