The Privilege of Well-Being in an Increasingly Unequal Society.

🤖 Plain-English Summary

This article provides an overview of a model of psychological well-being put forth over 30 years ago. These problems have been exacerbated by recent historical stressors (Great Recession, COVID-19 pandemic).

🔑 Key Findings

• The intent was to advance new dimensions of positive functioning based on integration of clinical, developmental, existential, and humanistic thinking, along with Aristotle's writings about eudaimonia.
• The operationalization and validation of the model are briefly described, followed by an overview of scientific findings organized around: (1) demographic and experiential predictors of well-being; (2) well-being as predictors of health and biomedical outcomes; (3) pathway studies that examine intervening processes (moderators, mediators); and (4) underlying mechanistic processes (neuroscience, genomics).
• Much prior work underscores the benefits of well-being, including for longevity.

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