People draw on psychological resources such as gratitude to cope with adversity and maintain well-being. These resources must largely be acquired, and studies have identified environmental and behavioral factors of this learning. Yet little research has investigated how people can be active agents in this process by how they engage their experiences of psychological resources. Consequently, the HEAL framework was developed to organize numerous ‘mental engagement factors,’ and the Taking in the Good Course (TGC) was created to explore their use. In a multiple arm, pre-post intervention study, TGC participants reported significant increases in composite measures of Cognitive Resources, Positive Emotions, and Total Happiness, and decreases in a composite measure of Negative Emotions; these results persisted two months after the course ended. These findings suggest that people can learn how to heighten the internalization of beneficial experiences, with implications for improving responses to treatment and the development of psychological resources.

Previous tests of Quality of Life models have been limited to cross-sectional data. In contrast, we are collecting a time-series database of national QOL indicators to examine trends and to fully test causal models.

We report the first neural recording during ecstatic meditations called jhanas and test whether a brain reward system plays a role in the joy reported. Jhanas are Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) that imply major brain changes based on subjective reports: (1) external awareness dims, (2) internal verbalizations fade, (3) the sense of personal boundaries is altered, (4) attention is highly focused on the object of meditation, and (5) joy increases to high levels. The fMRI and EEG results from an experienced meditator show changes in brain activity in 11 regions shown to be associated with the subjective reports, and these changes occur promptly after jhana is entered. In particular, the extreme joy is associated not only with activation of cortical processes but also with activation of the nucleus accumbens (NAc) in the dopamine/opioid reward system. We test three mechanisms by which the subject might stimulate his own reward system by external means and reject all three. Taken together, these results demonstrate an apparently novel method of self-stimulating a brain reward system using only internal mental processes in a highly trained subject.

The authors consider how to construct summary indices (e.g., quality-of-life [QOL] indices) for a social unit that will be endorsed by a majority of its citizens. They assume that many social indicators are available to describe the social unit, but individuals disagree about the relative weights to be assigned to each social indicator. The summary index that maximizes agreement among citizens can then be derived, along with conditions under which an index will be endorsed by a majority in the social unit. The authors show that intuition greatly underestimates the extent of agreement among individuals, and it is often possible to construct a QOL index that most citizens agree with (at least in direction). In particular, they show that the equal-weighting strategy is privileged in that it minimizes disagreement among all possible individuals' weights. They demonstrate these propositions by calculating real QOL indices for two surveys of citizens' actual importance weights.

The ‘Easterlin paradox’ holds that economic growth does not add to the quality-of-life and that this appears in the fact that average happiness in nations has not risen in the last few decades. The latest trend data show otherwise. Average happiness has increased slightly in rich nations and considerably in the few poor nations for which data are available. Since longevity has also increased, the average number of happy life years has increased at an unprecedented rate since the 1950s.

Quality of Life (QOL) is often measured with surveys of citizen’s satisfaction. In contrast, the current research uses already-existing voting data to infer citizens’ perceptions of QOL. Under this model, citizens decide how much their QOL has improved (or declined) since the last election, and then vote to reward (or punish) the incumbent party accordingly. Analysis of the popular vote for the incumbent party then allows inference on how citizens judge their QOL and how they weight the various domains. Previous research has concluded that voters reward an incumbent who improves the economic domain prior to election. I test whether voters also reward declining crime rates, and estimate how citizens weight the relative importance of each in determining QOL. I analyze the vote shares by state from U.S. presidential elections from 1972 to 1996. Results show that changes in crime rates do influence vote share, consistent with the responsibility hypothesis, but to a smaller degree than the economic domain does. The method described provides convergent evidence that citizens weight domains differentially, and can provide the weights for a national QOL index.

