This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 17 January 2022 and 6 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Brianne202 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: AlexGorton.


Compare to well being

The term "well being" (without the hyphen) redirects to a different (QOL) page. This should be reconciled. --Lbeaumont (talk) 23:48, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Biscuittin (talk) 21:09, 9 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Online Tools for understanding well-being

This section seems to be biased towards one particular view without any valid references. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.9.185.136 (talk) 04:47, 14 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Can the name of the article be wellbeing instead of well-being?

As the word wellbeing is in use along with well-being, but wellbeing seems more popular use of the word, should the article have name wellbeing and well-being can be redirected here? The reverse is being done now. SHould I request administrators to do these changes if they find appropriate. Thanks in advance. -- Abhijeet Safai (talk) 08:11, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Canadian Law

In the "Background" section of this article, there's one sentence that states, "Social well-being is mentioned in Canadian law.[4]". This is a ridiculously trivial inclusion — such as of near irrelevance. That reference opens to a web page that mentions well-being in a generalized context.

The actual line in the reference merely reads: "(i) provides for the sound development of the oil and gas sector, by fostering a healthy environment, a sound economy and social well being,"; whereas, that's hardly of any substantial significance or relevance. I'm sure we could find the words "well being" — aside from "social well being" — scattered in countless government documents around the world. So what? This doesn't really evidence anything and it should be omitted. Ca.papavero (talk) 08:18, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 26 July 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) -- Calidum 00:12, 4 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]



Well-beingWellbeing – As per the common name policy and concise titles policy. A Google Trends query shows that "wellbeing" is used 5.5x more than "well-being" and is the most used search term in every single region listed. ItsPugle (talk) 22:51, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I had a look at the Google Ngrams page, but it was somewhat confusing about the right search notation to use since "well-being" includes a hyphen. Turns out you need to put a space on either side of the hyphen otherwise it'll see it as an operator. As a result, the proper search term shows "wellbeing" being used exponentially more. ItsPugle (talk) 10:46, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah it will by default assume you want to search for the hyphenated word, and will convert the syntax (note the message "Replaced well-being with [well - being] to match how we processed the books"). Your link isn't proper - see how in the legend of the graph it is using double-hyphens as "well -- being". In your link, you'd need to include the brackets as in [well - being], whereas for "well MINUS being", you'd use (well - being) -- I have no idea what "well -- being" is displaying. My link above is showing correct results for wellbeing vs well-being. -- Netoholic @ 11:11, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I'm not following. The Google Ngrams instructions say down the bottom Because users often want to search for hyphenated phrases, put spaces on either side of the - sign (§ Ngram Compositions). ItsPugle (talk) 22:19, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It also says this: The Ngram Viewer will try to guess whether to apply these behaviors. You can use parentheses to force them on, and square brackets to force them off. Example: and/or will divide and by or; to measure the usage of the phrase and/or, use [and/or]. And well-meaning will search for the phrase well-meaning; if you want to subtract meaning from well, use (well - meaning). In other words, if you add the spaces, you should also add the brackets - just as they indicate on the results screen when you search for well-being. -- Netoholic @ 06:58, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Ngrams is so confusing. I'm lost, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ItsPugle (please use {{ping|ItsPugle}} on reply) 23:44, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Psychometric Properties of Flourishing Scales From a Comprehensive Well-Being Assessment

A recently published paper "Psychometric Properties of Flourishing Scales From a Comprehensive Well-Being Assessment" claims to have developed "a measure of complete well-being". It may be helpful to integrate these new findings into the existing article. Thanks! --Lbeaumont (talk) 15:44, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Types of Wellbeing

mental well-being, physical well-being, economic well-being or emotional well-being

There are four different types of well-being; mental, physical, economic, and emotional well-being. A section for each well-being should be added.Jenna.Hill1 (talk) 02:03, 3 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Eudaemonia

Maybe it would be appropriate to add Aristotle's concept of eudaemonia to the introduction of the article? Just a thought...

