Happiness & Personality

Abstract

Part 1. An integrative accumulator model to account for individuals' biases in their characteristic happiness is described. Some of the different views about happiness which are expressed in Strack et al. (1991) are unified by the model which is based on Vickers (1979). Part 2. Data, bearing on whether people tend to be biased toward happiness, unhappiness, neither or both, are presented. Four groups, distinguished from each other by the frequency with which they experience positive and negative emotions, show a clear pattern of differences on happiness and satisfaction measures. The consistency of the differences between the four groups labelled Happy, Labile, Stable and Unhappy suggests that the differences reflect trait rather than state factors. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.