We consider problems associated with the construction of summary indices for a social unit (e.g., cities, states, nations). These problems are motivated by the question of how to construct a social well-being or Quality-of-Life (QOL) index that summarizes many social indicators, and that a majority of individuals can agree with. We specify a model for measuring the extent to which individuals with differing importance weights for the component indicators agree on a summary QOL index, and derive conditions under which an index will be endorsed by a majority of a social group. We show that, in every case, intuition greatly underestimates the extent of agreement among individuals who have different importance weights for the components. Two types of QOL indices are distinguished: (1) those rating multiple social units (e.g., cities, states, countries) in the same time period (cross-sectional data), and (2) those rating a single social unit on multiple time periods (time-series data). In the first case, we show that it is easy to create a QOL index on which most people in society agree. In the second case, we show that it is more difficult, but define conditions under which it is possible. In particular, we show that the equal-weighting strategy is privileged in that it minimizes disagreement among all possible individuals’ weights. When the actual distribution of individuals’ weights is known, one can improve agreement further by using the mean weights applied by individuals. Finally, we examine nationally representative surveys of importance weights and show that they meet the conditions for successful construction of a QOL index that will be endorsed by a majority of individuals in a country. We conclude with recommendations for measuring weights and creating QOL indices that have high levels of support among individual members of social units.

“Will raising the incomes of all increase the happiness of all?” Intuition says 'yes' but theories of relative utility caution that the answer may be ‘no’. The theory of relative utility holds that rises in income will produce at best short-lived gains in happiness. If people’s happiness depends on income relative to others (social comparisons), or on income relative to their own past income (adaptive expectations) then raising the incomes of all may not increase average happiness. In contrast, the theory of absolute utility predicts that additional income allows each person to fill additional needs, thus increasing average happiness. We test the absolute utility theory against both types of relative utility theories. Previous tests have been plagued by low statistical power, which has been incorrectly interpreted as evidence against absolute utility models. The current study improves statistical power by including longer time series, by adding 9 nations with low GDP/capita and (in some analyses) by pooling countries into income tiers. We also apply a model by VanPraag and Kapteyn (1973), which can estimate separate effects for social comparisons, adaptive expectations, and absolute income theories. The results show no effect for social comparison across countries, but show support for partial adaptation to new income over a two-year period. Most importantly, increasing national income does go with increasing national happiness, but the short-term effect on happiness is higher than the long-term effect for a given rise in income.

``Will raising the incomes of all increase the happiness of all?'' Intuitionsays `yes' but theories of relative utility caution that the answer may be`no'. The theory of relative utility holds that people's happiness dependson income relative to others (social comparisons), or on income relative totheir own past income (adaptive expectations) – so that raising the incomes ofall may not increase average long-term happiness. In contrast, the theoryof absolute utility predicts that additional income allows each person to filladditional needs, thus increasing average long-term happiness.Previous tests among these theories have been plagued by low statisticalpower, which has been incorrectly interpreted as evidence against absoluteutility models. The current study improves statistical power by includinglonger time series, by adding nine nations with low GDP/capita and (in someanalyses) by pooling countries into income tiers. We also apply a dynamicmodel by Van Praag and Kapteyn (1973), which can estimate separate effectsfor social comparisons, adaptive expectations, and absolute utility theories.The results show no effect for social comparison across countries, but showsupport for partial adaptation to new income over a two-year period.Most importantly, increasing national income does go with increasingnational happiness, but the short-term effect on happiness is larger thanthe long-term effect for a given rise in income.

Intertemporal judgments are paired comparisons between the present time and some other time (e.g. “How satisfied are you with your life these days compared to five years ago?”). These judgments can provide evidence on the question, “Is life satisfaction in developed nations increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant?” This paper provides the first review of intertemporal judgments of life satisfaction, and reports a meta-analysis of 71 such studies from 9 developed countries. Results show that in every survey that asks people how happy their own lives are now compared to some past time, a majority says they are happier now than in the past. The meta-analysis also shows that this question must be carefully distinguished from asking about quality of life of the average person, which shows a majority believing that life was better for the “average person” in the past. These two beliefs are logically inconsistent, since the average respondent actually says their satisfaction is higher now. We consider several sources of bias that may influence these results, including cognitive processing heuristics, self-appraisal (desirability) bias, and information bias in media news.

