Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being.
1989/12/01 by Carol D. Ryff · 13,541 citations
Psychology · #Happiness #Meaning (existential) #Optimism, Hope, and Well-being #Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction #Psychological and Temporal Perspectives Research #Psychological well-being #Psychology #Psychotherapist #Social psychology #Well-being
paper · open access · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1069
published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57(6), 1069-1081 (American Psychological Association)
openalex publication_date 1989/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Abstract
El Bienestar Psicológico ha sido ampliamente abordado en la Psicología; sin embargo, poco estudiado desde la Psicología de las emergencias y desastres. El objetivo de la investigación que dio origen a este artículo fue caracterizar las condiciones de vida y el bienestar psicológico de los adolescentes damnificados por las altas lluvias en Campo de la Cruz, municipio del departamento del Atlántico, como primera fase de un proyecto de intervención. Se realizó una investigación de tipo cuantitativo, descriptivo, en la que participaron 228 estudiantes entre los 13 y los 18 años de edad. Se concluye que después del desastre, un grupo significativo de los adolescentes reporta satisfacción respecto a diversas áreas de la vida, pero señalan falencias en la autonomía y relaciones personales, y no están satisfechos con sus condiciones económicas, ni con los espacios de los que disponen para realizar sus actividades educativas.
Citations
Cited by
- Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being.
- The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power.
- Sending memorable messages to the old: Age differences in preferences and memory for advertisements.
- Healthy and Unhealthy Emotion Regulation: Personality Processes, Individual Differences, and Life Span Development
- Understanding the Search for Meaning in Life: Personality, Cognitive Style, and the Dynamic Between Seeking and Experiencing Meaning
- The Concept of Mental Toughness: Tests of Dimensionality, Nomological Network, and Traitness
- Measuring Self‐Esteem in Context: The Importance of Stability of Self‐Esteem in Psychological Functioning
- Goal adjustment capacities and quality of life: A meta‐analytic review
- Narrative identity informs psychological adjustment: Considering three themes captured across five time points and two event valences
- Remembering the real me: Nostalgia offers a window to the intrinsic self.
- The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being.
- Evaluating the Big Five as an organizing framework for commonly used psychological trait scales.
- Striving for the Sacred: Personal Goals, Life Meaning, and Religion
- Measuring Community Connectedness among Diverse Sexual Minority Populations
- Sources of Perceived Social Support, Social-Emotional Experiences, and Psychological Well-Being of International Students
- Investigating the Role of Academic, Social, and Emotional Self-Efficacy in Online Learning
- Enhancing well‐being and alleviating depressive symptoms with positive psychology interventions: a practice‐friendly meta‐analysis
- Self-transcendent Media Experiences: Taking Meaningful Media to a Higher Level
- Entertainment and Politics Revisited: How Non-Escapist Forms of Entertainment Can Stimulate Political Interest and Information Seeking
- Mental Illness and/or Mental Health? Investigating Axioms of the Complete State Model of Health.
- Perceived discrimination experiences and mental health of Latina/o american persons.
- The meaning in life questionnaire: Assessing the presence of and search for meaning in life.
- The authentic personality: A theoretical and empirical conceptualization and the development of the Authenticity Scale.
- Nature facilitates eudaimonic well‐being through promoting connection with self and others
- Childhood Family Violence and Adult Recurrent Depression
- Creativity and Well‐being: A Meta‐analysis
- The Mental Health Continuum: From Languishing to Flourishing in Life
- Stakeholder Engagement: Past, Present, and Future
- Quantifying Parsimony in Structural Equation Modeling
- Insight, Rumination, and Self-Reflection as Predictors of Well-Being
- The meaningful life in Japan and the United States: Levels and correlates of meaning in life
- Effects of School-based Multicomponent Positive Psychology Interventions on Well-being and Distress in Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
- Normal and Maladaptive Personality Traits as Predictors of Motives for Social Media Use and Its Effects on Well-Being
- Loss in the Life Story: Remembering Death and Illness Across Adulthood
- Psychiatric aspects of cannabis consumption
- Examining Online Behaviors of Young Adults During the Covid-19 Pandemic Social Isolation Period with Regard to Life Satisfaction, Loneliness, and Hostility
- On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being
- Personality, Culture, and Subjective Well-Being: Emotional and Cognitive Evaluations of Life
- Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire
- Exploring Emotional Intelligence’s Influence on Psychological Well-Being among International Students: The Interplay of Psychological Capital, Academic Engagement, and Social Support
- Associations between sense of purpose and romantic relationship quality in adulthood
- The Big Five personality domains as predictors of social wellbeing in Iranian university students
- Estudi de la relació entre el benestar personal i l’adaptació de conducta en el marc de l’escola salugènica
- Happier together. Social cohesion and subjective well‐being in Europe
- The toll of prejudice: The longitudinal interplay between ethnic prejudice and well-being in adolescence
- The Relation Between Well-Being, Impostor Feelings, and Gender Role Orientation Among Canadian University Students
- Are You Gossiping About Me? The Costs and Benefits of High Workplace Gossip Prevalence
- Cumulative stress and epigenetic aging: Examining the role of psychological moderators.
