Исследование феномена «удовлетворенность жизнью»

Abstract

The article attempts to study the phenomenon of “life satisfaction”. It offers a comparative analysis of such concepts as “well-being”, “subjective well-being” and “life satisfaction”. Life satisfaction is the main cognitive component of personal well-being and is seen as a conscious assessment of one’s life. The research has shown that life satisfaction is closely associated with personal well-being, since this term is most often used by the study participants as a synonym of life satisfaction. Overall life satisfaction is also closely related to satisfaction in subjectively important areas of life, including friends, family, job and career, economic status, social status, and self-esteem (Argyle 2003). The concept of “life satisfaction” is often defined using the models and definitions of personal well-being, so this paper provides an overview of the models of subjective well-being, life satisfaction, and happiness from the researchers working in this field. These models, depending on the number of key components they include, may be one-dimensional, two-dimensional, or multidimensional (Fomina 2016). One-dimensional theories of subjective well-being focus on one single principle that underpins well-being. In the case of two-dimensional theories, the authors assume that the structure of well-being comprises two basic components. Multidimensional models include more aspects related to the resulting sense of well-being. The emphasis is placed on the fact that an individual’s assessment of their own life is the main indicator of life satisfaction. It is shown that the concepts of “well-being”, “subjective well-being” and “life satisfaction” include interacting objective and subjective components. The concept of “life satisfaction”, being closely related to the concepts of “well-being” and “subjective well-being”, is not identical to any of them. According to L. I. Galiakhmetova, despite covering relatively independent phenomena, the concept of “life satisfaction” is characterized by stability, complexity, and consistency.