What makes people happy? Philosophers have asked this question for over 2000 years, and more recently, it has sparked the interest of researchers in both economics and psychology. The present dissertation unites five studies on the determinants of subjective well-being. Study 1 investigates whether certain pursuits, such as spending more time with other people, are particularly suited to increase life satisfaction. Study 2 turns to an indicator of the absence of well-being, worries, and how they are affected by both age and external world events. Moving on to potential moderators, Study 3 tests the popular notion that overall life satisfaction is an aggregate of satisfaction with different life domains, weighted by the importance of the respective domains. Study 4 investigates whether age is an important moderator, as it seems plausible that different things matter to people in different life stages. Lastly, Study 5 provides a critique of a popular conceptualization of happiness in which its causes—genes, life circumstances, and volitional activities—are decomposed and compared quantitatively. Discussing problems underlying this reasoning naturally leads to challenges for future research on well-being which concludes this dissertation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:35221 |
| Date | 04 September 2019 |
| Creators | Rohrer, Julia Marie |
| Contributors | Universität Leipzig |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | German, German |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion, doc-type:doctoralThesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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