Four Myths about Subjective Well-being

Subjective well-being is a broad construct that reflects an individual's subjective evaluation of the quality of his or her life. Psychologists know a great deal about the causes and correlates of well-being, but some important misconceptions have developed and are often repeated. The purpose of this article is to address the evidence for four such misconceptions that we believe reflect 'myths' about subjective well-being. These myths include the idea that well-being measures are strongly influenced by irrelevant contextual factors, the idea that money is not an important correlate of well-being, the idea that social relationship variables are a particularly strong correlate of well-being, and the idea that well-being cannot change.