Exploring the Dynamics of Evaluation

Abstract

The major topic of our research is perceptions of well-being, what we have called affective evaluations of various aspects of one’s life. Preceding chapters have described how affective evaluations relate to one another, how they seem to be organized in people’s thinking, how global evaluations can be “accounted for” on the basis of concern-level evaluations, and how different assessment methods influence the validity of the resulting measures. There remain important questions concerning the psychological dynamics that generate these affective evaluations, and the related matter of the “meaning” of any particular answer a respondent may give.