SpicyMemes123 (talk) 12:03, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Emotional well-being

Emotional well-being redirects here but has substantial text after the #REDIRECT directive. Please can an editor familiar with the subject un-redirect, merge, delete or otherwise deal with the content? Pinging the redirect author, TheEmeraldBoat. Thanks, Certes (talk) 16:51, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the notice; I’ll go remove the post-redirect content. I’m not sure why I left the article content when I first made the edit, to be honest. Teb (talk) 17:16, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: PSYC 115 General Psychology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 30 August 2023 and 15 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Potatolover23, Takeoutsushi (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by TIME137TSS (talk) 01:11, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Social media is a two-process framework that contributes to well-being

Social media online is a two-process framework. Process one involves the self-disclosure and the effects of well-being. Process two involves the well-being states that influence disclosure has on motivations. Process one consists of 4 prominent mechanisms which include 1) perceived connectedness, 2) social support, 3) capitalization process, and 4) psychological authenticity. Perceived connectedness refers to the feeling of relatedness with one another in their lives, this can lead to a negative or positive effect on well-being. Social support refers to the social benefits that people perceive, express, and gain from human interactions. Social support provides and provides a positive effect. Capitalization and authenticity suggests that expressing personal thoughts and emotions have additional effects on psychological well-being because it increases the salience and significance of the events. Process two aims to make clear the disclosure types due to the variations in psychological states. Process two consists of 1) interpersonal motives: relational development and 2) intrapersonal motives: self-expression. Relational development seeks to gain closeness and intimacy with another person. This motive gains more of a positive disclosure due to the intentional self-disclosure. Self-expression on social media allows for those to release pent-up thoughts or feelings in a ‘safe’ space. Studies suggest that self-expression can lead to a more negative connotation of disclosure. Closing the gap will point out that a lack of honesty makes it difficult for positive self-disclosure in social media. Negative disclosure leads to impaired relational goals.

--Takeoutsushi (talk) 20:42, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your efforts to improve this article. I suggest that you prepare a draft before and add it to the article when it is complete. Please keep in mind that well-being is a very broad topic the effect of social media on well-being is only one very specific issue. So it may not be justified to dedicate a full section social media, see WP:PROPORTION. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:45, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Digital Media

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 30 September 2024 and 11 December 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Dnunezgonz (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Dnunezgonz (talk) 22:27, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to the article

I was considering improvements to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status. Currently, the article has a few unreferenced passages and the following maintenance tags: 1x Expand section, 2x citation needed, 1x when?, 1x clarification needed.

The section "Scientific approaches" currently only lists three fields of study (developmental, personality, and clinical psychology) but fails to mention the main field (positive psychology) and the many approaches outside psychology (economics, neuroscience, health sciences,...). We could rename the section to "Fields of inquiry" or something similar so that it can also cover philosophy, another key discipline. This section would also be a good place to properly explain how well-being is measured since this is currently missing. The discussion of "Global studies" seems more appropriate for this section rather than as a separate main section, which is currently placed at the end of the article.

The article mentions some types of well-being in passing, but I think this topic needs a more thorough discussion in a separate section. At the very least, it should cover the distinction between subjective and objective well-being. It would be good to explain other types as well, such as mental, physical, social, economic, emotional, eudaimonic, individual, and community well-being.

I'm not sure that we need the section "Overview" since providing an overview is already the purpose of the lead section. It could be replaced by a definition section, which could also cover the connection between well-being and related terms like ill-being, happiness, pleasure, life satisfaction, etc.

