Högskolan i Skövde

his.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • apa-cv
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Neuroscientific perspective on the bidirectional relationship between life satisfaction and health: Are people happier because they are healthy, or are they healthier because they are happy?
University of Skövde, School of Bioscience.
2018 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 15 credits / 22,5 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Bentham’s 1832 Greatest Happiness Principle states that the greatest happiness for the greatest amount of people should be the goal of public policy. When people are asked what they wish for in life, health and happiness are consistently mentioned. This thesis examines the relationship between health and happiness. However, as happiness is difficult to consistently operationalize across different studies and scientific disciplines, life satisfaction is used as a proxy for happiness. This thesis studies the relationship between health and life satisfaction with a particular focus on the directionality of the relationship and the tentative processes indicated to be involved with this process. This study is accomplished through a literary review of the scientific literature related to life satisfaction, its neural correlates and their relationship with physical health. This study is modelled on the top-down, bottom-up and bidirectional debate within the larger Subjective Well-Being (SWB) literature. The results indicate that the correlation between life satisfaction and health appears to be robust, but the exact directionality and causality is unclear and difficult to establish with a literary review, with only predictive ability of life satisfaction on later physical health or vice versa established. Furthermore, the results appear to indicate that the central process linking this relationship is resilience - the ability to adaptively respond to stressors. Enhancing resiliency through psychological interventions may be a method to promote happiness and health in individuals as well as in society as a whole.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2018. , p. 47
Keywords [en]
Neuroscience, life satisfaction, happiness, health, resilience, behavioural changes, public happiness, public health
National Category
Applied Psychology Public Health, Global Health, Social Medicine and Epidemiology Neurosciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:his:diva-15738OAI: oai:DiVA.org:his-15738DiVA, id: diva2:1221594
Subject / course
Cognitive Neuroscience
Educational program
Psychological Coach
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2018-06-21 Created: 2018-06-20 Last updated: 2018-06-21Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(423 kB)189 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 423 kBChecksum SHA-512
77906e9a7e3c159d43c0d5f0e547e5cd74a3c195c914699c0651b02b4251fd37856c687995d88b82d97225a3ea91af41c431eb8ead08ed715c7a705c86194f86
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Niemi, Markus
By organisation
School of Bioscience
Applied PsychologyPublic Health, Global Health, Social Medicine and EpidemiologyNeurosciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 189 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 580 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • apa-cv
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf