Assessing Subjective Well-being in Wide Populations. A Posetic Approach. . .
245
In order to assess emotional state, social studies often adopt tools – internationally used and tested in epidemiology – measuring mental health or psychological
unease. One of the most used is the battery of questions on mental health
(hereinafter: MHI) adopted in the SF-36 3 questionnaire. This tool considers two
positive and three negative emotional states and the question is how long a person
has experienced each of the five emotions during the previous 4 weeks. The answers
are articulated in six possible items, ranging from “never having experienced that
state” to “being always in that state”. Ware et al. (1993) summarize the measure
of mental health adopting the average score between the five answers. This way to
elaborate data follows two assumptions (even though implicitly): (1) the modalities
are quantitative and continuous; (2) the value of synthesis admits compensation.
Many studies (clinical and epidemiological, but also social statistics) base their
analysis on these assumptions. This model implies the idea that the experience of a
negative emotion can be subtracted from the experience of a positive one, generating
a balanced measure of the respondent’s emotional state. This presupposes that
positive and negative emotions lay on a single continuum, e.g. a latent variable
corresponding to the emotional state (or mental health). Anyway, this statement is
neither obvious nor incontrovertible. Diener and Emmons (1984) show that there
is no compensation between positive and negative emotions, arguing that we can
experience such compensation only in very short periods. If we consider a long
period of time, we might remember having experienced opposite emotions, but we
would not represent them as an average emotional level.
The third pillar of SWB is the eudaimonic dimension. It allows capturing aspects
of SWB strongly based on inter-subjective relationships, such as shared values,
social recognition and belonging. This dimension cannot be called subjective in the
strict sense, because it is not based only on the evaluations, opinions or perceptions
of those directly involved, but also on the observation of behaviors, attitudes,
relationships and results. Eudaimonia corresponds to a state of good psychological
function that goes beyond conscious evaluation or emotional perception and concerns the realization of one’s individual potential (Waterman 2008 and 2011). Some
authors emphasize the egocentric perception of the need for realization and selfdetermination (Deci and Ryan 2008), other ones (e.g. Nussbaum 2011) the aspect
of sharing and recognition within a wider system of values. A common definition
of the concept of eudaimonia – and the identification of indicators to measure it – is
not yet available.
Thus, we have just seen how the three dimensions of SWB can be arranged on the
basis of an increasing level of definitional complexity and operational criticality and
a decreasing level of agreement in the scientific community. In any case, the debate
on SWB and its indicators is still very active and involves further concepts, such as
the flourishing (Diener et al. 2010; Seligman 2011; Huppert and So 2013), which
we will not consider here. The three pillars of SWB are, in turn, defined on the basis
3 Developed by a group of scholars at the New England Medical Center in Boston coordinated by
J. H. Ware (1993).
245
In order to assess emotional state, social studies often adopt tools – internationally used and tested in epidemiology – measuring mental health or psychological
unease. One of the most used is the battery of questions on mental health
(hereinafter: MHI) adopted in the SF-36 3 questionnaire. This tool considers two
positive and three negative emotional states and the question is how long a person
has experienced each of the five emotions during the previous 4 weeks. The answers
are articulated in six possible items, ranging from “never having experienced that
state” to “being always in that state”. Ware et al. (1993) summarize the measure
of mental health adopting the average score between the five answers. This way to
elaborate data follows two assumptions (even though implicitly): (1) the modalities
are quantitative and continuous; (2) the value of synthesis admits compensation.
Many studies (clinical and epidemiological, but also social statistics) base their
analysis on these assumptions. This model implies the idea that the experience of a
negative emotion can be subtracted from the experience of a positive one, generating
a balanced measure of the respondent’s emotional state. This presupposes that
positive and negative emotions lay on a single continuum, e.g. a latent variable
corresponding to the emotional state (or mental health). Anyway, this statement is
neither obvious nor incontrovertible. Diener and Emmons (1984) show that there
is no compensation between positive and negative emotions, arguing that we can
experience such compensation only in very short periods. If we consider a long
period of time, we might remember having experienced opposite emotions, but we
would not represent them as an average emotional level.
The third pillar of SWB is the eudaimonic dimension. It allows capturing aspects
of SWB strongly based on inter-subjective relationships, such as shared values,
social recognition and belonging. This dimension cannot be called subjective in the
strict sense, because it is not based only on the evaluations, opinions or perceptions
of those directly involved, but also on the observation of behaviors, attitudes,
relationships and results. Eudaimonia corresponds to a state of good psychological
function that goes beyond conscious evaluation or emotional perception and concerns the realization of one’s individual potential (Waterman 2008 and 2011). Some
authors emphasize the egocentric perception of the need for realization and selfdetermination (Deci and Ryan 2008), other ones (e.g. Nussbaum 2011) the aspect
of sharing and recognition within a wider system of values. A common definition
of the concept of eudaimonia – and the identification of indicators to measure it – is
not yet available.
Thus, we have just seen how the three dimensions of SWB can be arranged on the
basis of an increasing level of definitional complexity and operational criticality and
a decreasing level of agreement in the scientific community. In any case, the debate
on SWB and its indicators is still very active and involves further concepts, such as
the flourishing (Diener et al. 2010; Seligman 2011; Huppert and So 2013), which
we will not consider here. The three pillars of SWB are, in turn, defined on the basis
3 Developed by a group of scholars at the New England Medical Center in Boston coordinated by
J. H. Ware (1993).