Australian Centre on Quality of Life Bulletin Archive http://www.acqol.com.au/publications#bulletins

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/27: 040719 to Vol 3/39: 260919

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/39: 260919 Bulletin of the Australian Centre on Quality of Lifehttp://www.acqol.com.au/Editor: Robert A. Cummins [robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au]Back-issues of the Bulletin are available at http://www.acqol.com.au/projects#bulletins

Note 1: The ACQol site is under development and some content is missing.Note 2: Please address any intended group correspondence to the editor only.

Paper for private studyThe attached paper, on the topic of life quality, is sent to you for your personal private study and discussion within ACQol. You are prohibited from further distributing this paper to any

other person.

Continued discussion from last week

[copied into Pandect – NO]In response to last weeks’ Bulletin 3/38 on happiness, Tony Ward tonyward@bigpond.net.au has reminded us that “While children’s happiness may have only become a widespread goal in the mid to late 19th century, as the article argues, I should note that the famous second sentence of the 1776 US Declaration of Independence reads:‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ (Jefferson, 1776). So general happiness was certainly an important goal a century earlier.”

A nice point to make, which directs attention to what meaning Jefferson intended to convey by using the word. The attached paper (Shannon, 2016) nicely covers this issue. In summary of Shannon, Jefferson’s ‘happiness’ had a quite different meaning from the term today. His happiness:“had its roots in humankind's inherent capacity for reason and desire for material security. Reason … was the means by which people pursued individual and collective improvement. The "Creator" gave humans reason because he wanted them to be happy.

In Jefferson's world, reasonable people pursued happiness by migrating from poverty and deprivation in the Old World to the natural bounty of the New. They pursued happiness by adopting new techniques that improved crop yields and livestock breeding. They built ships, roads, and canals that opened new markets and sped commerce.

Happiness meant being able to provide for your family without fear of famine, incessant warfare, or an exploitive aristocracy. In his essay "Information to Those Who Would Remove to America," Franklin called this condition a "general happy mediocrity." Today, we call it a

stable, middle-class society, where people who work hard can reasonably expect freedom and prosperity for themselves and their children”.

What is particularly fascinating in this account is Jefferson’s description of ‘happiness’ as ‘general happy mediocrity”. This, in fact, is surprisingly close to our current conception of Homeostatically Protected Mood (see below).

However, Jefferson was not alone in his use of ‘happiness’ in 1776. In that same year the Scottish philosopher Smith (1776) and, later, the English philosopher (Bentham 1780, 1789)created the origin of economics as a discipline (for an expansion on Bentham see Cummins, 2019b). In the absence of empirical data, these philosophers made all sorts of assumptions upon which to base their arguments. Most crucially, they believed that the happiness benefits of economic activity could not be directly measured. Positive outcomes for the individual could only inferred from their rational choice behaviour (as did Jefferson), and this benefit became known as ‘utility’. Thus it came about that, within economics, income became proxy for happiness and, ceteris paribus, the more money individuals or nations have, the happier they are. [and, as we now know, happier and warmer].

Because these philosophers believed that ‘happiness’ could not be directly measured, they did not further define the term. But, had they done so, they would likely have been in the same ball-park as Jefferson, possibly without the necessity to cross the Atlantic to achieve the desired state. So, what has psychological science contributed to this definition during the intervening 243 years?

Thirty years after Jefferson, Noah Webster produced his first dictionary, ‘A Compendious Dictionary of English Language’ (Webster, 1806). This modest, small-sized dictionary of about 400 pages, was the first dictionary of any significance produced by an American (Landau, 2005).

(Webster, 1806, p. 139) “Happinefs, n. bleffednefs, content, good fortune”

Comment: It is fascinating to see the inclusion of ‘content’. While this word was not used in subsequent entries by Webster, it does appear in the Psychological Science description 213 years later (see below).

(Webster, 1828) “Happiness: The agreeable sensations which spring from the enjoyment of good; that state of a being in which his desires are gratified, by the enjoyment of pleasure without pain; felicity [great happiness]; but happiness usually expresses less than felicity, and felicity less than bliss. happiness is comparative. To a person distressed with pain, relief from that pain affords happiness; in other cases we give the name happiness to positive pleasure or an excitement of agreeable sensations. happiness therefore admits of indefinite degrees of increase in enjoyment, or gratification of desires. Perfect happiness or pleasure unalloyed with pain, is not attainable in this life”.

Comment: While this description is much closer to the current view, it still presents a view of happiness encumbered by: (a) being free from pain [masochists would disagree] and being created by release from pain [a jilted lover, released from pain, would disagree]; (b) being comparative [not so, see HPMood later]; pure happiness without pain is not attainable by mortals [not so, both meditation and medication can provide this].

(Webster, 1913)1. Good luck; good fortune; prosperity.2. An agreeable feeling or condition of the soul arising from good fortune or propitious happening of any kind; the possession of those circumstances or that state of being which is attended with enjoyment; the state of being happy; contentment; joyful satisfaction; felicity; blessedness.3. Fortuitous elegance; unstudied grace; - used especially of language.

Comment: all of the 1828 encumbrances have disappeared.

(Merriam-Webster, 2019)1a : a state of well-being and contentment : joy b : a pleasurable or satisfying experience. 2 : felicity, aptness a striking happiness of expression 3 obsolete : good fortune : prosperity

Cummins (2019) from psychological science:(a) Happiness is feeling of general wellbeing.(b) Happiness exists as a single affect, taxonomically located at about 3560 on the affective

circumplex (see, e.g. Davern, Cummins, & Stokes, 2007).(c) Happiness may be experienced as either a mood or an emotion.(d) Happiness as a mood exists as an unchanging, low-intensity positive affect.(e) Happiness as a mood combines with Contentment and Alert to form the psychological

molecule of Homeostatically Protected Mood (HPMood). (f) The level of HPMood is an individual difference and represents a setpoint for each

person.(g) The level of happiness as an emotion is variable but is normally held within 8.25

percentage points of each setpoint (Capic, Li, & Cummins, 2018).

References: see end of Bulletin

Further discussion of these paper(s), for circulation to members, is invited. Send to: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Substantive comments received by midnight on Monday 30th September Oz time will be published in the following Bulletin. Such comments may offer a novel extension to the view

that has been put, an alternative and informed view, or offer a critique.

ACQol members are invited to send papers, queries or comments, on the topic of life quality, for distribution and discussion by members under these same conditions.

Brief reportSourced from the Analysis & Policy Observatory

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2019). Australia’s welfare 2019 in brief. Cat. no. AUS 227. Canberra: AIHW https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2019/09/apo-nid258136-1385626.pdf.

Overall, Australia is faring well on many indicators: Fewer people are working very long hours 2009 to 2018, 16% to 14% of employed people worked 50 hours or more a week

Civic engagement has increased 2010 to 2019, 90% to 97% of eligible people were enrolled to vote

More homes have internet access 2007 to 2016, 67% to 86%

The measures in some other areas are not as encouraging : One in 4 unemployed people are long-term unemployed 2009 to 2018, 15% to 25%of unemployed people aged 15 and over had been looking for work for more than a year.

One in 9 families with children are jobless 2012 to 2017 12% to 12% of families with children under 15 had no one in the family who was employed.

Media newsTanika Roberts [trobe@deakin.edu.au]

Executive Volunteer, Bulletin Co-Editor– Media

Understanding Why Play Is So Important For Childrenhttps://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/comparatively-speaking/201909/understanding-why-play-is-so-important-children Daniel Marston

Over the years of working with children I have seen many circumstances supporting the importance of play for appropriate development. This is also something supported quite strongly in the research on child development. Engaging in appropriate play activities is helpful for children to develop important skills needed for interacting with other people.  It is also essential for learning effective approaches for dealing with challenges individuals face as they grow up.

Membership changesSangeetha Thomas <thomassa@deakin.edu.au>simonet@deakin.edu.au

Membership RegistrarWelcome to new membersDr. Kai LudwigsDirector, Happiness Research OrganisationKeywords: Happiness, ESM, DRM, Happiness Analyzer

Professor Cecilia WongProfessor of Spatial Planning, The University of ManchesterKeywords: Spatial planning, Community well-being, Quality of life, Indicators

Dr. Allison RossAssistant Research Professor, Arizona State UniversityKeywords: Physical activity, Subjective well-being, Sense of community

Dr Francesca ParenteResearch fellow, Italian Trade AgencyKeywords: Human development economics and well-being, Inequality, Socioeconomics, Regional studies

-----------------------

ReferencesCapic, T., Li, N., & Cummins, R. A. (2018). Confirmation of Subjective Wellbeing Set-points: Foundational for

Subjective Social Indicators. Social Indicators Research, 137(1), 1-28. Retrieved from 10.1007/s11205-017-1585-5.

Cummins, R. A. (2019b). Jeromy Bentham, Utility, and the Golden Triangle of Happiness. In G. Brulé & C. Suter (Eds.), Wealth(s) and Subjective Well-Being. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 76. (pp. 67-83). Cham: Springer https://rd.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-05535-6#toc.

Davern, M., Cummins, R. A., & Stokes, M. (2007). Subjective wellbeing as an affective/cognitive construct. Journal of Happiness Studies, 8(4), 429-449. doi:10.1007/s10902-007-9066-1

Jefferson, T. (1776). United States Declaration of Independence. Philadelphia: John Dunlap.

Landau, S. I. (2005). Johnson's influence on Webster and Worcester in early American lexicography. International Journal of Lexicography, 18(2), 217-229.

Merriam-Webster. (2019). Online dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com

Shannon, T. J. (2016). What About That Pursuit of Happiness? Gettysburg Gettysburg College https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://en.wikipedia.org/

&httpsredir=1&article=1074&context=histfac.

Webster, N. (1806). A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. New Haven: Hartford.

Webster, N. (1828). An American Dictionary of the English Language. (2 vols.). New York: S. Converse.

Webster, N. (1913). Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language: The Dictionary Proper Being the Authentic Ed. of Webster's International Dictionary of One Thousand Eight Hundred and Ninety, Ed. Under the Supervision of Noah Porter... to which is Now Added a Department of New Words, Together with Many Valuable Special Features. Springfield, Mass: G. & C. Merriam Company.

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/38: 190919 Bulletin of the Australian Centre on Quality of Lifehttp://www.acqol.com.au/Editor: Robert A. Cummins [robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au]Back-issues of the Bulletin are available at http://www.acqol.com.au/projects#bulletins

Note 1: The ACQol site is under development and some content is missing.Note 2: Please address any intended group correspondence to the editor only.

Paper for private studyThe attached paper, on the topic of life quality, is sent to you for your personal private study and discussion within ACQol. You are prohibited from further distributing this paper to any

other person.

Background: Parents have many responsibilities to their children. One is the effective transfer of information concerning beliefs about family and societal functioning. Such beliefs install fairly easily, given genetic assistance for such learning and the 24/7 presence of a parent, at least in early childhood. This learning facilitates the child’s integration into family roles, thereby meeting parental expectations. It also assist effective interaction with non- family members of their society. Within the mix of these beliefs is learning how to deal with feelings of happiness.

There is great diversity between cultures in the extent to which child happiness is valued. For example, Nunn (2015) reports a survey of 4,592 parents in 15 countries. Parents were asked to rate various attitudes towards their child including “What are the three most important goals that you want your child to achieve as an adult? (p.9). The percentage of parents who rated ‘Be happy in life’ in their top three goals, ranged from 79.5% (averaging France, Canada, Australia, UK) to 52.3% (Indonesia, Turkey, Malaysia, India). In contrast, the same country groupings rated ‘Be successful in their career’ as 21.8% and 40.1% respectively.

While these comparative statistics are influenced by numerous cultural and religious factors, it is notable that these country groupings systematically differ in national wealth. The respective rankings of GDP/capita (Central Intelligence Agency, 2019) of these same country groupings is (40th,34th, 29th,39th) and (127th,77th,71st, 156th). These combined results make sense. Within poor countries, aspirations are dominated by visions of economic success, and happiness is seen as an outcome of such success. Happiness is the province of the rich and powerful. For poor and powerless families, happiness is subjugated by concerns with daily survival. As Stearns (2019) states in relation to colonial America, “childhood after infancy was primarily associated with work, under the sometimes rough direction of adults” (p.2). Under such conditions, child obedience was the priority virtue (for a review see Stearns, 2014), child happiness was hardly considered relevant, and child boredom was non-existent; like their parents, children were either working or sleeping.

However, as nations develop economically, and people move above the poverty line to gain financial security, their aspirations change. Instead of being concerned with simple survival, aspirations can now turn to aspects of life quality. One such aspiration is the promotion of happiness. So as wealth begins to spread within economically developing societies, concerns for happiness increases, the value of obedience decreases, and both adults and their children have spare time on their hands.

Reference: Stearns, P. N. (2019). Happy Children: A Modern Emotional Commitment. Frontiers in psychology, 06 September 2019 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02025.

Author summary: American parents greatly value children’s happiness, citing it well above other possible priorities. This commitment to happiness, shared with parents in other Western societies but not elsewhere, is an important feature of popular emotional culture. But the commitment is also the product of modern history, emerging clearly only in the 19th century. This article explains the contrast between more traditional and modern views, and explains the origins but also the evolution of the idea of a happy childhood. Early outcomes, for example, included the novel practice of hosting parties for children’s birthdays, another mid-19th-century innovation that has expanded over time. Explaining the intensification of the happiness commitment also reveals some of the downsides of this aspect of popular emotional culture, for example in measurably complicating reactions to childish unhappiness. The basic goal of the essay is to use this important facet of modern emotional history to evaluate a commitment that many modern parents assume is simply natural.