- Need Satisfaction and Well-Being
- Measuring basic needs satisfaction: Evaluating previous research and conducting new psychometric evaluations of the Basic Needs Satisfaction in General Scale
- The Association Between Frequency of Social Media Use, Wellbeing, and Depressive Symptoms: Disentangling Genetic and Environmental Factors
- Measuring Machine Companionship: Scale Development and Validation for AI Companions
- RETRACTED: Exploring EFL learners' positive emotions, technostress and psychological well‐being in AI ‐assisted language instruction with/without teacher support in Malaysia
- Growing at Work: Employees' Interpretations of Progressive Self-Change in Organizations
- Psychometric Evaluation of the Mental Health Continuum–Short Form in French Canadian Young Adults
- Relationship between school connectedness and psychological well-being in adolescents: a meta-analysis
- Thriving at work: Toward its measurement, construct validation, and theoretical refinement
- Language-based assessments can predict psychological and subjective well-being
- Therianthropy: Wellbeing, Schizotypy, and Autism in Individuals Who Self-Identify as Non-Human
- Factors Associated with Teacher Wellbeing: A Meta-Analysis
- The Interplay Between Workplace Incivility, Religiosity and Well-Being: Insights from Jordan and the United Arab Emirates
- Consumer Wisdom: A Theoretical Framework of Five Integrated Facets
- Post–traumatic Growth as Positive Personality Change: Evidence, Controversies and Future Directions
- Passion for a Leisure Activity, Presence of Meaning, and Search for Meaning: The Mediating Role of Emotion
- Determining the role of eudaimonic values in conservation behavior
- Meaning in Life and Meaning of Life in Mental Health Care: An Integrative Literature Review
- Changes in the network structure of well-being components in adolescents in the school context: A 2-year longitudinal study
- Work Cognition and Psychological Well-Being: The Role of Cognitive Engagement as a Partial Mediator
- Volunteer Work and Hedonic, Eudemonic, and Social Well‐Being
- Exploring emotional regulation, well-being, and academic engagement: A comparative study among Chinese high school and college EFL learners
- Flexibly navigating cultural diversity: How polycultural identity facilitates a meaningful and rich life
- Loneliness predicts mortality risk via the erosion of purpose in life
- A synthesis of RCTs on psychological interventions fostering strengths and virtues: Evidence from 21 systematic reviews
- A Comparison Between Variational Inequality and Elrod-Adams Simulations of Reynolds Flow with Cavitation
- Influence of algorithmic management practices on workplace well-being – evidence from European organisations
- Examining well‐being in posttraumatic stress disorder treatment: An explorative study
- The relationships between organizational culture and thriving at work among nurses: The mediating role of affective commitment and work engagement
- Agreeableness, extraversion and life satisfaction: Investigating the mediating roles of social inclusion and status
- What is an athlete's psychological well-being? Constructing concepts with Olympic and Paralympic athletes
- “It strikes a chord within me”: a mixed-method exploration of existential resonance in eudaimonic entertainment experiences
- Clinical Significance and Remission in Treating Major Depressive Disorder: Parallels Between Related Outcome Constructs
- Toward an International Consensus on a Social Return on Investment Model of Recreational Physical Activity and Sport Participation: A Delphi Study
- Daily dynamics of pro-environmental behaviors and eudaimonic well-being among adolescents
- The role of well‐being in consumer's responses to personalized advertising on social media
- Bridges over troubled water: A meta-analysis of the associations of character strengths with well-being and common mental health disorders
- How Can the University Environment Support Student Quality of Life? A Novel Conceptual Model
- Within-Person Temporal Associations Among Self-Reported Physical Activity, Sleep, and Well-Being in College Students
- No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression
- Entrepreneurship and well-being: The role of psychological autonomy, competence, and relatedness
- Pre-pandemic Predictors of Loneliness in Adult Men During COVID-19
