Subjective well-being (SWB), as Diener et al. define it, is how people evaluate their lives – both at the moment and for longer periods such as for the past year.
[9] In 2002, Diener conducted a study at the University of Illinois with Martin Seligman, finding that "the most salient characteristics shared by the 10% of students with the highest levels of happiness and the fewest signs of depression were their strong ties to friends and family and commitment to spending time with them.
Diener discovered that there are reasons for greater SWB among extraverts beyond the fact that they spend more time with others, a hypothesis popularized by other researchers.
[11] This is evident in his research showing that the pleasantness of a situation is a more important factor than the social or nonsocial aspect in determining extraverts' enjoyment.
In a paper published in 2011, Diener and Chan reviewed eight types of evidence that support a causal relationship from SWB to health and longevity.
They also illustrated that happiness produces greater self-control, more pro-social behaviors and higher-quality social relationships (DeNeve, Diener, Tay, & Xuereb, 2013).
The traditional adaption theory of Well-Being suggests that people have a pre-determined set point for happiness (Brickman & Campbell, 1971).
[17] In particular, people who lose their spouses or jobs cannot fully recover many years after the events (Lucas, Clark, Georgellis, & Diener, 2004).
Namely, rising income most likely results in higher SWB when it leads to greater optimism, financial satisfaction and household material prosperity among citizens.
They illustrated that income has stronger influence on people's evaluation of their lives than the positive or negative emotions they experience over time (Diener, Kahneman, Tov, & Arora, 2010).
[20] The study points to the necessity to evaluate different elements of SWB separately instead of treating happiness as a single entity.
In recent years, Diener conducted major studies looking at the role of culture in explaining the international differences of SWB.
The Flourishing Scale (FS) measures one's self-perceived success in important areas of life, such as relationship, self-esteem, and optimism (Diener et al., 2009).
More than any other scientist, Diener studied the poorest people in the world, including groups such as the homeless and those living in slums such as in Calcutta.
In recognition of his scientific contributions, Ed Diener held an endowed chair at his university, the Joseph R. Smiley Distinguished Professorship of Psychology.
Diener has several honorary doctorates to his name, was a fellow of five scientific societies, and has been the focus of many popular media articles, from Newsweek to the Wall Street Journal to Reader's Digest.
The finding that subjective well-being is beneficial to outcomes such as health, longevity, social relationships, and work productivity, added force to the proposal.
The program includes several types of skills, for example, positive sociability, values and strengths understanding, sleep and exercise, and coping with stress and difficult events.
Supported by their Diener Education Fund, the project aimed to reduce financial costs to psychology students by providing freely available online textbook alternatives.
[32] The Dieners recruited their friends and colleagues (such as Elizabeth Loftus, Ap Dijksterhuis, and Roy Baumeister) to write chapters on their areas of expertise, and the project compiled these into a set of multimedia textbooks that are freely available and customizable by instructors.