Comment on Stearns (2019)This paper is an informative and interesting account of evolving societal concern with children’s happiness. While particularly directed to American society, the story likely applies to most societies, as they transition from poverty to middle-class. However, it does rather fall-down in treating this evolving pattern of children’s happiness in isolation from adult happiness. This is a pity because adults set the developmental context. As adults develop the

resources allowing concern with their own happiness, the happiness of their children becomes relevant. Grumpy kids a happy household do not make. So, understanding child happiness becomes a priority.

The emergence of this realization is evidenced by voluminous literature on child happiness in the late 19th century. However, the evidence is fragmented and Stearns (2019) struggles to describe the scene. He describes the idea of ‘natural childhood happiness’ as being ‘deeply ingrained’ (citing Berman, 2016), but also that it “is not automatic or in any sense natural, but the product of more particular circumstance” (p.2). A contemporary understanding of SWB homeostasis eases this apparent confusion. While Homeostatically Protected Mood reflects the genetic propensity to experience ‘happiness’ at the level of each setpoint (in the range of 70-90 percentage points) (Capic et al., 2018), the actual experience of happiness at that level depends on the retention of homeostatic control (Cummins, 2017a). The expression of happiness, on the other hand, as overt behavior, is under a quite different kind of control, being dependent on culture (Cummins, 2019c).

With this understanding it is possible to elaborate on Stearns’ comment that “before about the middle of the 19th century most Americans (and, probably, most people in most agriculturalsocieties) did not equate children and happiness and indeed were unlikely to see childhood as a particularly happy phase of life” (p.2). Homeostatic control would have been under challenge from both the difficult conditions of life and the culture of Protestantism, with its doctrine of original sin (Greven, 1988). Life was hard and jolliness frowned-on for both children and their parents. Stearns cites Gillis (1981) “… any kind of systematic happiness, or even a common use of the term, was simply not part of popular expectations” (p.2). But as the 20th century approached, a new view of child-happiness emerged as being a desirable state. This raised a number of potentially negative issues for parents, nicely articulated by Stearns. Two of these are obedience, has already been mentioned, and boredom.

The word ‘boredom’ first appeared in common usage only in the mid-19th century (Online Etymology Dictionary, 2019) thereby coinciding with the growing interest in happiness. Initially boredom applied to childhood mainly as a character lesson: children should be taught not to be bored. This surely was a parental defensive manoeuvre. While it is good for children to be happy, they need to learn not to feel bored. So, children learned how to be self-sufficient by interacting with friends, real or imaginary, hobbies, or whatever else they could devise to fill time.

After 1950, however, Sterns states that “the meaning was flipped: boredom now became a state to be blamed on others, a reason for personal discontent….“I’m bored” became yet another way of telling the adult world that it was falling short, for the child should be entertained” (p.6). So the net outcome of economic development, in the terms discussed, can be summarised. Both adults and children have become potentially happier. Whether this potential is realized, for both, depends on children learning both ‘happy obedience’ and ‘engagement self-sufficiency’ to avoid boredom. Perhaps this understanding links to the increasing trend for couples not to have children.

References: see end of Bulletin

Further discussion of this paper, for circulation to members, is invited. Send to: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Substantive comments received by midnight on Monday 23rd September Oz time will be published in the following Bulletin. Such comments may offer a novel extension to the view

that has been put, an alternative and informed view, or offer a critique.

ACQol members are invited to send papers, queries or comments, on the topic of life quality, for distribution and discussion by members under these same conditions.

Website additions and changesTanja Capic <tanja.capic@deakin.edu.au>

WebMaster

New Instrument DescriptionOur Directory of Instruments lists over 1,200 scales that measure some aspect of subjective life quality. These are generally brief scale descriptions, designed to provide a thumb-nail overview of each scale’s design and purpose. A few key scales have an ‘Extended description’, which comprises a formal statement of the available psychometric information. The purpose of these extended descriptions is not to evaluate scale performance, but to list the available psychometric results. Evaluating these results is a task for each researcher who is considering whether to use the instrument.

The extended description of the Satisfaction With Life Scale has been created by Executive Volunteer Editor Nova Hartanty nhartant@deakin.edu.au and is available from

http://www.acqol.com.au/instruments#measures

Reference: Hartanty, N. (2019). Satisfaction With Life Scale. In: R. A. Cummins (Ed.), Australian Centre on Quality of Life: Directory of Instruments. Deakin University: Geelong.

http://www.acqol.com.au/instruments#measures

Brief reportSourced from the Analysis & Policy Observatory

Victorian Ombudsman. (2019). OPCAT in Victoria: A thematic investigation of practices related to solitary confinement of children and young people. Melbourne: Victorian government printer https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2019/09/aponid257076-1384436.pdf.

This report considers the practical implications of implementing the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) in Victoria.

OPCAT is an international human rights treaty that aims to prevent abuse of people in detention by opening places where people are deprived of liberty –prisons, police cells, psychiatric hospitals and so on – to regular independent inspections.

The Victorian Ombudsman’s ‘thematic’ OPCAT-style inspection took place over three weeks in March and April 2019. It focussed on practices that may lead or amount to solitary confinement of children and young people, being isolation ‘for 22 or more hours a day without meaningful human contact’, as described in the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (called the ‘Mandela Rules’).

The evidence of staff across the three facilities ranged from informed understanding of the impact of isolation, to concerns about the practice but without the tools to respond in other ways, to outright denial that isolating young people may be a problem. In both the prison and youth justice environments the investigation’s survey suggests a particular lack of understanding about the mental health impact of isolation on young people.

Overall, the inspection found that whatever name, and for whatever reason, the practice of isolating children and young people is widespread in both the prison and youth justice environments. It is equally apparent that the practice is seen as punitive, even when that is not the intention; young people can be isolated both for acts of violence and for being the victim of an act of violence – and when used in response to challenging behaviour may exacerbate rather than improve the situation.

Media newsTanika Roberts [trobe@deakin.edu.au]

Executive Volunteer, Bulletin Co-Editor– Media

The Burnout We Can't Talk About: Parent BurnoutRobyn Koslowitz  https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/targeted-parenting/201909/the-burnout-we-cant-talk-about-parent-burnout

We are taught, both explicitly and implicitly, that parenting is so rewarding, fulfilling and wonderful that the task is so joyful that the occasional difficulties (Meltdowns! Dirty diapers. 2 AM wakeup calls. Dirty diapers at 2AM!) are barely noticed. That’s just plain untrue, and it’s a myth that can harm parents.Burnout is an exhaustion syndrome, characterized by feeling overwhelmed, physical and emotional exhaustion, emotional distancing from one's children, and a sense of being an ineffective parent. Parental burnout can have serious consequences. Research indicates that parental burnout has much more severe implications than were previously thought. Burnout was associated with escape ideation—the fantasy of simply leaving parenting and all its stressors—as well as with neglectful behavior and a "violence" category that included verbal and psychological aggression and physical aggression directed at children.

Membership changesSangeetha Thomas <thomassa@deakin.edu.au>simonet@deakin.edu.au

Membership RegistrarWelcome to new membersDr. Rhonda PhillipsDean and Professor, Purdue UniversityKeywords: Community well-being, community development, urban and regional planning and development

Dr. Jorge VarelaAssistant Professor, Universidad del DesarrolloKeywords: Aggression, Bullying, Violence, Prevention, Educational Psychology

-----------------------ReferencesBerman, R. (2016). Unhappiness: The Key to Raising Happy Kids. Santa Monica, CA: Goop.Capic, T., Li, N., & Cummins, R. A. (2018). Confirmation of Subjective Wellbeing Set-points:

Foundational for Subjective Social Indicators. Social Indicators Research, 137(1), 1-28. Retrieved from 10.1007/s11205-017-1585-5.

Central Intelligence Agency. (2019). World Fact Book: Distribution of Faminly Income-Gini Index. doi:https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/fields/2172.html#51

Cummins, R. A. (2017a). Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis - Second edition. In D. S. Dunn (Ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199828340/obo-9780199828340-0167.xml

Cummins, R. A. (2019c). Wellbeing across Cultures: Issues of measurement and the interpretation of data. In K. D. Keith (Ed.), Cross-Cultural Psychology: Contemporary Themes & Perspectives (Second ed., pp. 516-530). New York: Wiley/Blackwell.

Gillis, J. R. (1981). Youth and History: Tradition and Change in European Age Relations, 1770 Present. New York, NY: Academic Press.

Greven, P. (1988). The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Nunn, C. (2015). The Value of Education; Learning for life: Global report. London: HSBC Holdings plc http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/HSBCSurvey.pdf.

Online Etymology Dictionary. (2019). Etymonline.com. Retrieved 19 Sept 2019.Stearns, P. N. (2014). Obedience and emotion: A challenge in the emotional history of childhood.

Journal of Social History, 47(3), 593-611. Stearns, P. N. (2019). Happy Children: A Modern Emotional Commitment. Frontiers in psychology,

06 September 2019 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02025.

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/37: 120919Bulletin of the Australian Centre on Quality of Lifehttp://www.acqol.com.au/Editor: Robert A. Cummins [robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au]Back-issues of the Bulletin are available at http://www.acqol.com.au/projects#bulletins

Note 1: The ACQol site is under development and some content is missing.Note 2: Please address any intended group correspondence to the editor only.

Paper for private studyThe attached paper, on the topic of life quality, is sent to you for your personal private study and discussion within ACQol. You are prohibited from further distributing this paper to any

other person.

Continued discussion from last weekIn last week’s Bulletin (3/36: 050919) Cummins commented on Evans, J. (2017). The end of History and the Invention of Happiness, CWiPP Working Paper No.11 Sheffield: Centre for Wellbeing in Public Policy, University of Sheffield.These earlier comments form the first attached document. Points for discussion arising from this document, contributed by Mark Fabian <mark.otto.fabian@gmail.com>, and Cummins’ rejoinders, follow:

[Note from Cummins: I have chosen to reply to six points in Fabian’s text. The precise text to which each reply is directed, has been underlined]

Mark Fabian <mark.otto.fabian@gmail.com>

I have to completely disagree with your comments in today's ACQoL newsletter [ACQol Bulletin, 3/36, 050919]. Philosophical discussion is integral to the construct validation process that underpins psychometric data. Ironically, Alexandrova has compellingly argued in her A Philosophy for the Science of Wellbeing that   the construct validation exercises that have been conducted in support of SWB measures are not logically sound precisely because they skipped the philosophy that is necessary to generate the theoretical priors that a construct is meant to correspond to (see also Alexandrova and Haybron "Is Construct Validation Valid?" in Philosophy of Science , vol. 83, no. 5).

1. Cummins: It is unfortunate that Alexandrova and Haybron (2016) is being used as an example of the dangers of ‘skipping philosophy’. It might be better employed as an example of poor scholarship. The authors have cited, and misrepresented, a classic paper (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955), thereby setting-up a straw-man, which they proceed to destroy. It is widely agreed within psychological science that the three processes required for construct validation, presented by Cronbach and Meehl (1955) are: (a) Factor analysis; (b) Convergent validity; (c) Discriminant validity. Alexandrova and Haybron (2016) employ only (a) and (b), to then conclude “the practice of construct validation in well-being research is theory avoidant, favoring a narrow focus on statistical tests while largely ignoring relevant philosophical considerations” (abstract). They have created their straw-man by omitting the critical criterion for construct validity, which is (c) Discriminant validity; the extent to which a scale measures its targeted construct, rather than an extraneous construct. The value of discriminant validity, in separating the variance simultaneously contributed by multiple variables to measures of subjective wellbeing, has been a feature of our research (e.g. Cummins et al., 2018; Davern et al., 2007).

Fabian: One of the most common critiques of the SWB literature is that it is theoretically lightweight (to be fair, this is understandable in its historical context) and omits many items that large numbers of scholars across multiple disciplines think properly belong in any concept of wellbeing, notably existential concerns like meaning and eudaimonic concerns like basic need satisfaction.

2. Cummins: I have specifically argued my case for the exclusion of ‘existential concerns like meaning and eudaimonic concerns’ from research conducted within psychological science in ACQol Bulletin, 3/36, 050919. In the absence of a reasoned critique, I will not comment further. However, I am certainly keen to develop the Theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis beyond ‘lightweight’. The attached paper (Cummins, 2017a) is a recent review of the theory. A critique of this theory will be appreciated, as will advice as to how our research might progress to provide additional critical evidence.

Fabian: As Huppert and So have shown, these do not correlate well with life satisfaction or affect measures. In order to have the theoretical discussion required to proceed with an effective construct validation exercise and develop good metrics, we need terms like hedonia and eudaimonia, and subjective well-being scholars need to spend a bit less time in the data and bit more time clarifying concepts. It is illustrative that you equate happiness with subjective wellbeing , even though philosophers have always separated these two concepts (see for example, Sumner's Welfare, Happiness and Ethics ).

3. Cummins: The offending text reads “Evan’s … provides a lucid and critical account of early Greek philosophy on ‘happiness’ (Subjective Wellbeing: SWB),”. I agree that my

attempted short-hand fails to convey its intended meaning. My intention was to indicate that, whereas the ancient Greek text is usually translated as implying ‘happiness’, psychological science employs SWB as the general term for ‘feeling good about one’s self’. As explained elsewhere in my text, in contemporary scientific terminology ‘happy’ is a single affect located at about 3560 on the affective circumplex (see, e.g. Davern et al., 2007).

