Questioning the ‘subjective well-being’ concept: Distinguishing wellbeing and happiness

This paper criticizes the “subjective well-being” concept, as this concept eliminates the difference between wellbeing and happiness. This paper proposes that wellbeing and happiness are two gauges of satisfaction that measure different quantities. It establishes its proposed thesis by examining how the social welfare function (SWF) accommodates altruism as opposed to caring understood as love. Altruism is an act related to wellbeing, whereas caring in the sense of love is an act related to happiness. SWF can include neither altruism nor caring—but for totally different reasons that demonstrate that the two prosocial acts are different. Therefore, the duo gauges of satisfaction (wellbeing and happiness) cannot be amalgamated into the “subjective well-being” concept.

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Published in: Acta Psychologica
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
See article on publisher's website: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.104702