There are more things to be done but they can be addressed later since the ones mentioned so far will already involve a lot of work to implement. I was hoping to get some feedback on these ideas and possibly other suggestions. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:14, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've implemented most of the suggested changes. I think there are a few more ways to improve the article. The section "Theories of well-being" could be expanded to include perfectionism, eudaimonism, and hybrid theories and the contrast between monism vs pluralism.
The section "Models and components of well-being" currently discusses the models proposed by different theorists, one at a time. I'm not sure that this is the best approach: there are countless other models not yet mentioned and many of these models overlap with objective list theories discussed in the section "Theories of well-being". I think a better approach would be to explain the most-discussed components/factors directly rather than how different theories group them together. This could include subsections/paragraphs on emotions, life satisfaction, health, autonomy, flourishing, achievement/accomplishment, relationships, finding meaning, environment, etc. The most influential models, like PERMA, should also be mentioned but not as the main topic of the section. Phlsph7 (talk) 14:23, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GA review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Well-being/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Phlsph7 (talk · contribs) 13:09, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Urchincrawler (talk · contribs) 20:17, 7 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]


Hi. I'm going to be reviewing your article. I made a few minor edits for things like WP:SCAREQUOTES. I will continue to check for issues and publish my final review on this page.

Hello Urchincrawler and thanks for taking the time to review this article! Phlsph7 (talk) 09:11, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I'm currently going through the article and here are some concerns I have about the article's writing since some things are written in a way that could be confusing or not ideal. This comment may seem long, but it's mostly me picking out the specific potential issues. The article seems otherwise mostly solid thus far. Here is what feedback I have so far. No major issues, but a few areas for minot improvements to clarity, lay person language, etc.
"these factors can be assessed and quantified from an external perspective. They include personal, social, economic, and environmental aspects such as health, education, income, housing, leisure, and security."
Since this is describing objective measures, it would help to add what is being quantified. Health, income, and housing are pretty intuitive, but specifying how leisure and education are measured objectively as it relates to wellbeing would be helpful. Perhaps "access to education" or "level of education" instead of just education and "amount of leisure time" instead of just leisure.
Good idea, I made the examples more concrete. Many of these factors are discussed in more detail in the section "Components and contributing factors". Phlsph7 (talk) 10:50, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]


I would also rephrase this slightly, "It [mental health] involves the absence of disorders and disturbances, together with the abilities to cope with challenging situations, maintain positive relationships, and cultivate personal growth." What is meant by "disturbances"? Does this refer to traumatic events or something else? I would also change absence to "absence and management" since some people have lifelong chronic mental disorders but can still take measures to achieve psychological well-being such as medication.
I added the part about management of disorders. The term disturbances is used here in a rather general sense to express a lack of internal balance, indicating that you don't need a mental disorder to be miserable. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:50, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]


"According to a common view, the value of each episode of pleasure and pain depends only on its intensity and duration."
The "according to a common view" seems like weasel words (see WP: WEASEL). Commonly held is a vague description. Who is this view commonly held by? Is it commonly held by most of the world population? How do you know it's commonly held?
I added the technical terms for these positions. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:50, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]


"Desire theories have some overlap with hedonism because people desire pleasure and the satisfaction of desires is typically pleasurable. However, people want various other goods besides pleasure, and desire theorists emphasize the diversity of desires and the individual differences from one person to another."
I would change "However, people want..." to "Desire theorists believe people want goods for reasons beyond pleasure..." or something similar. Whether or not wellbeing is based on pleasure or a want for more is believed by different groups (as your previous section on hedonism goes over.) The current wording to me came off as support for desire theory over hedonist theory, which would not be a neutral point of view. "However" should also be avoided per WP:WTW (words to watch). There are multiple instances of "However" in the article. While this is fine sometimes, it seems a few uses were unnecessary and may cause unintentional tone issues. Combing through and removing a few would help.
I reformulated the expression to avoid this concern. The term "however" usually indicates that there is a contrast between what comes before and what comes after. As I interpret MOS:EDITORIAL, the point is not that making readers aware of genuine contrasts is a problem in encyclopedic tone but to avoid inventing false contrasts unsupported by reliable sources. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:50, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]


I would also simplify these couple sentences: "Pleasure and pain are commonly seen as symmetric phenomena that counterbalance each other. According to this view, the disvalue of an episode of intense pain can be annulled by the value of an episode of intense pleasure." I'm unsure how many lay readers would understand symmetric phenomena. Perhaps something like, "Pleasure and pain are often thought of as balancing forces to one another. In this view, the harm that intense pain inflicts on one's wellbeing is cancelled out by intense pleasure." I hope I'm not underestimating lay readers, but I've never seen "disvalue" used commonly.
I tried to reformulate these sentence to make them more accessible. I replaced the term "disvalue" with "negative value". Phlsph7 (talk) 10:50, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]