 Fabian: Eudaimonia is handled particularly egregiously in this context, with many SWB scholars presently associating it with meaning and purpose (see e.g. OECD 2013, Stone and Mackie 2013, Clark et al 2018) even though both philosophical and psychological accounts of eudaimonia explicitly distance themselves from meaning and purpose. While I am not sympathetic to ancient philosophical perspectives on eudaimonia, the fact that these are hard to operationalise does not mean that they are incorrect. For example, the notion that someone needs "practical wisdom" to achieve optimal functioning seems straightforwardly correct - fools might be happy but they are not well. We should not mistake what we can measure well for the totality of a concept, else we would be back at the consumption measures economists are fond of. In any case, eudaimonic perspectives in psychology (notably self-determination theory) have plenty of valid measures at their disposal.

4. Cummins: I challenge the statement that ‘self-determination theory has plenty of valid measures’. In making my point, consider Ryan and Deci (2000), which has received over 32,000 citations. The authors state that each type of need-motivation “has specifiable consequences for … well-being” (p.69). As evidence they claim “Reis, Sheldon, Gable, Roscoe, and Ryan (2000) found that variations in the fulfillment of each of the three needs (i.e., competence, autonomy, and relatedness) independently predicted variability in daily well-being” (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p. 76). This would be an important result if verified.

As a measure of the three needs, Reis et al. (2000) use the following instruments: Autonomy - the Self- Determination Scale (Sheldon & Deci, 1996). Competence - the Multidimensional Self-Esteem Inventory (O'Brien & Epstein, 1988). Relatedness - a measure of attachment style (Mikulincer, Florian, & Tolmacz, 1990) combined with the UCLA Loneliness scale (Russel, Peplau, & Cutrona, 1980). Factor analysis of the combined ‘relatedness’ measures revealed two method factors, positive and negative. The authors then created a ‘connectedness composite’ by subtracting the negative factor from the positive factor.

The problems with these measures are as follows. The Self-Determination Scale is unpublished, the Multidimensional Self-Esteem Inventory is not publicly available for examination, and as far as is known, neither scale has been validated. Additionally, the correlation between the three measures of autonomy, competence and relatedness ranged from .31 to .40, which are not significantly different from one another (Zobs=0.565, ns) to show discrimination. Finally, the metric created as the ‘connectedness composite’ is uninterpretable.

Fabian: I would also disagree with your characterisation of hedonia as being contained by affect, mood, and emotion. Hedonia also incorporates evaluations of whether life is pleasant. These can be distinguished from evaluations of whether life is fulfilling or valuable, that is from existential satisfaction. By way of a simple illustration, one can conceive of individuals who judge their lives as pleasant and who are typically in a good mood but experience disquiet as a result of not knowing what they should do with their life or whether they are a good person. This state is common among young professionals. Affect might be symptomatic of these deeper issues, but conceptualising wellbeing as corresponding to these symptoms

rather than their causes is erroneous. Elevating mood by chemical or behavioural means would not cure the underlying issue even though it would remove the symptoms. This is eloquently explored in Brave New World. The eudaimonic notion that well-being consists at least in part in living well as opposed to being well is helpful here. Haybron would also dispute your definition because it omits the issue of emotional and affective disposition, that is, how likely someone is to fall into certain moods. If you remove someone who is prone to panic attacks from environments that give them such attacks, their emotional state might improve, but you have again not addressed the underlying issue, which concerns why they are prone to panic attacks.  

Finally, perhaps I have misunderstood, but I don't see how liberal concerns become at all "redundant in the face of an intervention based on understanding the scientific composition and psychological management of SWB".

5. Cummins: My comment links to “Evans’ philosophic opposition to government interventions rests on a eudaimonic concern by “policy-makers … that a citizen's religious, spiritual or ethical beliefs are their own private business … [and that] attempts by governments to impose one [eudaimonic] conception could easily degenerate into the sort of illiberal totalitarianism”. This opposition melts away if the intervention avoids eudaimonic aspects, and concerns only on the provision of sufficient resources to allow each individual to achieve homeostatic control of their SWB. It is interesting that key resources to achieve this are, unfortunately, also the hardest for governments to provide: sufficient money, an activity providing a sense of purpose, and an emotionally intimate relationship (Cummins, 2018c).

Fabian: You said, for example, that governments should aim to help people suffering homeostatic defeat by means of purpose and intimacy. How can a government provide someone with a "purposeful" activity without making value judgements?

6. Cummins: There are various ways such as. (a) by ensuring full employment for those people who seek paid work; (b) by ensuring that people who become parents, or who separate/divorce, receive a sufficient level of financial assistance such that their standard of living is maintained; (c) by encouraging employers to re-employ those who left due to health concerns, to engage in child care, etc; (d) by encouraging volunteer activities; (e) by appropriately resourcing people who have a disability; etc. The assumption, in these examples, is that people who have the resources to maintain normal levels of SWB will choose a form of ‘purposeful activity’ consistent with their own beliefs and values.

Purposeless implies that something has no point; a point is something worthwhile, and "worthwhile" implies a value judgement. There seems an obvious case here for liberal oversight to ensure value pluralism is respected. Ironically, I suspect that any liberal approach to such interventions would involve respecting autonomy and helping people to unearth intrinsic motivations. This would land you in the middle of Ryan and Deci's eudaimonic perspective on wellbeing. 

References are located at the end of the Bulletin

Further discussion of this topic, for circulation to members, is invited. Send to: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Substantive comments received by midnight on Monday 16th September Oz time will be published in the following Bulletin. Such comments may offer a novel extension to the view

that has been put, an alternative and informed view, or offer a critique.

ACQol members are invited to send papers, queries or comments, on the topic of life quality, for distribution and discussion by members under these same conditions.

Website additions and changesTanja Capic <tanja.capic@deakin.edu.au>

WebMaster

Australian Unity Wellbeing Index: Report 35.1 ‘Ageing Well: Healthy Transitions to Retirement’, together with the data file and coding map, are available from

http://www.acqol.com.au/publications#reports

Reference: Khor, S., Cummins, R. A., Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M., Capic, T., Olsson, C. A., & Hutchinson, D. (2019). Ageing Well: Healthy Transitions to Retirement. Australian Unity Wellbeing Index: Report 35.1. Geelong: Deakin University http://www.acqol.com.au/publications#reports.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYSubjective Wellbeing (SWB) in ageing and retirement is a topic of growing relevance, with more than 1 in 7 Australians aged 65 years or above, and more people in this age group choosing to remain in the workforce for longer periods (AIHW, 2018). As individuals age, SWB becomes increasingly influential on health and longevity (Diener, Oishi, & Tay, 2018).Identifying factors that predict wellbeing in retirement may offer important insights that inform health and policy advances to promote wellbeing in older Australians.

This report specifically examines SWB among retirees in Australia over the past 16-years. The data comprised information drawn from 27, independent, cross-sectional surveys using the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index. These surveys were conducted between 2003 and 2018 on 50,060 participants, of which 12,759 participants were retired.

Differences in SWB between retirees and non-retirees• Retirees as an aggregate group (2003-2018) reported scores above the Australian normative range on Global Life Satisfaction (GLS), overall Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI), and on the individual domains of standard of living, achieving in life, personal relationships and future security.

• Compared to non-retirees, participants who were retired reported higher scores on the individual domains of standard of living, achieving in life, personal relationships, community connectedness and future security. However, retirees reported lower scores on the domain of health compared to non-retirees. This pattern of results was observed in the aggregate group (2003-2018) and across the 27 independent surveys.

Brief reportSourced from the Analysis & Policy Observatory

Kearney, M. S., & Mogstad, M. (2019). Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a Policy Response to Current Challenges. Washington: The Aspen Institute https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/UBI-ESG-Memo-082319.pdf.

We briefly review the main motivations behind recent calls for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) in the United States and the main features of some current UBI proposals. We then argue that a UBI would be extremely expensive and yet do very little to reduce inequality or advance opportunity and social mobility. We argue that instead of a UBI, the federal government should pursue a pro-work strategy of income support, paying wage subsidies to low-wage workers along with targeted transfer benefits consisting of both cash and near-cash types of support paid to the most needy individuals and households.

Media newsTanika Roberts [trobe@deakin.edu.au]

Executive Volunteer, Bulletin Co-Editor– Media

What we know and don’t know about how mass trauma affects mental healthhttps://www.sciencenews.org/article/what-we-know-how-mass-trauma-affects-mental-health   Sujata Gupta

Researchers are trying to figure out who is most at risk of self-harm after mass trauma such as a school shooting or terror attack. Suicide can occur in clusters, especially among teens. But it’s too early to tell if these deaths are connected in any way, are related to having experienced similar mass traumas — or if they simply occurred close together by chance, says April Foreman. The deaths do shine light on a question that researchers are trying hard to answer: How does being connected to a mass trauma event like a school shooting affect a person’s later risk for mental health problems and self-harm? 

Membership changesSangeetha Thomas <thomassa@deakin.edu.au>simonet@deakin.edu.au

Membership Registrar

Welcome to new membersDr Aquiles Docente, Universidad Argentina de EmpresasKeywords: Quality of life, wellbeing, satisfaction with life

Professor Richard J. EstesProfessor of Social Policy and Practice, University of PennsylvaniaKeywords: Social policy, Social welfare

Dr. Walter ToscanoFull Professor, Universidad Nacional de La Matanza, ArgentinaKeywords: Physical Activity, Sports, Higher Education, Quality of Life, Health

Dr Ema GruberPsychiatrist, chief of Department R4, Mental Health Centre Sct. Hans, Boserupvej 2, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark

Keywords: PWI, psychiatrist, Croatian, emigration

Dr. Prof. Graciela TononDirector UNICOM- Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional de Lomas de ZamoraKeywords: Quality of life, qualitative methods, community, children, young people, development, Higher Education

Dr Jamie ByrneLecturer, Deakin UniversityKeywords: Sleep, body clock, mood, emotions, reward

-----------------------References from FabianAlexandrova, A. (2018). A Philosophy for the Science of Well-Being. Oxford University PressAlexandrova, A. and Haybron, D. (2016). Is Construct Validation Valid? Philosophy of

Science, vol. 83, no. 5Huppert, F. and So, T. (2013). Flourishing Across Europe: Applications of a New Conceptual

Framework for Defining Well-Being. Social Indicators Research, vol. 110, no. 3Sumner, L. (1999). Welfare, Happines, and Ethics. Clarendon Press

OECD (2013). Guidelines for Measuring Subjective Well-Being. Paris, FR: OECDStone, A. and Mackie, C. (2013). Subjective Well-Being: Measuring Well-Being, Suffering,

and other Dimensions of Experience. National Research Council Report. National Academies Press.  

Clark, A.; Fleche, S.; Layard, R.; Powdthavee, N. and Ward, G. (2018). The Origins of Happiness. Princeton University Press.  

Haybron, D. (2008). The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Illusive Psychology of Well-Being. Oxford University Press

Huxley, A. Brave New World. Available for free at: http://www.idph.com.br/conteudos/ebooks/BraveNewWorld.pdf

Deci, E. and Ryan, R. (2000). The "What" and "Why" of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behaviour. Psychological Inquiry, vol. 11, no. 4

References from CumminsAlexandrova, A., & Haybron, D. M. (2016). Is construct validation valid? Philosophy of

Science, 83(5), 1098-1109. Cronbach, L. J., & Meehl, P. E. (1955). Construct validity in psychological tests.

Psychological Bulletin, 52(4), 281-302. Cummins, R. A. (2017a). Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis - Second edition. In D. S. Dunn

(Ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199828340/obo-9780199828340-0167.xml

Cummins, R. A. (2018c). The Golden Triangle of Happiness: Essential resources for a happy family. International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies, 9(4), 12–39.

Cummins, R. A., Capic, T., Hutchinson, D., Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M., Olsson, C. A., & Richardson, B. (2018). Why self-report variables inter-correlate: The role of Homeostatically Protected Mood. Journal of Wellbeing Assessment, 2, 93-114. doi:10.1007/s41543-018-0014-0

Davern, M., Cummins, R. A., & Stokes, M. (2007). Subjective wellbeing as an affective/cognitive construct. Journal of Happiness Studies, 8(4), 429-449. doi:10.1007/s10902-007-9066-1

Mikulincer, M., Florian, V., & Tolmacz, R. (1990). Attachment styles and fear of personal death: A case study of affect regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 273-280.

O'Brien, E., & Epstein, S. (1988). The Multidimensional Self-Esteem Inventory: Professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.

Reis, H. T., Sheldon, K. M., Gable, S. L., Roscoe, J., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). Daily well-being: The role of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26(4), 419-435.

Russel, D., Peplau, L. A., & Cutrona, C. E. (1980). The revised UCLA Loneliness Scale: Concurrent and discriminant validity evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(3), 472-480.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78.

Sheldon, K. M., & Deci, E. (1996). The self-determination scale. Unpublished manuscript, University of Rochester, 754.

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/36: 050919 Bulletin of the Australian Centre on Quality of Lifehttp://www.acqol.com.au/Editor: Robert A. Cummins [robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au]Back-issues of the Bulletin are available at http://www.acqol.com.au/projects#bulletins

Note 1: The ACQol site is under development and some content is missing.Note 2: Please address any intended group correspondence to the editor only.

Paper for private studyThe attached paper, on the topic of life quality, is sent to you for your personal private study and discussion within ACQol. You are prohibited from further distributing this paper to any

other person.

Background: This paper has been recommended to us by Richard Mills <richardmills@atautism.org>

Cummins writes:The two words, Eudaimonic and Hedonic, have no place in contemporary scientific discussion concerning subjective wellbeing (SWB). Coined some 2,500 years ago, they were intellectual marvels of their time. They divided people’s subjective experience, approximately, into feelings (Hedonic) and thoughts (eudaimonic). This simple dichotomy led to wonderful philosophical discourses on matters such as ethics, virtue, and the meaning of happiness. As a result, the early Greek philosophers enriched civilization in a quantum jump of such magnitude and importance that their insights continue to be debated. However, while accepting that philosophy gave birth to science, still acknowledged in the awarding of the PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) degree to graduates of all university disciplines, this does not mean that science IS philosophy. Contemporary science has a sophistication of procedure and methodology that would have been incomprehensible to Aristotle. Along with this sophistication has come new terminology, which is required to convey contemporary

methods and constructs. This is true in all branches of science, including psychological science. Moreover, of course, in order to comprehend such advances, investigators and commentators must become familiar with the contemporary methods and terminology of each discipline. This is why Eudaimonic and Hedonic are now archaic and misleading terms for science in general.

In contemporary psychological science, the intellectual territory covered by ‘hedonic’ is described using three new constructs. First is ‘affect’; a generic term for the constellation of different feelings that we can recognise, such as happiness and anger. Second is the Affective Circumplex (Russell, 1980); which describes how these affects can be systematically and meaningfully arranged, in a circle, by the CIRCUM program developed by Browne (1992) and Fabrigar, Visser, and Browne (1997). This program provides an estimate of the polar angle between 00 and 3600 for each affect item, thereby enabling them to be plotted on the perimeter of a circle. Within this circumplex-structure there are two orthogonal and bi-polar dimensions; unpleasantness-pleasantness and low-high arousal. On the horizontal axis, the unpleasant affects (e.g. unhappy) are located on the opposite side from the pleasant affects (e.g. happy). On the vertical axis, low-arousal feelings (e.g. calm) are found on the opposite side from high-arousal feelings (e.g. active). All of the other affective terms lie between these anchors, with their position defined by their polar angle. One result of this arrangement is that, around the circumplex perimeter, similar (i.e. highly positively correlated) affects lie close to each other. Understanding derived from the circumplex has been key to all contemporary theories involving affects, such as Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis (Davern et al., 2007).

The third form of affect classification, characterises them as either an Emotion or a Mood. The dichotomy is based on purpose, temporal duration, and strength. Emotions are generated as responses to what we perceive (e.g. a friendly face) or what we imagine (e.g. monsters under our bed). Their purpose is to direct attention to something our brain considers relevant. Emotions are generally of brief duration, thereby allowing attention to be directed to new percepts as required, and can be an intense form of affect. Moods are quite different. They are not generated in response to any percept or thought. Rather, they have a constant presence, being produced under genetic direction. They also comprise low-level affect. While some reviewers have concluded that the cause of moods is often difficult to determine (Ekkekakis, 2013), a genetic cause has been proposed for Homeostatically Protected Mood (Capic et al., 2018; Cummins et al., 2018). These authors propose that HPMood comprises a constant and unchanging source of mildly positive and activated affect, which has the purpose of providing a positive sense of self-awareness. The actual affective experience in consciousness at any moment is a combination of emotion and HPMood (see, Capic et al., 2018).

The second archaic term, ‘Eudaimonic wellbeing’ has been the target for massive philosophical debate. In eudaimonic philosophies, the principal focus is on cognitive activity reflecting virtue, excellence, the best within us, and the full development of our potentials. Notably, from a scientific perspective, no scales yet developed provide a reliable and valid measure of these concepts. In particular, no extant measure of ‘eudaimonic wellbeing’ has demonstrated discriminant validity from personality and other valid measures of psychological organization such as self-esteem, optimism, perceived control, and subjective wellbeing.

Adding to the confusion is an influential review by Ryan and Deci (2001). This proposes the separation of eudaimonia from hedonia; an empirically false proposition. For example, the

value measure of ‘excellence’ and positive affect are obviously interwoven. More broadly, other attempts to operationalise ‘eudaimonia’ have simply led scholars into a deep conceptual jungle from which no paths of simple organization are evident (see, e. g., Huta & Waterman, 2014). Consistent with this forlorn view, the best-known attempt to create a scale that integrates areas, proposed to be subsumed within a conception of eudaimonia, has failed. As has been documented by many authors, the Psychological Well-Being Questionnaire (Ryff, 1989) does not factor as intended (e.g., Espinoza, Meyer, Anderson, Vaters, & Politis, 2018), and so does not meet the basis requirements of validity and reliability.

The solution to this problem of ancient nomenclature is simple. Authors of papers in psychological science should refer only to variables defined by a scale of measurement, and cite supporting psychometric data, most especially evidence of discriminant validity.

Reference: Evans, J. (2017). The end of History and the Invention of Happiness, CWiPP Working Paper No.11 Sheffield: Centre for Wellbeing in Public Policy, University of Sheffield.

Author summary: This paper explores how the contemporary politics of wellbeing moves beyond classical liberal ideas of the state as protector of 'negative liberty' and back to Ancient Greek ideas of the state as the promoter of flourishing or eudaimonia. It looks at the influence of Aristotle and the Stoics on UK mental health and education policy, particularly Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and wellbeing classes. It ends by discussing whether government schemes for wellbeing promotion are illiberal, concludes that they potentially are, and suggests a way to make interventions more pluralistic and democratic.

Comment on Evans (2017)There is much to applaud in Evan’s paper. He provides a lucid and critical account of early Greek philosophy on ‘happiness’ (Subjective Wellbeing: SWB), and is suitably searching in his account of modern-day efforts to improve national wellbeing in the UK. While Evans is justified in disparaging the scientific efforts of positive psychology and similar programs, missing from his account is an understanding of contemporary psychological science as presented in the ‘Background’ section above. This omission leads him into two false conclusions. One is that science is irrelevant in the public-policy context, and second that some form of universally-available Cognitive Behavioural Therapy provides an answer to increasing the level of population happiness. My more detailed comments follow:

1. Evans expresses concern that “Although western citizens have become materially better off since the 1960s, our levels of happiness have apparently not gone up.” Moreover, it seems, this is a core concern, acted on by Government advisors, who regard it as a failure of current policies, thereby opening their doors to the un-validated forms of intervention.

My response: Homeostasis theory explains this temporal stability in SWB level as due to a fairly constant proportion of the population who have the resources necessary to maintain control of their Subjective Wellbeing (SWB). Attempting to increase SWB is futile for such people, who are already in homeostatic control. Any effort to increase their SWB will be counteracted by the homeostatic processes operating to keep SWB levels within individual setpoint ranges. The implication of this for public policy, is that the provision of additional resources has been misdirected. If additional resources were instead directed to people experiencing homeostatic defeat, population levels of SWB would reliably rise as many of these people regained homeostatic control. The key resources to achieve this are,

unfortunately, also the hardest for governments to provide: sufficient money, an activity providing a sense of purpose, and an emotionally intimate relationship (Cummins, 2018c).

2. Much of Evans’ philosophic opposition to government interventions rests on a eudaimonic concern by “policy-makers … that a citizen's religious, spiritual or ethical beliefs are their own private business … [and that] attempts by governments to impose one [eudaimonic] conception could easily degenerate into the sort of illiberal totalitarianism”.My response: All of this becomes redundant in the face of an intervention based on understanding the scientific composition and psychological management of SWB.

3. Evans considers (the famous philosopher) Nozick’s view as ‘undeniably attractive’, that the best that we can hope for is a society in which everyone is given as much freedom as possible to define the good life for themselves.” My response: I find this statement deniably attractive. I would endorse an alternative statement such that ‘everyone is provided with the resources to achieve normal-range levels of SWB.’

4. Evans endorses the mass (voluntary) use of Cognitive Behavior Therapy. He explains that through CBT “We can change our emotions by using the 'Socratic method' to discover our underlying beliefs and values, and then changing those beliefs that are harmful, as well as changing our behaviour. My response: There is considerable danger in the mass-use of CBT or other forms of mind-control, graphically described by many authors (e.g. Leader, 2007). In the current context, an obvious danger is the use of government resources to change beliefs about the self, instead of providing access to the resources necessary for people to regain homeostatic control.

Summary: Both ‘eudaimonia’ and ‘hedonia’ are toxic to understanding when used in discussions about government resources being used to better the wellbeing of society. Both terms are also toxic to the scientific understanding of wellbeing generally. In contemporary discussions of wellbeing, both eudaimonia and hedonia need to be replaced by contemporary terms which convey scientific understanding.

Further discussion of this paper, for circulation to members, is invited. Send to: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Substantive comments received by midnight on Monday 9th September Oz time will be published in the following Bulletin. Such comments may offer a novel extension to the view

that has been put, an alternative and informed view, or offer a critique.

ACQol members are invited to send papers, queries or comments, on the topic of life quality, for distribution and discussion by members under these same conditions.

Brief reportSourced from the Analysis & Policy Observatory

Gardener, L., & Costello, C. (2019). STRONGER TOGETHER: The impact of family separation on refugees and humanitarian migrants in Australia. Melbourne: Oxfam Australia h t t p s : / / a p o . o r g . a u / s i t e s / d e f a u l t / f i l e s / r e s o u r c e - f i l e s / 2 0 1 9 / 0 8 /a p o - n i d 2 5 5 5 5 1 - 1 3 8 2 4 8 6 . p d f.

Currently, the Australian Government offers limited opportunities for family reunion for refugees and humanitarian migrants, and the barriers to successful applications are high.However, family reunion offers humanitarian migrants the best chance to rebuild theirlives on a firm footing — with their family by their side. Australia should establish a newHumanitarian Family Reunion visa stream within an increased Refugee and HumanitarianProgram to make family reunion for humanitarian migrants more accessible. As this report shows, Australia stands to reap significant long-term economic and wellbeing benefits from increasing our intake of people seeking safety.Economic modelling undertaken by Deloitte Access Economics for Oxfam found that increasing Australia’s Refugee and Humanitarian Program could have notable positive impacts on the broader economy. An increase in the humanitarian intake from 18,750 in 2019–2020 to 44,000 by 2022–2023 would:• increase the size of the Australian economy by $37.7 billion in net present value terms over the next 50 years.• sustain on average an additional 35,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the Australian economy every year for the next 50 years; and• increase demand for Australian goods and services by $18.2 billion in net present value terms.

Media newsTanika Roberts [trobe@deakin.edu.au]

Executive Volunteer, Bulletin Co-Editor– Media

When anxiety happens as early as preschool, treatments can helpSUJATA GUPTAhttps://www.sciencenews.org/article/when-anxiety-happens-early-preschool-treatments-can-help

To experience fears about the future or social belonging is human, says Jerome Kagan, a retired Harvard University psychologist and a leading researcher in the field. It’s normal for children to fear big, barking dogs, or to worry about losing a parent or how to respond when a classmate is being bullied. Only when such anxieties become all encompassing, when they interfere with overall happiness or the ability to interact in society, does the condition become pathological, meriting the name “anxiety disorder.” Young children may need a different kind of therapy to accommodate their developing brains researchers have identified a clear link between shyness in infancy and later anxiety, namely social anxiety.

Report from Google Analytics for the ACQol siteInclusive period: August 2019

Number of users = 827

Membership changesSangeetha Thomas <thomassa@deakin.edu.au>simonet@deakin.edu.au

Membership RegistrarWelcome to new membersDr. Elena GrimacciaResearcher, Italian National Institute of Statistics Keywords: Sustainable development, Research Methodology, Scale Development, qualitative and quantitative

Professor Marek KosnyWroclaw University of EconomicsKeywords: Income Distribution, Economic Inequality, Economic Security

-----------------------ReferencesBrowne, M. W. (1992). Circumplex models for correlational matrices. Psychometrika, 57(4), 469–

497. Capic, T., Li, N., & Cummins, R. A. (2018). Confirmation of Subjective Wellbeing Set-points:

Foundational for Subjective Social Indicators. Social Indicators Research, 137(1), 1-28. Retrieved from 10.1007/s11205-017-1585-5.

Cummins, R. A. (2018c). The Golden Triangle of Happiness: Essential resources for a happy family. International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies, 9(4), 12–39.

Cummins, R. A., Capic, T., Hutchinson, D., Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M., Olsson, C. A., & Richardson, B. (2018). Why self-report variables inter-correlate: The role of Homeostatically Protected Mood. Journal of Wellbeing Assessment, 2, 93-114. doi:10.1007/s41543-018-0014-0

Davern, M., Cummins, R. A., & Stokes, M. (2007). Subjective wellbeing as an affective/cognitive construct. Journal of Happiness Studies, 8(4), 429-449. doi:10.1007/s10902-007-9066-1

Ekkekakis, P. (2013). The measurement of affect, mood, and emotion: A guide for health-behavioral research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Espinoza, J. A., Meyer, J. P., Anderson, B. K., Vaters, C., & Politis, C. (2018). Evidence for a bifactor structure of the Scales of Psychological Well-being using exploratory structural equation modeling. Journal of Well-Being Assessment, 2(1), 21-40.

Fabrigar, L. R., Visser, P. S., & Browne, M. W. (1997). Conceptual and methodological issues in testing the circumplex structure of data in personality and social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 184–203.

Huta, V., & Waterman, A. S. (2014). Eudaimonia and its distinction from hedonia: developing a classification and terminology for understanding conceptual and operational definitions. Journal of Happiness Studies, 15(6), 1425-1456. doi:10.1007/s10902-013-9485-0

Leader, D. (2007). A dark age for mental health. Guardian [online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/oct/13/comment.publicservices [Accessed on 30 Sep 2019].

Russell, J. A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 1161-1178.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001). On Happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 141-166.

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/35: 290819Bulletin of the Australian Centre on Quality of Lifehttp://www.acqol.com.au/Editor: Robert A. Cummins [robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au]Back-issues of the Bulletin are available at http://www.acqol.com.au/projects#bulletins

Note 1: The ACQol site is under development and some content is missing.Note 2: Please address any intended group correspondence to the editor only.

Paper for private studyThe attached paper, on the topic of life quality, is sent to you for your personal private study and discussion within ACQol. You are prohibited from further distributing this paper to any

other person.

Background:

This paper has been recommended to us by Simon Albrecht simon.albrecht@deakin.edu.auCummins comments: An important criterion by which to judge the worthiness of a theory is the extent to which it has predictive value beyond the data used for its formulation. The extension of Subjective Wellbeing (SWB) Homeostasis theory to leadership research could be such an instance. In order to examine this possibility a brief overview of the theory is in order.

SWB Homeostasis Theory proposes that a homeostatic system defends our normal state of feeling mildly good about ourselves (Cummins, 2017a). The heart of this system is a genetically-determined setpoint, not for SWB but for its major component, called Homeostatically Protected Mood (HPMood). This mood comprises three affects (content, happy, alert), it has a set-level for each person, and does not change over time. Within a population sample, such setpoints are distributed normally within the range of 70 to 90 percentage points (pp) on a 0-100pp scale (Capic et al., 2018). SWB is an amalgam of HPMood and emotion, with the latter representing the affective response to ideas and percepts. Emotion is usually stronger than HPMood, which allows our attention to be drawn to its source. However, the homeostatic system has the role of attempting to return the level of SWB to setpoint. Thus, measured SWB tends to oscillate around its setpoint level for each person (Anglim, Weinberg, & Cummins, 2015). Note, however, this does not represent a change in HPMood, it is the changing emotion which causes the level of SWB to differ over time.

These oscillations in SWB experienced by each person normally occur within a range of about 8.25pp on either side of their setpoint (Capic et al., 2018). However, a strong emotion will take measured SWB beyond this range. Then, the capacity of homeostasis to return SWB to its sepoint range depends on the balance between the strength of the emotional challenge and the capacity of the system restore normality. The resources to achieve this return have been described elsewhere (Cummins, 2018c; Cummins & Nistico, 2002).

A proposition based in homeostasis theory, is that evolution has set 80pp as the level of positivity to be the most generally adaptive for human functioning. This level is represented by the mean of the normal population distribution of HPMood, as 80pp. And this brings homeostasis theory, and the broad area Alvesson and Einola (2019) refer to as ‘positive scholarship’, into conflict.

Positive Scholarship is an umbrella-term. Within leadership studies the inclusive term ‘positive leadership’ subsumes such well-known specific theories as ‘authentic leadership’(Avolio & Gardner, 2005). Within psychology, ‘positive scholarship’ is represented by ‘positive psychology’. Homeostasis theory offers a challenge to all positive scholarship theories. Whereas homeostasis theory proposes that the optimal normal population level of positivity is 80pp, positive scholarship theories propose that a higher-than-normal level of general positivity is required for optimal performance either as a ‘leader’ or as an ‘optimally functioning person’.

Reference: Alvesson, M., & Einola, K. (2019). Warning for excessive positivity: Authentic leadership and other traps in leadership studies. The Leadership Quarterly, 30, 383-395.

Author summary: We study authentic leadership as a prominent but problematic example of positive leadership that we use as a more general “warning” against the current fashion of

excessive positivity in leadership studies … we critically examine the principal tenets of mainstream authentic leadership theory and reveal a number of fundamental flaws: shaky philosophical and theoretical foundations, tautological reasoning, weak empirical studies, nonsensical measurement tools, unsupported knowledge claims, and a generally simplistic and out of date view of corporate life. Even though our study focuses on authentic leadership,much of our criticism is also applicable to other popular positive leadership theories, such as transformational, servant, ethical, and spiritual leadership.

Comment on Alvesson et al (2019)Robert A. CumminsAlvesson and colleagues have argued their case well. It is surely now incumbent on the proponents of Positive Leadership, Positive Psychology and, indeed, of Positive Scholarship generally, to respond to these challenges. In the meantime, and continuing the Alvesson critique, it seems parsimonious to consider the positive scholarship field as a whole.

In introducing their conception of Positive Psychology, Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) state “The field of positive psychology … is about valued subjective experiences: well-being, contentment, and satisfaction (in the past); hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and happiness (in the present). At the individual level, it is about positive individual traits: the capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent, and wisdom. At the group level, it is about the civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship: responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, moderation, tolerance, and work ethic.” (p.4) In other words, the authors use the known universe of positive constructs to define a well-functioning person.

In introducing their conception of Authentic Leadership, Avolio and Gardner (2005) state “What constitutes the normal range of functioning in [conditions of major societal challenges] is constantly shifting upwards as new challenges, technologies, marketdemands, and competition emerge. We suggest that such challenges have precipitated a renewed focus on restoring confidence, hope, and optimism; being able to rapidly bounce back from catastrophic events and display resiliency; helping people in their search for meaning and connection by fostering a new self-awareness; and … leaders who lead with purpose, values, and integrity, etc.” (p.316) In other words, much the same universe of positive constructs as Seligman used to define a well-functioning person.

In summary, both proposals list a very wide range of positive attributes and both claim a link between superior human functioning and the experience of these attributes at higher-than-normal levels. This proposition conflicts with homeostasis theory for the following reasons.

1. All of the listed positive attributes have a strong association with HPMood. The reason for this is explained and demonstrated by Cummins et al. (2018). Essentially, when people are asked to evaluate them self on some rather abstract quality (e.g. satisfaction with life as a whole), there is no clear target for a cognitive evaluation. This causes them to reflect inwards, on their general mood state, such that their response largely reflects their level of HPMood. Alternatively, when people evaluate some property outside them self that is specifically identified (e.g. satisfaction with public transport in your area), their response reflects their feelings about this clear cognitive target, and HPMood will be barely detectable in their response.

The demonstration of this phenomenon (Cummins et al., 2018) is illustrated by the changing correlation between Global Life Satisfaction and the Personal Wellbeing Index, both of which variables are personal and abstract. Before and after removing HPMood variance, their correlation changed from .74 to .44 (a decrease of 50.11%). On the other hand, the correlation between Global Life Satisfaction and income (a specific variable), changed after removing HPMood variance from .08 to .07 (a decrease of 1%). Notably, most of the Positive Scholarship variables are characterised as highly personal and abstract. Examples are: Self-Esteem – ‘I feel that I have a number of good qualities’; Optimism – ‘In uncertain times, I usually expect the best’, etc. It is thus very likely that most of the Positive Scholarship variables have a high content of HPMood.

2. When a self-evaluated variable has a high content of HPMood, its estimated level is likely to reflect that person’s setpoint. Moreover, in general population samples, setpoints are normally distributed between 70 to 90pp. Thus, the population mean is 80pp and so, presumably, the Positive Scholarship adherents consider that having a setpoint in the upper half of the distribution is advantageous to high functioning generally and leadership in particular. This seems most unlikely. If it was generally advantageous to have a set-point above 80pp, then evolution would have selected a higher median set-point for the population.

In conclusion, the arguments critiquing the ideas of Positive Scholarship are now many, varied, and convincing. Homeostasis theory now adds to this chorus of opposition by offering an additional form of challenge. The claim that high positive self-evaluation is linked generally to high performance, has not been substantiated.

References: see end of Bulletin

Further discussion of this paper, for circulation to members, is invited. Send to: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Substantive comments received by midnight, on Monday 2nd September Oz time, will be published in the following Bulletin. Such comments may offer a novel extension to the view

that has been put, an alternative and informed view, or offer a critique.

ACQol members are invited to send papers, queries or comments, on the topic of life quality, for distribution and discussion by members under these same conditions.

Comments, Observations, and QuestionsKimina Lyall klyall@deakin.edu.au draws our attention to the cartoon below. Kimina

comments ‘Leunig understands Homeostatically Protected Mood!’ I agree.

Michael Leunig (born 2 June 1945), typically referred to as Leunig (his signature on his cartoons), is an Australian cartoonist, poet and cultural commentator. He was declared an Australian Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia in 1999. See Wikipedia for

more details.

Media contribution by ACQol MemberDelyse Hutchinson delyse.hutchinson@deakin.edu.au was interviewed on ABC radio 28Aug19 in relation to a USA report ‘An optimistic outlook 'means you live longer'https://www.bbc.com/news/health-49447685. Delyse managed a plug for the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index.

Brief reportSourced from the Analysis & Policy Observatory

Government of South Australia. (2019). Connected –A community approach to bullying prevention within the school gates and beyond’. Adelaide: Author https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2019/08/apo-nid253861-1380446.pdf.

In South Australia, student reports about their experiences of bullying are obtained as a part of the wellbeing and engagement collection administered annually. In 2018, this survey was completed by more than 75,000 students in years 4 to 10.

In 2018 18% of children and young people in SA schools reported being bullied at least once a week. Half of all students reported that they were bullied monthly and 32% reported that they were rarely bullied. There has been a modest increase in the number of children reporting that they were rarely bullied compared to 2015 data. Verbal and social bullying were the most common forms of bullying experienced.

Media newsTanika Roberts [trobe@deakin.edu.au]

Executive Volunteer, Bulletin Co-Editor– Media

Why war’s emotional wounds run deeper for some kids and not othershttps://www.sciencenews.org/article/war-emotional-wounds-ptsd-syria-refugee-childrenBruce BowerMost people who live through violent conflict and other extreme traumas experience emotional turmoil, but don’t develop PTSD. A minority suffer severe psychological wounds that don’t heal without outside help. Even then, there are no guarantees. A new investigation conducted with Syrian refugee youngsters in Lebanon offers a peek at why some kids emotionally rebound while others wilt in the face of wartime horrors. “Highly sensitive children who are sheltered from early adversities end up being least prepared to cope with wartime experiences,” says Karam. 

Membership changesSangeetha Thomas <thomassa@deakin.edu.au>simonet@deakin.edu.au

Membership RegistrarWelcome to new membersMs Joanna GiannesPrincipal, Sofia LeadersKeywords: Health and Wellbeing

Dr Mark FabianAdjunct Lecturer, Australian National UniversityKeywords: Subjective well-being, Eudaimonia, Hedonia, Meaning

Professor Simplice AsonguLead Economist and Director, European Xtramile Centre of African StudiesKeywords: Inclusive human development; Africa

Dr. Kreg LindbergAssociate Professor, Oregon State UniversityKeywords: Measurement, Policy

Dr.Irene DaskalopoulouAssistant Professor, University of the PeloponneseKeywords: Applied microeconomics; Consumer behavior; Satisfaction; Social capital; Wellbeing

-----------------------ReferencesAlvesson, M., & Einola, K. (2019). Warning for excessive positivity: Authentic leadership and other

traps in leadership studies. The Leadership Quarterly, 30, 383-395. Anglim, J., Weinberg, M. K., & Cummins, R. A. (2015). Bayesian hierarchical modeling of the

temporal dynamics of subjective well-being: A 10 year longitudinal analysis. Journal of Research in Personality, 59(3), 1-14. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2015.08.003

Avolio, B. J., & Gardner, W. L. (2005). Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(3), 315-338.

Capic, T., Li, N., & Cummins, R. A. (2018). Confirmation of Subjective Wellbeing Set-points: Foundational for Subjective Social Indicators. Social Indicators Research, 137(1), 1-28. Retrieved from 10.1007/s11205-017-1585-5.

Cummins, R. A. (2017a). Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis - Second edition. In D. S. Dunn (Ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199828340/obo-9780199828340-0167.xml

Cummins, R. A. (2018c). The Golden Triangle of Happiness: Essential resources for a happy family. International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies, 9(4), 12–39.

Cummins, R. A., Capic, T., Hutchinson, D., Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M., Olsson, C. A., & Richardson, B. (2018). Why self-report variables inter-correlate: The role of Homeostatically Protected Mood. Journal of Wellbeing Assessment, 2, 93-114. doi:10.1007/s41543-018-0014-0

Cummins, R. A., & Nistico, H. (2002). Maintaining life satisfaction: The role of positive cognitive bias. Journal of Happiness Studies, 3(1), 37-69.

Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: an introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5-15.

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/34: 220819Bulletin of the Australian Centre on Quality of Lifehttp://www.acqol.com.au/Editor: Robert A. Cummins [robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au]Back-issues of the Bulletin are available at http://www.acqol.com.au/projects#bulletins

Note 1: The ACQol site is under development and some content is missing.Note 2: Please address any intended group correspondence to the editor only.

Paper for private studyThe attached paper, on the topic of life quality, is sent to you for your personal private study and discussion within ACQol. You are prohibited from further distributing this paper to any

other person.