- Where is your best friend from? Implications of intragroup and intergroup friendships for adolescents’ identity and well-being
- Time to rediscover task-oriented leadership? A multi-source, time-lagged study on leadership and well-being in public service jobs
- Islamic ethical spirituality and psychosocial well-being: integrating Islamic thought in multicultural counselling and interfaith dialogue
- Psychological Well-Being Revisited: Advances in the Science and Practice of Eudaimonia
- Research on teacher well-being: a systematic review
- Impact of virtual reality and video backgrounds on mental health in digital meditation
- Purpose as a moral virtue for flourishing
- The Influence of Racial Socialization, Mentor Support, and Emotion Regulation on the Psychological Well-Being of African American Boys
- What is Unique About Kindness? Exploring the Proximal Experience of Prosocial Acts Relative to Other Positive Behaviors
- Your Best Self Helps Reveal Your True Self
- Flourishing in critical dialogue
- Extrinsic goals benefit capitalism but not well-being. Rethinking the economy’s goal for a healthier future
- "Tech" a Deep Breath: Technology-guided Breathing Practise With or Without a Social Robot for Psychological and Emotional Well-Being
- Stability and Change in Subjective, Psychological, and Social Well-Being: A Latent State-Trait Analysis of Mental Health Continuum–Short Form in Korea and the Netherlands
- Consumers’ technology-facilitated brand engagement and wellbeing: Positivist TAM/PERMA- vs. Consumer Culture Theory perspectives
- Life purposes of Finnish adolescents
- The Impact of Organizational Factors on Psychological Needs and Their Relations with Well-Being
- School intervention for promoting psychological well-being in adolescence
- Reciprocal associations between sense of purpose and subjective well-being in old age
- Religiosity, Identity Confusion, and Psychological Well-Being in Turkish University Students: The Moderating Role of Religious Orientation
- The Effects of Surfing and the Natural Environment on the Well-Being of Combat Veterans
- A Theory of Subjective Wellbeing
- What is your status portfolio? Higher status variance across groups increases interpersonal helping but decreases intrapersonal well-being
- The Spanish Version of the Short Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (SWEMWBS): Evidence on Validity, Reliability, and Test of a Processual Model of Physicians’ Well-Being
- Ego-control and ego-resiliency: Generalization of self-report scales based on personality descriptions from acquaintances, clinicians, and the self
- Exploring the meaning of well-being in severe mental disorder: Insights from patients, relatives, and mental health professionals
- Promoting Students’ Emotional, Behavioral, and Cognitive Engagement in EFL Classrooms: Do Grit and Well-Being Matter?
- Mapping Adolescent Wellbeing: Developmental Network Differences between Early To Middle Adolescence in 24 Countries
- Pursuing Moral Purpose for Human Flourishing
- The longitudinal relation between purpose in life and accelerometer-measured physical activity
- Innate Health: A Novel Examination of What Explains Well-Being, Prosocial Behavior, and Aggression Among Men Living in a U.K. Prison
- Spirituality and Religious Engagement, Community Involvement, Outness, and Family Support: Influence on LGBT+ Muslim Well-Being
- Meaning in life and resilience to stressors
- A mindfulness-based promotive coping program improves well-being in college undergraduates
- Human resource management and employee well‐being: towards a new analytic framework
- Social Study Resources and Social Wellbeing Before and During the Intelligent COVID-19 Lockdown in The Netherlands
- Self-Employment and Eudaimonic Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Problem- and Emotion-Focused Coping
- Beyond Happiness: Minority Stress and Life Meaning Among LGB Individuals
- The pains and pleasures of parenting: When, why, and how is parenthood associated with more or less well-being?
- An Engagement-Based Student Typology and Its Relationship to College Outcomes
- Development of a measure of experiential avoidance: The Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire.
- The Brief Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire: Development and initial validation.