"Emotions include subjective experiences of pleasure and pain and more complex psychological phenomena that encompass various additional aspects."
What are these various additional aspects? It's kind of vague. I assume it's the arousal and evaluative assessments that follow, but it the wording could be touched up for clarity such as "Emotions include subjective experiences of pleasure and pain alongside more complex psychological phenomena, such as ..." Urchincrawler (talk) 07:56, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I changed the order of presentation and reformualted some parts to clarify this point. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:50, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. Sorry the wait. I went through the parts of the article I hadn't yet evaluated and I have sone feedback.
"Knowledge is a cognitive success through which people stand in contact with reality."
The phrasing of this seems kind of abstract. While the following sentences go into how knowledge is helpful to well-being, I think if you are going to start the paragraph with a definition of knowledge it should be more clear and concrete.
I added some more details. The exact definition of knowledge is controversial, so I don't think that the article should dive further into this topic. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Understandable Urchincrawler (talk) 11:39, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"ethical excellence"
What counts as ethical excellence? Maybe phrase this differently.
I modified the following clause to make this point clearer. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"the affective level" Does this refer to the affective components of well-being? Maybe rephrase slightly for clarity.
Reformulated. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Positive psychology is the branch of psychology dedicated to the study of well-being and related phenomena, like happiness and flourishing."
How does wellbeing differ from flourishing? If one is flourishing, doesn't that mean they have what they need to thrive and therefore have good well-being?
Well-being and flourishing are related concepts but not synonyms. Flourishing is associated with the eudamonic conception of well-being but is not a central component of all conceptions of well-being. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"According to one view, the two always accompany each other, meaning it is in everyone's self-interest to act virtuously. An alternative perspective denies this close connection, stating that, at least in some cases, a virtuous person has to compromise their own well-being for the greater good."..."Another central subfield concerns the role of personality, in particular, how individuals differ regarding personality traits and how these traits impact well-being. The VIA model, an influential framework in positive psychology, analyzes personality based on six main virtues: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. A closely related topic focuses on the role of the self, which encompasses the way a person conceptualizes and imagines themselves. Important factors for well-being are self-esteem, or how a person evaluates themselves, and authenticity, or the degree to which a person's behavior is subjectively consistent with their sense of self."
"One view" and "Another view" don't give a sense of weight to those opinions, especially since each only had 1 source. It also comes off almost as weasel words. Try describing people that hold those views and/or adding more sources. WP:WEIGHT I see this in a few other parts of the article too like "A different perspective argues that their relation is more complex..." and "One view sees community well-being as the sum of individual well-beings while others emphasize that the relation between the two is more complex." This doesn't do much to reflect how much weight these views have. For instance, I could find a book from a chocolate addict and write a paragraph about "One view is that quantity of chocolate consumption is the only true measure of well-being. Others disagree." Of course, I trust you wouldn't include something that fringe, but it's hard to verify weight with vague wording and single sources.
I tried to clarify a little who holds the views, but this is often not so easy for wide-spread views. Ascribing a widely-held view to a single philosopher could violate WP:UNDUE by given the impression that it is only a view of this particular philosopher. The alternative of using vague expressions to give a broad overview is used in high-quality reliable sources. For example, to provide a general characterization, Baril 2015, pp. 242–243 talks about divided opinions using expressions like "among professsional philosophers" and "among philosophers". If you think there are not enough sources there, I can find more. However, the passages you mentioned already have several high-quality sources and we also have to be careful to avoid WP:OVERCITE. Your example with the chocolate consumptions centers on unreliable sources that are themselved biased. Do you think that sources like Baril 2015 are biased?