Background: This paper has been recommended by Kate Lycett <kate.lycett@mcri.edu.au>

Cummins writes: Systematic reviews have drawn increasing attention from the research community over the past few decades. They have become great favorites among hard-pressed academics, and their harder-pressed students, because they are essentially mechanical devices for generating literature reviews. The technology comes with set of rules for the inclusion or exclusion of articles, together with other rules for the creation of synthetic tables of results (e.g. Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff, & Altman, 2009). Adherence to these rules allows systematic reviews to be created by people who are not necessarily conversant with the review topic, such as research assistants. One consequence has been the generation of an enormous literature. Referring to PubMed listing, Ioannidis (2016) estimated that, between 1991 and 2014, the number of systematic reviews increased by 2,728%, versus an increase of only 153% for all indexed items. His review is entitled “The mass production of redundant, misleading, and conflicted systematic reviews and meta‐analyses.”

So, an essential question is what proportion of this information mountain is valid and reliable. Ioannidis (2016) estimates this to be about 3% in the context of medical reviews. Depressing though this figure certainly is, I suspect that reviews extending into the social sciences may yield an even lower figure. It is thus a worthy line of enquiry to ask what factors, other than simple mechanical failure, bring such reviews undone.

Reference: Møller, M. H., Ioannidis, J. P., & Darmon, M. (2018). Are systematic reviews and meta-analyses still useful research? We are not sure. Intensive Care Medicine, 44, 518–520.

Abstract: An evaluation of the landscape of current systematic reviews and meta-analyses suggests that many of them are focused on unimportant questions, many are redundant and unnecessary, a sizeable proportion are flawed beyond repair, and eventually only about 3% of them are both well done and clinically useful. … However, there is a minority of systematicreviews and meta-analyses that can be extremely useful.

Discussion: Systematic reviews are certainly relevant to the broad field of medicine, where some have yielded new understanding. Notably, however, in medicine the variables under consideration are likely to be estimates of biological functioning; involving biochemical, physiological, or anatomical measures. Such variables are amenable to objective designation in terms of quantities and frequencies, which allows them to be self-evidently referenced to standardized norms and validity testing. But extending systematic reviews to include subjective variables within the social sciences is a very different kettle of fish.

Subjective indicators of life quality are much more difficult to reliably and validly characterise than are the objective measures. By definition, the character of an objective indicator can be verified by a number of people. In stark contrast, the subjective indicators exist only within the private consciousness of each individual respondent. The public demonstration indicator values requires the person to represent their thoughts in some external manner, thereby allowing it to be detected by other people. This may be by speech, gesture, writing, or responding to a prepared scale of measurement. It is this indirect representational process which is the major problem for measurement validity and reliability. In order to meet strict psychometric criteria, subjective variables need to be measured with far greater sensitivity to confounding factors than is commonly found for objective measures.

Within individual studies, involving relatively homogeneous samples, the normal procedures of established psychological measurement do allow the generation of data with adequate validity and reliability. This does not apply, however, to either heterogeneous samples or, most especially, to the combination of data between studies. Some of the almost insurmountable problems of data combination are as follows:

1. The terminology used in subjective wellbeing research is anarchic. There simply are no rules. Different authors may well refer to the output of a scale they have used in common by using different terms, such as happiness, life satisfaction, positive feelings, etc. Within the context of a single study this does not matter very much, but it matters a lot when data from different studies are combined. Such terms are not strict synonyms. They are separately represented on the affective circumplex and are rated at different levels (e.g. Davern et al., 2007). The best that can be said for their combination, is that they generally share some level of common variance. But such a crude approach to data combination undoubtedly adds confounding variance to empirical reviews. As ever, if an author is combining data from differently-named variables, they have a responsibility to argue their case for equivalence; not to simply ignore the problem.

2. Single-named variables, such as ‘life satisfaction’, are commonly measured by scales which have quite different constructions. For example, the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) asks respondents to rate their level of

‘agreement’ with five statements. The Satisfaction with Life domains Test (Baker & Intagliata, 1982) measures ‘satisfaction with life’ by asking people to rate their feelings with 15 life areas using the ‘delighted-terrible’ scale. It is surely inappropriate to assume that such different data can be validly combined.

3. To what extent do people from different groups, especially different cultural groups, respond to SWB measurement scales in the same way? The answer comes from numerous studies using either Rasch Analysis or Invariance Testing. Even at the level of individual words, different cultural responses may be non-comparable. For example, Oishi (2007) found that Chinese report low levels of feeling ‘proud’, despite high levels of other positive emotions (e.g., excited, enthusiastic, interested, determined), whereas Americans report feeling proud quite often, as well the other positive emotions. These findings are consistent with the self-enhancement versus self-criticism literature (Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). While pride is a signature positive emotion among typically self-enhancing Americans, it is not a positive emotion among typically self-critical Chinese.

4. At the interpretive level of whole questions, Oishi (2006) notes that the Satisfaction with Life Scale item 5 ‘If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing’, is not comparable between Chinese and American cultures. This item uses counterfactual reasoning, and he notes “that this might be particularly difficult to translate in a culture where counterfactual thinking is not employed as often as in Western cultures (Bloom, 1981)” (p.422).

5. Many scales do not factor as intended by their authors and this failure is particularly evident between cultural groups. Such failure is an almost universal finding for multi-factorial scales, such as Ryff’s Scales of Psychological Wellbeing (see ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/24: 130619). Thus, the sub-scales are unreliable, of uncertain validity, and their data combination is uninterpretable.

6. Some rather subtle sources of bias may defeat systematic reviews when authors are insufficiently familiar with the literature. This was demonstrated in respect of the systematic review of biophilia therapy by Trostrup, Christiansen, Stølen, Nielsen, and Stelter (2019). As reported in ACQol Bulletin (Vol 3/26: 270619), the authors failed to observe that the biophilia treatments they listed positively biased the treatment groups by providing an enhanced opportunity for relationship formation and achieving something interesting.

And so on. So this discussion raises the question of whether it even possible to construct valid and reliable systematic reviews in the area of subjective wellbeing. My guess is that, if it is possible, then it will only be so when conducted by an expert in the area. Moreover, by the time they have done with explaining their reasoning and justification for combining results, a superior form of communication may have been a critical narrative review.

References: see end of Bulletin

Further discussion of this paper, for circulation to members, is invited. Send to: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Substantive comments received by midnight on Monday 26th August Oz time will be published in the following Bulletin. Such comments may offer a novel extension to the view that has

been put, an alternative and informed view, or offer a critique.

ACQol members are invited to send papers, queries or comments, on the topic of life quality, for distribution and discussion by members under these same conditions.

Brief reportSourced from the Analysis & Policy Observatory

Wallace, J. (2019). The enabling state: Where are we now? Dunfermline Carnegie UK Trust.https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2019/08/apo-nid252746-1378926.pdfFive years ago the Carnegie UK Trust published The Rise of the Enabling State (Wallace, 2013). A review of over 180 policy sources, The Rise of the Enabling State identified seven interconnected policy shifts evident across the UK (see Figure 1). Together these broad shifts constitute the shift from the traditional Welfare State to the Enabling State: a state that seeks to take a whole of government approach and to empower individuals and communities andTable 1 provides a description of what these shifts entail. These shifts are complex, interdependent and far from risk free.

Media newsTanika Roberts [trobe@deakin.edu.au]

Executive Volunteer, Bulletin Co-Editor– Media

Nations with strong women's rights likely to have better population health and faster growth

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190719173557.htmBMJ July 19 2019While many parts of the world have made good economic progress, women's rights have often been overlooked, say the researchers. This is despite many countries having signed the international bill of rights for women, formally known as The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Overall, countries with strong women's rights had better/improving health than those where women's rights were only moderately or poorly respected. These health indicators include disease prevention, such as vaccination, reproductive health, death rates and life expectancy.  

Membership changesSangeetha Thomas <thomassa@deakin.edu.au>

Membership Registrar

Welcome to new membersProfessor Wenjie DuanProfessor of Social Work, East China University of Science and TechnologyKeywords: Health-related QoL; well-being; happiness; social indicator; psychometrics

Prof. dr. Johan GraaflandFull professor in Economics, Business and Ethics, Tilburg UniversityKeywords: Economic freedom, virtues, human flourishing, life satisfaction, corporate social responsibility, sustainability

Ms Michelle CarlyleGeneral Manager, Business Development &amp; Innovation, Unisson DisabilityKeywords: Personal wellbeing for people with intellectual disability

Professor Miroslav VerbicFull Professor, University of LjubljanaKeywords: subjective well-being, elderly, income and wealth, consumption, methodology

Professor Joar VittersoProfesor, University of Tromso, NorwayKeywords: hedonic wellbeing, eudaimonic wellbeing

Mrs Sangeetha ThomasPhD candidate, Deakin UniversityKeywords: Health related QoL

-----------------------ReferencesBaker, F., & Intagliata, J. (1982). Quality of life in the evaluation of community support

systems. Evaluation and Program Planning, 5, 69-19. Bloom, A. (1981). The linguistic shaping of thought. Hillsdale, NJ: Earlbaum.Davern, M., Cummins, R. A., & Stokes, M. (2007). Subjective wellbeing as an

affective/cognitive construct. Journal of Happiness Studies, 8(4), 429-449. doi:10.1007/s10902-007-9066-1

Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The satisfaction with life scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49, 71-75.

Heine, S. J., Lehman, D. R., Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1999). Is there a universal need for positive self-regard? Psychological Review, 106(4), 766-794.

Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2016). The mass production of redundant, misleading, and conflicted systematic reviews and meta‐analyses. The Milbank Quarterly, 94(3), 485-514.

Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224-253.

Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., & Altman, D. G. (2009). Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. Annals of Internal Medicine, 151(4), 264-269.

Oishi, S. (2006). The concept of life satisfaction across cultures: An IRT analysis. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(4), 411-423.

Oishi, S. (2007). The application of structural equation modeling and item response theory to cross-cultural positive psychology research. In A. D. Ong & M. v. Dulmen (Eds.), Handbook of methods in positive psychology (pp. 126-138). New York: Oxford University Press.

Trostrup, C. H., Christiansen, A. B., Stølen, K. S., Nielsen, P. K., & Stelter, R. (2019). The effect of nature exposure on the mental health of patients: a systematic review. Quality of Life Research, 28, 1695–1703.

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/33: 150819Bulletin of the Australian Centre on Quality of Lifehttp://www.acqol.com.au/Editor: Robert A. Cummins [robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au]Back-issues of the Bulletin are available at http://www.acqol.com.au/projects#bulletins

Note 1: The ACQol site is under development and some content is missing.Note 2: Please address any intended group correspondence to the editor only.

Comments, Observations, and QuestionsGraeme Lindenmayer <gretandlin@netscape.net> asks “I have often wondered how expectations and feelings of entitlement fit in [to subjective wellbeing:SWB]. There are immediate, short term and long term expectations. It would be interesting to find out how people acquire their expectations, and how they affect happiness.”

Cummins replies:These are interesting questions relating to the ‘gap’ theories of SWB. These theories propose that the level of SWB is influenced by more than simply the value of single measured variables, such as income. They propose that SWB is additionally influenced by the perceived value placed on (income), generated by comparative processes. The two such processes, identified by Graeme, are ‘expectations’ and ‘entitlement.’

Both processes involve perceived differences between a reference level, such as desired/expected/entitled income, and the perceived reality, as actual income. While many models have been devised to explain how the resulting ‘gap’ contributes to the prediction of SWB, they all involve the assumption that the magnitude of the ‘gap’ adds unique predictive variance beyond that accounted for by the magnitude of (money) alone. Examples of other variables that have been proposed to yield ‘gaps’ are hopes and expectations (Calman, 1984), attained and desired goals (Bergner, 1989), capabilities (Ruta, Camfield, & Donaldson, 2007), etc. One of the most thorough and articulated of these gap theories (see Andrews & Robinson, 1991) in relation to SWB, is Multiple Discrepancies Theory (Michalos, 1985). However, before examining the evidence for this theoretical direction, it is worth considering what such ‘gaps’ represent in terms of psychological processing.

The derived variables representing the ‘gap’ in these theoretical models are always complex, diving deep into cognitive psychology. This certainly applies to expectations and feelings of entitlement. Both are temporally-relevant, comparative, cognitive-affective variables. Expectations are based on past-experience, while feelings of entitlement are commonly based

on societal norms. Expectations may be acute (a happy birthday) or chronic (appropriate social interaction). Feelings of entitlement are more likely to be chronic. However, even if we simplify our focus to the chronic effects in relation to SWB, these variables remain far more complex than the established components of SWB research, which involve single measured variables.

Not only is a ‘gap’ variable derived from two measured variables, but also from their interaction. For example, we might ask ‘How contented would you like to be?’ and ‘How contented are you right now?’ The ‘gap’ variable is a ratio between them, representing their interaction, and this interaction may well change with the absolute level of each measured variable. Such complexity requires multi-variable modelling in order to validly represent the nature of the derived ‘gap. Simply forming a ratio between ‘like to be’ and ‘right now’ is far too simplistic and, when used as a predicted source of variance, will almost certainly produce unreliable and weak results.

This prediction is supported in relation to empirical investigations of Multiple Discrepancies Theory (MDT: Michalos, 1985). This asserts that SWB is a function of perceived discrepancies between: what someone has and wants, feels they deserve and need, what relevant others have, what one expects to have, the best one had in the past and the best one expects to have in the future. This gap-model was tested by Davern et al. (2007) who used structural modelling to predict SWB by a combination of personality, MDT, and HPMood. They found the strongest predictor to be HPMood, followed by MDT, with personality making a minor contribution. Similarly designed, follow-up studies (Blore, Stokes, Mellor, Firth, & Cummins, 2011; Tomyn & Cummins, 2011a) reported that MDT made no significant contribution to SWB after the variance supplied by HPMood had been accounted for.