I review studies of national elections from 13OECD countries over 30 years to examine theeffect of declining or increasing Quality ofLife (QOL) on citizens' voting behavior. Theresults are consistent with the theory thatcitizens hold the incumbent party responsiblefor increases or decreases in QOL during theirterm in office, and vote against an incumbentparty that fails to deliver improved QOL. Studies show that this ``responsibilityhypothesis'' holds not only for economicvariables such as GDP/capita, but for murderrates, violent crime rates, nutrition, andinequality. The platform and qualification ofcandidates also has an effect on voting, butthe macro-variables composing QOL occur priorto and act to shape the platform and strategyof candidates. These results hold importantimplications for constructing indexes of QOL,because researchers can use national votingbehavior to recover the weights that voters usein combining domains of QOL. By using theseweights from the `representative voter',researchers can create a unified index of QOLfor social reports.

Our book is a useful "how to" book for researchers and government offices wanting to start or improve their own QOL survey, and contains "best practices" from all over the world. We discuss cutting-ed

A number of governments and public policy institutes have developed “Quality of Life Indexes” – statistics that attempt to measure the quality of life for entire states or regions. We develop 14 criteria for determining the validity and usefulness of such QOL indexes to public policy. We then review 22 of the most-used QOL indexes from around the world. We conclude that many of the indexes are successful in that they are reliable, have established time series measures, and can be disaggregated to study subpopulations. However, many fall short in four areas: (1) indexes vary greatly in their coverage and definitions of domains of QOL, (2) none of the indexes distinguish among the concepts of input, throughput, and output that are used by public policy analysts, (3) they fail to show how QOL outputs are sensitive to public policy inputs, and (4) none have examined convergent validity against each other. We conclude that many of these indexes are potentially very useful for public policy and recommend research to further improve them.

In data-rich marketing environments (e.g., direct marketing or new product design), managers face an ever-growing need to reduce the number of variables effectively. To accomplish this goal, the authors introduce a new method called sliced inverse regression (SIR), which finds factors by taking into account the information contained in both the dependent and independent variables. Sliced inverse regression objectively identifies appropriate factors through simple statistical tests for determining the number of factors to retain and for assessing the significance of factor-loading coefficients. The authors make conceptual connections between SIR and several existing approaches, including principal components regression (PCR) and partial least squares regression (PLSR). Using Monte Carlo experiments, the authors demonstrate that SIR performs better than these approaches. Two empirical examples—designing a new executive business program and direct marketing by a catalog company—are presented to illustrate the application of SIR and to show that it outperforms both PLSR and PCR in these cases. In addition, the authors discuss how direct marketers can apply SIR to analyze large databases and to thus target customers effectively. In conclusion, SIR is a promising methodology in data-intensive marketing environments.

Two studies provide evidence for social comparison effects of income on subjective well-being (SWB). The 1st study of 7,023 persons from nationally representative samples in the United States shows that the range and skew of the income distribution in a community affects a person's happiness, as predicted by range-frequency theory. The 2nd study of 8 nations over a period of 25 years shows that decreasing the skew (inequality) of the income distribution in a country increases average national SWB. Both studies strongly support social comparison effects of income within a community, and both results are predicted by range-frequency theory. These studies are the first to successfully extend earlier results of R. H. Smith, E. Diener, and D. H. Wedell (1989) from the laboratory into naturalistic situations. The magnitude of the social comparison effects is smaller than the main effect of income, which implies that nations can avoid creating a "hedonic treadmill."

This paper studies the effects of several Quality ofLife (QOL) indicators on the outcomes of nationalelections. We test the hypothesis that declines innational QOL will have a negative effect on the votingsupport for the governing party in the next election. For each election since 1960 in thirteen countries, weuse objective measures of QOL for the previous year toestimate the voting function by using astate-of-the-art technique called Sliced InverseRegression (Li, 1991). These objective measuresinclude GDP per capita, food availability, inflation,crime rates, divorce rate, and percent of females inthe labor force, among others. The estimated “votingfunction” is the best predictor of voters' behavior asa function of the changes in QOL. The results show that changes in economic variablesand food availability significantly affect electionoutcomes. In addition, changes in crime rates werefound to be nearly as important as economic variablesin influencing the election outcomes. This marks thefirst time that a non-economic indicator has beenshown to affect elections. In contrast, measures ofsatisfaction with family life, such as divorce, infantmortality, and percent females in the workforce, showno effect on voting behavior, probably because votersdo not hold their governments responsible for familyaffairs.