- Revisiting Redemption: A Life Span Developmental Account of the Functions of Narrative Redemption
- Measuring Subjective Wellbeing: Recommendations on Measures for use by National Governments
- Meaning-Based Job-Related Well-being: Exploring a Meaningful Work Conceptualization of Job Satisfaction
- Labor automation for fair cooperation: Why and how machines should provide meaningful work for all
- Structural validity of the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form: The bifactor model of emotional, social and psychological well-being
- Canine-Assisted Intervention Reduces Anxiety and Stress in Higher Education Students: A Randomized Controlled Trial
- Linking sense of purpose and multiple markers of health in older adulthood: A bidirectional approach
- Empirical evidence for the validity of the job crafting scale (JCS) in a Portuguese setting
- The Portuguese Adaptation of the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form for Adult Population
- Trajectories of change in well-being during cognitive behavioral therapies for anxiety disorders: Quantifying the impact and covariation with improvements in anxiety.
- Examining the special interest areas of autistic adults with a focus on their employment and mental health outcomes
- Wellbeing and Happiness
- Perceptions of a good life: Associations with culture, age, wellbeing, and health
- The Relationship of Level of Positive Mental Health With Current Mental Disorders in Predicting Suicidal Behavior and Academic Impairment in College Students
- The Well-Being Development Model: A Theoretical Model to Improve Outcomes among Criminal Justice System–Involved Individuals
- Different types of well-being? A cross-cultural examination of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being.
- Long-term Measurements: Towards a Longitudinal Understanding of Human-AI Interactions
- Travel and Subjective Well-Being: A Focus on Findings, Methods and Future Research Needs
- The contours of purpose beyond the self in midlife and later life
- Language Proficiency, Second Language Educational Experience, and Psychological Well-being Among International Students at U.S. Universities
- Relationships between Occupational Factors and Health and Well-Being in Individuals with Persistent Mental Illness Living in the Community
- Preliminary Efficacy of an Occupation-Oriented Purpose in Life Intervention After Breast Cancer
- Personality's Correlates of Adult Development and Aging
- Development of a self-report measure of capability wellbeing for adults: the ICECAP-A
- Do People Embrace Praise Even When They Feel Unworthy? A Review of Critical Tests of Self-Enhancement Versus Self-Verification
- Engagement und Wellbeing: Wie nachhaltiges Verhalten unser Wohlbefinden beeinflusst
- The Psychological Roots of Health Promotion
- Predicting Teaching Enjoyment from Teachers’ Perceived School Climate, Self-Efficacy, and Psychological Wellbeing at Work: EFL Teachers
- Depression and everyday social activity, belonging, and well-being.
- The mediating role of perceived teacher emotional support in EFL students’ social-emotional competence and psychological well-being: a structural equation modelling (SEM) study
- Marketing sustainable tourism: the role of value orientation, well-being and credibility
- Sustainable Well-Being: A Potential Synergy between Sustainability and Well-Being Research
- Measuring Personal Growth and Development in Context: Evidence of Validity in Educational and Work Settings
- Purpose in Life and Its Relationship to All-Cause Mortality and Cardiovascular Events
- Does Materialism Hinder Relational Well-Being? The Role of Culture and Social Motives
- AS WE AGE: A REVIEW OF THE WISCONSIN LONGITUDINAL STUDY, 1957–2001
- Social Support and Wellbeing in Cat and Dog Owners, and the Moderating Influence of Pet–Owner Relationship Quality
- Beauty in Mind: The Effects of Physical Attractiveness on Psychological Well-Being and Distress
- Mental Illness and Mental Health: The Two Continua Model Across the Lifespan
- Ethics, Values, Virtues, and Character Strengths in Mindfulness-Based Interventions: a Psychological Science Perspective
- Meaning in Life in Emerging Adulthood: A Person‐Oriented Approach
- The Psychometric Location of Wisdom-Related Performance: Intelligence, Personality, and more?
- Comparing the Psychometric Properties of Two Measures of Wisdom: Predicting Forgiveness and Psychological Well-Being with the Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale (SAWS) and the Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (3D-WS)
- Understanding subjective well-being: perspectives from psychology and public health
- Hedonia, eudaimonia, and well-being: an introduction
- Reconsidering happiness: the costs of distinguishing between hedonics and eudaimonia
- Eastern Conceptualizations of Happiness: Fundamental Differences with Western Views
- Positive psychology interventions: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies
- The structural neural substrate of subjective happiness
- Dynamic benefits of finding the silver lining: secondary control as a buffer against declines in well-being during COVID-19
- The Relation of Ego Integrity and Despair to Personality Traits and Mental Health
- Social Media Use, Body Image, and Psychological Well-Being: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Korea and the United States
- Affectivity and psychological adjustment across two adult generations: Does pessimistic explanatory style still matter?