My conclusion is that expectations and feelings of entitlement may well play a significant role in understanding the forces impinging on SWB. However to discover the true role of these and other ‘gap’ variables, advanced modelling techniques applicable to cognitive psychology are required.

Further discussion of this topic, for circulation to members, is invited. Send to: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Substantive comments received by midnight on Monday 19th August Oz time will be published in the following Bulletin. Such comments may offer a novel extension to the view that has

been put, an alternative and informed view, or offer a critique.

ACQol members are invited to send papers, queries or comments, on the topic of life quality, for distribution and discussion by members under these same conditions.

Website additions and changesIestyn Polley <iestyn.polley@deakin.edu.au>

Executive Web DeveloperCummins comments: Our special thanks go to Iestyn for mastering the tricky programming required to make these extended scale descriptions meld with the previous site structure.

This addition, of the extended description of the DASS scale, is a major new initiative for ACQol. While the current scale descriptions are minimalist snap-shots, the extended descriptions provide a far more sophisticated view of each scale’s psychometric performance.

However, it is important to note that these extended descriptions are not evaluative reviews. Rather, they are lists of psychometric characteristics, as reported by a few studies, selected on a convenience basis. These listings are merely intended to assist researchers in their evaluation of each scale’s worthiness.

Australian Centre on Quality of Life: Scale descriptions:Scale: Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995)

Brief psychometric description: http://www.acqol.com.au/instruments#measures

Extended psychometric description:Djordjevic, N. (2019). Depression Anxiety Stress Scales: Psychometric description. In R. A. Cummins (Ed.), Australian Centre on Quality of Life: Instruments. Geelong: Deakin University http://www.acqol.com.au/uploads/instruments/DASS-Nemanja-211118-FINAL.pdf

Reference to scale: Lovibond, S. H., & Lovibond, P. F. (1995) Manual for the depression anxiety stress scales (2nd ed.). Sydney: Psychology Foundation. http://www.psy.unsw.edu.au/groups/Dass/)

Brief reportSourced from the Analysis & Policy Observatory

Walsh, T., Levy, N., Bell, G., Elliott, A., Maclaurin, J., Mareels, I. M. Y., & Wood, F. M. (2019). The effective and ethical development of artificial intelligence: An opportunity to improve our wellbeing. Melbourne: Australian Council of Learned Academies, www.acola.org. https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2019/07/apo-nid250306-1375966.pdf

The promise underpinning predications of the potential benefits associated with AI technologies may be equally juxtaposed with narratives that anticipate global risks. To a large extent, these divergent views exist as a result of the yet uncertain capacity, application, uptake and associated impact of AI technologies. However, the utility of extreme optimism or pessimism is limited in the capacity to address the wide ranging and, perhaps less obvious, impacts of AI. … this report seeks to give a measured and balanced examination of the emergence of AI as informed by leading experts.

What is known is that the future role of AI will be ultimately determined by decisions taken today. To ensure that AI technologies provide equitable opportunities, foster social inclusion and distribute advantages throughout every sector of society, it will be necessary to develop AI in accordance with broader societal principles centred on improving prosperity, addressing inequity and continued betterment. Partnerships between government, industry and the community will be essential in determining and developing the values underpinning AI for enhanced wellbeing.

Media newsTanika Roberts [trobe@deakin.edu.au]

Executive Volunteer, Bulletin Co-Editor– Media

Using visual imagery to find your true passionsOhio State Universityhttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190722111900.htm

You may think you know what you like - how to spend your time or what profession to pursue. But a new study suggests that your pre-existing self-beliefs, as well as cultural stereotypes, may interfere with your memories and keep you from remembering what truly interests you. Researchers at The Ohio State University found that one particular mental technique could help us overcome the barriers that block us from finding our passions. In this study, first-person imagery helped women get in touch with how interesting a science activity actually was rather than be biased by their pre-existing beliefs, Niese said."It's something people could do on their own if they wanted to and gain these benefits in situations where cultural stereotypes or pre-existing beliefs might be likely to bias their judgment or cloud their memories."

-----------------------ReferencesAndrews, F. M., & Robinson, J. P. (1991). Measures of subjective well-being. In F. M.

Andrews, J. P. Robinson, P. R. Shaver, & L. S. Wrightsman (Eds.), Measures of personality and social psychological attitudes (Vol. 1, pp. 61-114).

Bergner, M. (1989). Quality of life, health status, and clinical research. Medical Care, 27, S148-S156.

Blore, J. D., Stokes, M. A., Mellor, D., Firth, L., & Cummins, R. A. (2011). Comparing multiple discrepancies theory to affective models of subjective wellbeing. Social Indicators Research, 100(1), 1-16. doi:10.1007/s11205-010-9599-2

Calman, K. C. (1984). Quality of life in cancer patients--an hypothesis. Journal of medical ethics, 10(3), 124-127.

Cummins, R. A. (2017a). Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis - Second edition. In D. S. Dunn (Ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199828340/obo-9780199828340-0167.xml

Davern, M., Cummins, R. A., & Stokes, M. (2007). Subjective wellbeing as an affective/cognitive construct. Journal of Happiness Studies, 8(4), 429-449. doi:10.1007/s10902-007-9066-1

Michalos, A. C. (1985). Multiple Discrepancies Theory (MDT). Social Indicators Research, 16, 347-413.

Ruta, D., Camfield, L., & Donaldson, C. (2007). Sen and the art of quality of life maintenance: Towards a general theory of quality of life and its causation. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 36(3), 397-423.

Tomyn, A. J., & Cummins, R. A. (2011a). Subjective wellbeing and homeostatically protected mood: Theory validation with adolescents. Journal of Happiness Studies, 12(5), 897-914. doi:10.1007/s10902-010-9235-5

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/32: 080819Bulletin of the Australian Centre on Quality of Lifehttp://www.acqol.com.au/Editor: Robert A. Cummins [robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au]Back-issues of the Bulletin are available at http://www.acqol.com.au/projects#bulletins

Note 1: The ACQol site is under development and some content is missing.Note 2: Please address any intended group correspondence to the editor only.

Continued discussion from last week

In last week’s Bulletin (3/31: 010819) Cummins commented on Brown & Rohrer (2019), which is a critique of Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, and Schkade (2005). These earlier comments form the attachment. Continued discussion contributed by Valerie Moller <V.Moller@ru.ac.za> is as follows:

“For some time, I’ve been dismayed to see the increasing popularisation of happiness and human well-being studies. And wonder if this is a good or bad thing. The science pages in mainstream newspapers, including the NY Times, which we read while in France in the international edition, have included items along the lines of how ordinary people can increase their well-being or happiness. And what really gets me is that the French tobacco shops where people buy their hard copy newspapers and news magazines (and popular ones), have a magazine with the title: Happinez, with a z. I see it is all about wellness issues. And, among the magazines, I saw a critical one where a headline referred to something like ‘are we being dictated to by the happiness industry’. The French are born philosophers and love to dissect issues at length. What really got me, was when I mentioned to a neighbour in France that I was going to participate in a quality of life conference in Innsbruck, she thought it was a spa! So that set me thinking. I’d need to find a different definition of our/my field of scientific (might not be that scientific in my case, but I’m still curious!) research in future.

And even in South Africa, mindfulness, which is surely not a bad thing, has taken off. A fellow academic dropped by my university office last year and wanted to introduce me to the practice. ... Incidentally, I came across a working paper that suggested future life satisfaction affected present life satisfaction among some individuals in the SOEP panel study. I thought that intriguing seeing that, on average, Africans in sub-Saharan countries tend to be more positive about the future than their present lives. So there might be better prospects for Africans ‘waiting for happiness’, the title of a Mauritanian hit song.

In short, is this popularisation of happiness good or bad for our discipline? I’ve been wanting to ask what you and colleagues like Alex Michalos and Ken Land, who have recently started the discussion on the next 50 years of social indicators, happiness and human well-being research. Way back, you lamented that we’d not found a common label for our field, as has Ed Diener and others. I think the popularisation trend fits with our era, which celebrates individual identity (see political scientist, Fukuyama’s recent book on the subject).”

Cummins replies:There are three issues raised by Valerie that I would like to discuss as: The overall impact of positive psychology and the issue of nomenclature, the link between present and future satisfaction, and mindfulness.

Positive psychology“Is the popularisation of happiness a good or bad thing” Valerie is ambivalent, and so am I. There was a time, not so long ago, when psychology was considered a ‘dismal science’. Rats, stats, and mental disorders. This started to change when Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) edited Issue 55 of American Psychologist. In the issue's introduction, their description of positive psychology (p. 5) describes the universe of positive psychology constructs. Their description heralded a major new disciplinary direction, not only attractive to social scientists and economists, but also to the world media. The resulting flood of attention certainly lifted the public profile of psychology into more positive territory. It has also damaged psychological science. New terms have been popularised whose measures have no clear discriminant validity, high-order statistics are

commonly used to create fishing expeditions rather than for theory testing, and correlations are commonly interpreted as causal. The end-result has been the creation of a literature full of nice sounding but meaningless terms, complex analyses that can never be replicated and, therefore, never falsified, and conclusions of causation that are invalid. Bring back the t-test!

Present/future life satisfactionValerie notes that, on average, Africans in sub-Saharan countries tend to be more positive about their future than their present lives. Indeed so, and this is the human condition. The mechanism responsible for this phenomenon may be understood as follows. (a) The setpoints for Homeostatically Protected Mood (HPMood) are distributed within the general population between 70 to 90 percentage points (pp) on a 0-100pp scale from no positive feelings to very high positive feelings (Capic et al., 2018). Thus, people generally feel positive about themselves. (b) When people are asked to rate their satisfaction with their lives, their answer reflects their single stream of consciousness. This stream has two major components. HPMood is an unchanging, positive, low-energy background affect. Superimposed on this background are emotions, reflecting our affective-cognitive reactions to internal thoughts and the percepts reflecting our environment. (c) Emotions are usually stronger than HPMood and are most commonly negative (Anglim et al., 2015). Thus, responses to scales measuring Subjective Wellbeing (SWB) typically lie below the average set-point (80pp). (d) Within any single response, the momentary balance between HPMood and emotion depends, inter alia, on the level of cognitive engagement generated by the question used to measure SWB. When cognition is weakly engaged, emotions are weakly stimulated, and the SWB response more strongly reflects HPMood (Cummins et al., 2018). (e) Because the future is unknown, a question about the present “How satisfied are you with your life as a whole” is more cognitively engaging than a similar question about the future “How satisfied with your life will you be in five years?” Thus, due to the greater dominance of HPMood, people tend to be more positive about their future life than their present life. QED.

MindfulnessValerie refers to mindfulness as ‘surely not a bad thing’. Perhaps this is so, in that the practice seems unlikely to be harmful. But this is also true of the myriad other procedures advocated within positive psychology. More importantly, it cannot form part of mainstream psychology until there is some semblance of scientific understanding about the mindfulness process. A previous issue of ACQOL Bulletin Vol 2/10: 080318 [http://www.acqol.com.au/publications#bulletins] has been devoted to this topic, specifically the excoriating review of mindfulness provided by (VanDam et al., 2018). Subhadra Evans <subhadra.evans@deakin.edu.au> had the last word in our discussion, concluding “until funding is invested into adequately powered randomized controlled trials, using rigorous methodology, clear definitions, inclusion of meaningful outcomes and systematic examination of adverse events, mindfulness risks being relegated to the pop psychology shelves”.

But, just possibly, Homeostasis theory as described may provide a scientific lead into the mindfulness mechanism. Consider the possibility that the practice of mindfulness and other versions of meditation have a common goal. This is to reduce as far as possible the emotion content in the stream of consciousness (see above). Then, once emotion has been eliminated,

HPMood dominates the stream, and conscious experience comprises an affective amalgam of contentment, happiness, and alertness. Could it be that science has characterised nirvana?

References: See end of Bulletin.

Further discussion of these matters, for circulation to members, is invited. Send to: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Substantive comments received by midnight on Monday 12th August Oz time will be published in the following Bulletin. Such comments may offer a novel extension to the view that has

been put, an alternative and informed view, or offer a critique.

ACQol members are invited to send papers on the topic of life quality, for distribution and discussion by members under these same conditions.

Brief reportSourced from the Analysis & Policy Observatory

Arden, J. (2019). Why does good government matter? New Zealand: Beehive Government https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/why-does-good-government-matter.

“Around the world, democratic values and institutions are under threat in a way that many of us never expected to see in our lifetimes. Nationalist sentiment that closes off the possibility of countries working together is surging. Authoritarian movements and regimes are on the rise. Norms that we in New Zealand and Australia take for granted – the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power, freedom of expression – are being challenged in new and more explicit ways. These trends are only possible because large numbers of people believe, rightly or wrongly, that their leaders are failing them…

This year, in New Zealand, we introduced our first Wellbeing Budget. We didn’t abandon the previous approach to public finance. We widened it. We said not only “What will be most conducive to economic growth?” but also, more fundamentally: “What will do the most to improve the lives of New Zealanders?” ‘What will help them to pursue lives of dignity and purpose?’ We embedded wellbeing at every stage of the creation of the Budget – from setting priorities to analysing proposals, to making the inevitable trade-offs that come with the privilege of being in government”.