According to WP:WEIGHT, articles should represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources. As I understand it, this means if there are two equally important views on a topic, they should get equal weight based on how they are presented in the article through factors like where they are placed and the amount of text dedicated to them. I don't think that this implies that we have to make explicit how much weight they get by quantifying in the text how important they are. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:36, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was confused what meant by WP:OVERCITE since 3 of the 4 paragraphs containing "one view" have only one citation at the end. For some reason whatever template you went with ends up sandwiching two or 3 sources into one. 2 or 3 sources is a lot better for supporting a view's importance than just one, so that's fine. Would you mind sharing how you set up the citations? I've never seen an article that has 3 different books together as one inline citation. Urchincrawler (talk) 06:36, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ah ok, now I understand the confusion. The article uses Template:multiref to bundle several citations into one reference tag. For example, the wikitext <ref>{{multiref | {{harvnb|Lin|2022|loc=Lead section}} | {{harvnb|Orsi|2015|p=63}}}}</ref> creates a citation bundle referring to two citations: one to Lin 2022 and the other to Orsi 2015. Inside the citation bundle, Template:harvnb is a shortened footnote. It needs another citation template to provide the full information of the source. The article provides this information in the subsection "Sources", in this case:{{cite book |last1=Lin |first1=Eden |chapter=Well-being |chapter-url=https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/well-being/v-1 |title=Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Routledge |access-date=16 December 2024 |language=en |doi=10.4324/9780415249126-L176-1 |date=2022 |isbn=978-0-415-25069-6 }} and {{cite book |last1=Orsi |first1=Francesco |title=Value Theory |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-1-4725-2408-9 |language=en |date=2015 }}. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:29, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Anthropologists are interested in the concept of well-being in different cultures. They seek to understand what people at different times and places associate with a good life, such as the culture-specific norms, values, and practices for achieving personal well-being. A key assumption in this field is that the concept of well-being involves a commitment to what is desirable and an evaluative framework for guiding behavior and assessing lifestyles. Anthropologists compare these commitments and frameworks across different cultures, like the differences between Western and non-Western conceptions of well-being. They describe the similarities and differences, typically without taking a position on which view is superior."
This seems like a lot of heavy lifting for just one source, especially explaining key assumptions in (presumably) all or most of archeology. Once again, please consider due weight.
Our first sentence, Anthropologists are interested in the concept of well-being in different cultures, seems to be supported by Fischer & Victor 2023, pp. 335–336: ‘Well-being’ (and its adjunct and sometimes synonym, ‘happiness’) carries different meanings and connotations across historical and cultural contexts. The anthropological challenge then becomes how to capture what notions of well-being (and the good and the good life) mean to different people in different times and places – and to build a positive framework based on this range of lived experience. We can go through the rest of the passage as well, sentence by sentence, but this could be a time-intensive process. Do you have specific parts in mind that you think violate WP:DUE?
I'm not sure what you mean by "This seems like a lot of heavy lifting for just one source, especially explaining key assumptions in (presumably) all or most of archeology."? This passages has two sources and it talks about anthropology, not archeology. I can look for more if necessary but I don't think that this is required. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:47, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Lastly, the stuff on religion at the very bottom seems rather glazed over. Religion can play a major role in how people interpret well-being. Lumping all the major religions at the bottom doesn't really do much to explore that. It seems odd that philosophical ideas of wellbeing get fleshed our while religious ideas do not. I would definitely like to see this expanded and perhaps made into it's own subsection within the section.

Urchincrawler (talk) 07:41, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I added some additional information. I don't think that a bigger expansion is justified after looking at the following overview sources: Alexandrova 2017, Bradley 2015, Fletcher 2015, Galvin 2018, Hooker 2015, and Huppert, Baylis & Keverne 2005. They have very little information on the different religious conceptions of well-being. There would be more high-quality overview sources to check, but from the ones I looked at so far, a full subsection is not required per WP:PROPORTION (and may not even be justified). If you know of a specific overview source that makes it clear that the different religious conceptions are a major aspect of the topic of well-being in general, I could look more into it. Phlsph7 (talk) 18:09, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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