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Lay Conceptions of Well-Being and Rules Used in Well-Being Judgments Among Young, Middle-Aged, and Elderly Adults

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Abstract

The present study deals with lay conceptions of well-being and its main determinants, and the rules used by everyday people to assess the well-being of others based on various pieces of information. The results showed that (a) most proposed definitions of well-being refer to the family, the physical body, and acceptance of oneself and one's situation; (b) the factors with the greatest impact on judgments of the well-being of others are health, harmony with spouse, harmony with children, self-acceptance, positive relations, purpose in life, and personal growth; (c) the above findings apply to respondents of all ages; and (d) the information integration rule for estimating the level of the well-being is essentially additive.

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  1. Département de Psychologie, Université François-Rabelais, F-37041, Tours, France

    María Teresa Muñoz Sastre

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  1. María Teresa Muñoz Sastre
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Sastre, M.T.M. Lay Conceptions of Well-Being and Rules Used in Well-Being Judgments Among Young, Middle-Aged, and Elderly Adults. Social Indicators Research 47, 203–231 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006989319411

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