Abstract
Most well-being research asks what makes for a happy and satisfying life, focusing on societal conditions and individual activities. In contrast, my research mostly asked how people evaluate their lives: When asked how happy or satisfied they are, how do people arrive at an answer? In the 1970’s I studied sociology at the University of Mannheim, Germany, where Wolfgang Zapf (see “pioneers” entry on Zapf; Glatzer, 2012) developed a German social indicators system building on research at Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (see “pioneers” entries on Campbell and Andrews; Michalos, 2014a, b). This work treated well-being reports as veridical read-outs of relatively stable inner states. At the same time, research in cognitive and social psychology began to emphasize the context sensitive nature of human judgment. Social psychologists at the University of Mannheim were introduced to this development through visits of Robert S. Wyer, of the University of Illinois, a pioneer of information Applied Research Quality Life (2015) 10:765–767 DOI 10.1007/s11482-015-9424-9
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