- Dimensions of Religion/Spirituality and Relevance to Health Research
- Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health.
- The Affective Revolution in Entrepreneurship: An Integrative Conceptual Review and Guidelines for Future Investigation
- The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?
- Intensive meditation training, immune cell telomerase activity, and psychological mediators
- Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on employees’ mental health: A systematic review
- The influence of tourism experience and well-being on place attachment
- Optimizing future well-being with artificial intelligence: self-organizing maps (SOMs) for the identification of islands of emotional stability
- Acculturation of Iranians in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands
- Work and the good life: How work contributes to meaning in life
- Can artificial intelligence-supported virtual tourist experiences improve tourist wellbeing?
- On the meaning of work: A theoretical integration and review
- ‘At home it's just so much easier to be yourself’: older adults' perceptions of ageing in place
- Secure Versus Fragile High Self‐Esteem as a Predictor of Verbal Defensiveness: Converging Findings Across Three Different Markers
- Beyond Economic Gains: Asset Transfer Programs and Psychological Well‐Being of Ultra‐Poor Women in Bangladesh
- Portrait of the self-enhancer: Well adjusted and well liked or maladjusted and friendless?
- Self-Event Connections in Life Stories, Self-Concept Clarity, and Dissociation: Examining Their Relations with Symptoms of Psychopathology
- Development of Overall Identity and Mental Well-Being and Their Associations in Adulthood
- The negative shadow cast by positive psychology: Contrasting views and implications of humanistic and positive psychology on resiliency.
- Reconsidering the psychometrics of quality of life assessment in light of response shift and appraisal. [europepmc]
- Mental Illness and Mental Health: The Two Continua Model Across the Lifespan. [europepmc]
- Development of a self-report measure of capability wellbeing for adults: the ICECAP-A. [europepmc]
- The NR-6: a new brief measure of nature relatedness. [europepmc]
- Participatory arts for older adults: a review of benefits and challenges. [europepmc]
- The relationship between nature connectedness and happiness: a meta-analysis. [europepmc]
- Relations of meaning in life and sense of coherence to distress in cancer patients: a meta-analysis. [europepmc]
- Psychometric properties of the Positive Mental Health Scale (PMH-scale). [europepmc]
- Review of 99 self-report measures for assessing well-being in adults: exploring dimensions of well-being and developments over time. [europepmc]
- Development and Validation of a Self-Report Measure of Mentalizing: The Reflective Functioning Questionnaire. [europepmc]
- Social media use in healthcare: A systematic review of effects on patients and on their relationship with healthcare professionals. [europepmc]
- Systematic review of the health-related quality of life issues facing adolescents and young adults with cancer. [europepmc]
- Why Does Positive Mental Health Buffer Against Psychopathology? An Exploratory Study on Self-Compassion as a Resilience Mechanism and Adaptive Emotion Regulation Strategy. [europepmc]
- Identifying fundamental criteria for eating disorder recovery: a systematic review and qualitative meta-analysis. [europepmc]
- Designing for Motivation, Engagement and Wellbeing in Digital Experience. [europepmc]
- Psychobiological factors of resilience and depression in late life. [europepmc]
- Association Between Life Purpose and Mortality Among US Adults Older Than 50 Years. [europepmc]
- The relationship between physical activity, mental wellbeing and symptoms of mental health disorder in adolescents: a cohort study. [europepmc]
- Psychological well-being among older adults during the COVID-19 outbreak: a comparative study of the young-old and the old-old adults. [europepmc]
- Mental Health and Well-Being of University Students: A Bibliometric Mapping of the Literature. [europepmc]
- Understanding subjective well-being: perspectives from psychology and public health. [europepmc]
- Researching and Practicing Positive Psychology in Second/Foreign Language Learning and Teaching: The Past, Current Status and Future Directions. [europepmc]
- Depression, anxiety and stress symptoms in Brazilian university students during the COVID-19 pandemic: Predictors and association with life satisfaction, psychological well-being and coping strategies. [europepmc]
- Smartphone-Based Ecological Momentary Assessment of Well-Being: A Systematic Review and Recommendations for Future Studies. [europepmc]
- Ageism and Psychological Well-Being Among Older Adults: A Systematic Review. [europepmc]
Related