Living well and wellbeing

McGrath, Laura (2023). Living well and wellbeing. In: McGrath, Laura and Turner, Jim eds. Exploring psychological worlds: Thinking, feeling, doing, Volume 1. The Open University, pp. 457–504.

Abstract

What does it mean to live a good life or to live well? This is a question that has occupied people for many centuries and been the focus of much of world philosophy. It is also the focus of many industries, as promoting health, well-being and wellness is a profitable area. In this busy arena, full of competing ideas, psychological approaches to well-being focus on understanding what the evidence says about the kinds of conditions people need to live fulfilling and healthy lives.

In this chapter you will be introduced to a variety of approaches used within psychology to understand well-being, happiness and flourishing. The first section looks at approaches to well-being, which have broadly characterised well-being as something that people feel, something that people do and something that people need. The later sections of the chapter examine in detail two specific examples of well-being research in different contexts. First, you will learn about research looking at Indigenous approaches to well-being, with a particular focus on Māori models of health. This is followed by a discussion of research from the United States and the UK on an area known as ‘positive psychology’.

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