Media newsTanika Roberts [trobe@deakin.edu.au]

Executive Volunteer, Bulletin Co-Editor– Media

Combined online self-management for pain, associated anxiety and depression worksRegenstrief Institute. (2019, July 22)https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190722111904.htm

Pain is the most common physical symptom for which adults seek medical attention in the United States, while anxiety and depression are the most common mental health symptoms for which adults visit a doctor. Regenstrief Institute research scientist Kurt Kroenke states "Pain, anxiety and depression can produce a vicious cycle in which the presence of one symptom, if untreated, may

negatively affect the response to treatment of the other two symptoms." A new study led by Dr Kroenke, has found that both online symptom self-management and online symptom self-management plus clinician telecare can be effective for individuals with all three symptoms, which frequently co-occur in this difficult to treat patient population.

Membership changesSimone Thomas simonet@deakin.edu.au

Membership RegistrarWelcome to new membersProfessor Samuel AdamsDean, Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, GhanaKeywords: economic development, sustainable development, income inequality, environmental quality, Ghana

Professor Ian BacheProfessor of Politics, University of Sheffield, UKKeywords: politics, policy, evidence, government, UK

Dr Raquel do Carvalhal MonteiroPostdoctoral Researcher, Universidade Federal Fluminense, BrazilKeywords: "Well-being" "social indicators" "quality of life" "sustainability" "happiness"

Mr Armando FatigatiVice President, Complex Claims Division, Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario, CanadaKeywords: catastrophic injuries quality of life

Dr Ghulam Rasool MadniAssistant Professor, The University of Lahore Keywords: Formal Rules and Informal Norms

Dr Bienvenido OrtegaAssociate Professor, University of Malaga, SpainKeywords: Human development, Tourism, Regional Analysis

Dr Adriano ParetoResearcher, Italian National Institute of Statistics, ItalyKeywords: Data analysis, Composite indicators, Well-being

Dr. Nopphol WitvorapongAssistant Professor, Faculty of Economics, Chulalongkorn University, ThailandKeywords: Social Capital; Subjective Wellbeing; Happiness; Health

-----------------------ReferencesAnglim, J., Weinberg, M. K., & Cummins, R. A. (2015). Bayesian hierarchical modeling of the

temporal dynamics of subjective well-being: A 10 year longitudinal analysis. Journal of Research in Personality, 59(3), 1-14. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2015.08.003

Brown, N. J. L., & Rohrer, J. M. (2019). Easy as (happiness) Pie? A Critical Evaluation of a Popular Model of the Determinants of Well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 1-17.

Capic, T., Li, N., & Cummins, R. A. (2018). Confirmation of Subjective Wellbeing Set-points: Foundational for Subjective Social Indicators. Social Indicators Research, 137(1), 1-28. Retrieved from 10.1007/s11205-017-1585-5.

Cummins, R. A., Capic, T., Hutchinson, D., Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M., Olsson, C. A., & Richardson, B. (2018). Why self-report variables inter-correlate: The role of Homeostatically Protected Mood. Journal of Wellbeing Assessment, 2, 93-114. doi:10.1007/s41543-018-0014-0

Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: the architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9, 111-131.

Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: an introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5-15.

VanDam, N. T., van Vugt, M. K., Vago, D. R., Schmalzl, L., Saron, C. D., Olendzki, A., . . . Gorchov, J. (2018). Mind the hype: A critical evaluation and prescriptive agenda for research on mindfulness and meditation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(1), 36-61.

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/31: 010819Bulletin of the Australian Centre on Quality of Lifehttp://www.acqol.com.au/Editor: Robert A. Cummins [robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au]Back-issues of the Bulletin are available at http://www.acqol.com.au/projects#bulletins

Note 1: The ACQol site is under development and some content is missing.Note 2: Please address any intended group correspondence to the editor only.

Paper for private studyThe attached paper, on the topic of life quality, is sent to you for your personal private study and discussion within ACQol. You are prohibited from further distributing this paper to any

other person.

Background: Kimina Lyall klyall@deakin.edu.au identified this article for discussion. Cummins writes: It seems extraordinary that an article such as Lyubomirsky et al. (2005) has received such little critical attention. The host journal, Review of General Psychology, is a mainstream publication of the American Psychological Association. Moreover, as Brown & Rohrer document, it contains such egregious errors of scientific reasoning such that its conclusions are worthless. So one might imagine that, in a scientifically alert community, such a publication would be a magnet for strongly worded critiques. Yet a search for critiques of this article over the intervening 14 years since publication yields very slim pickings. In addition to the three ‘blogs’ identified by Brown & Rohrer, there are a small number of other publications that offer comment in the context of broader reviews.

There are many contributing factors to this relative dearth of critical literature. One may be the relatively poor level of recognition that such articles achieve from other researchers in the area. A ready observation within the social-science literature is that original articles, no matter how misguided, are cited far more frequently than the articles demonstrating why they should be ignored [see discussion of the Yerkes – Dodson Law: ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/29]. This is especially true of original articles that provide overly simplistic explanations for complex phenomena. The critiques, on the other hand, are usually themselves complex

because they involve logic argument. As such, they are not attractive to researchers who are seeking support for simple ideas of how SWB works.

True to the above description, the article by Lyubomirsky et al. (2005) is a good example of an article that should be ignored, but is not. Quite the reverse. It has received over 3,000 citations, having been lauded by the proponents of positive psychology as evidence that personal happiness can be simply increased if the person takes appropriate steps to do so. Do read on.

ReferenceBrown, N. J. L., & Rohrer, J. M. (2019). Easy as (happiness) Pie? A Critical Evaluation of a Popular Model of the Determinants of Well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 1-17

Author summary: An underlying principle behind much of the research in positive psychology is that individuals have considerable leeway to increase their levels of happiness. In an influential article that is frequently cited in support of such claims, Lyubomirsky et al. put forward a model (subsequently popularized under the name of the “happiness pie”) in which approximately 50% of individual differences in happiness are due to genetic factors and 10% to life circumstances, leaving 40% available to be changed via volitional activities. We re-examined Lyubomirsky et al.’s claims and found several apparent deficiencies in their chain of arguments on both the empirical and the conceptual level. We conclude that there is little empirical evidence for the variance decomposition suggested by the “happiness pie,” and that even if it were valid, it is not necessarily informative with respect to the question of whether individuals can truly exert substantial influence over their own chronic happiness level.

Comment on Brown & Rohrer (2019)Robert A. CumminsThe authors have done a fine job of questioning the validity of Lyubomirsky et al. (2005). However, there are additional levels of understanding as to why the Lyubomirsky et al. claim is false, that “individuals have considerable leeway to increase their levels of happiness”. There are three further sources of evidence against this proposition, each one consistent with the theory of subjective wellbeing homeostasis as:

1. The highest level of subjective wellbeing (SWB) we have yet discovered, within statistically-cleaned, general population data, is about 80-82 percentage points (pp) on a 0-100pp scale. One source is Australian Unity Wellbeing Index Report 16.1 (Cummins, Walter, & Woerner, 2007a) which used the aggregate data from the 15 population surveys conducted to that time. This report includes an investigation of subgroups with the highest (and lowest) SWB (Personal Wellbeing Index). The highest are people who have both a high income (>$150,000pa) and a partner. Their average level of SWB is 79.3pp (author Figure 10). In a more recent report (Khor et al., 2019; Report 35.1, in press), which again uses combined data, this time from 27 surveys, the highest sub-group SWB is for people who have retired. While their PWI is at 76.73pp, Global Life Satisfaction is at 80.43pp. Clearly there appears to be a ceiling at around 80pp, and this is confirmed by empirically-tested theory.

2. In a recent publication confirming the existence of HPMood setpoints (Capic et al., 2018), the distribution of individual set-points within the population is between 70 and 90pp, with a mean of 80pp. Thus, in order for a population sample to exceed 80pp, that sample must

chronically experience a level of homeostatic support that not only negates the challenges but also provides a persistently positive experience. The latter is made even more difficult due to habituation and adaptation (Diener & Fujita, 1995). It seems reasonable to conclude from this theoretical viewpoint, that group mean scores for SWB are rarely going to exceed 80pp.

3. The third source of evidence comes from empirical studies demonstrating that the extent to which SWB can be chronically increased, depends on its level at baseline. Essentially, given the approximate ceiling for group means scores of around 80pp, the lower is the baseline measure below 80pp, the more potential there is for an intervention to raise the level of SWB. This was demonstrated by Tomyn, Weinberg, and Cummins (2015) who examined the outcome from a Government intervention program directed to a large national sample of ‘at-risk’ adolescents. For the purpose of data analysis, the sample was divided into three sub-groups who had baseline levels of SWB within the ranges of 0–50, 51–69, and 70+pp. The post-intervention increase in SWB was, respectively, 23.75, 12.08, and 1.48pp.

In conclusion, the proposition that there is some standard amount of SWB variance that can be represented as the ‘leeway to increase levels of happiness’ is without reasonable empirical or theoretical support. The level of potential change in the level of SWB depends on its level at baseline, which is also intuitively sensible.

References: see end of Bulletin

Further discussion of this paper, for circulation to members, is invited. Send to: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Substantive comments received by midnight on Monday 5th August Oz time will be published in the following Bulletin. Such comments may offer a novel extension to the view that has

been put, an alternative and informed view, or offer a critique.

ACQol members are invited to send papers on the topic of life quality, for distribution and discussion by members under these same conditions.

Website additions and changesTanja Capic <tanja.capic@deakin.edu.au>

WebMasterNew translation of the PWI into Maltesehttp://www.acqol.com.au/instruments#measures

This translation of the PWI into Maltese was created by:Charlene BorgParent Relations ManagerInspire Foundation, BulebelIndustrialEstate, Zejtun, Maltacharlene.borg@inspire.org.mtwww.inspire.org.mt

Brief reportsThe Conversation

Gunasekara, A. (2019). Migrants who adapt to Australian culture say they’re happier than those who don’t. The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/migrants-who-adapt-to-australian-culture-say-theyre-happier-than-those-who-dont-117264.

This report concerns a survey of over 300 non-Western, skilled migrants in Australia. Their subjective wellbeing (SWB) was measured by the Personal Wellbeing Index (International Wellbeing Group, 2013). The Australian general population normative range on this scale is from 74.2 to 76.8 percentage points (pp). The mean of the migrants is higher, on 77.27pp and was associated with them feeling more acculturated to Australian than to their heritage culture, higher English language competency, and an Australian identity. It was not associated with more time spent in Australia. Their least satisfaction of the 7 PWI domains came from community connection, as it does also for the general population. Overall, feelings of belonging and the maintenance of relationships is found to be a crucial factor in subjective wellbeing.

This report was identified by Graeme Lindenmayer <gretandlin@netscape.net>

Boris Johnson and the Triumph of Gullibility?Raj Persaud https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/boris-johnson-populism-psychology-gullibility-by-raj-persaud-2019-07

The success of populist politicians such as US President Donald Trump and new British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suggests that voters are becoming increasingly gullible. Although it is tempting to blame “fake news” and social media for this trend, recent psychological research points to a different and perhaps more startling explanation.

Conventional wisdom holds that people vote for disruptive populists such as Johnson largely out of anger and resentment. But a recent article in The Economist [Why are happy people voting for angry parties?] points out that populism and support for parties hostile to the status quo are rising at a time when opinion polls suggest that electorates have generally never been happier.

Professor Joseph Forgas, at the University of New South Wales, points to a deeper and more persuasive explanation: happy people are more gullible. In a series of experiments, Forgas found that negative emotional states made people less gullible, while a positive mood made them more so. Moreover, Forgas argues that voters’ openness to simple, populist messages has proved surprisingly important in influencing recent political events, such as Brexit, the ascendancy of Trump, and the election of populist autocrats in countries such as Hungary and Turkey.

Media news

Having a sense of meaning in life is good for you – so how do you get one?Lisa A Williams

https://theconversation.com/having-a-sense-of-meaning-in-life-is-good-for-you-so-how-do-you-get-one-110361?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The

%20Conversation%20for%20February%2014%202019%20-%201235611381&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for

%20February%2014%202019%20-%201235611381+CID_acd309e4485ff42cc4ed4e7e4a439b51&utm_source=campaign_monit

or&utm_term=Having%20a%20sense%20of%20meaning%20in%20life%20is%20good%20for%20you%20%20so%20how%20do%20you%20get%20one

The search for the heart of well-being – that is, a nucleus from which other aspects of well-being and health might flow – has been the focus of decades of research. New findings recently reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences point towards an

answer commonly overlooked: meaning in life. University College London’s psychology professor Andrew Steptoe and senior research associate Daisy Fancourt analysed a sample of

7,304 UK residents aged 50+ drawn from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. The data revealed that individuals reporting a higher meaning in life had:

lower risk of divorce lower risk of living alone increased connections with friends and engagement in social and cultural activities lower incidence of new chronic disease and onset of depression lower obesity and increased physical activity increased adoption of positive health behaviours (exercising, eating fruit and veg).

Report from Google Analytics for the ACQol siteInclusive period: July 2019

Number of users = 696ReferencesInternational Wellbeing Group. (2013). Personal Wellbeing Index Manual: 5th Edition. Retrieved from http://www.acqol.com.au/instruments

Capic, T., Li, N., & Cummins, R. A. (2018). Confirmation of Subjective Wellbeing Set-points: Foundational for Subjective Social Indicators. Social Indicators Research, 137(1), 1-28. Retrieved from 10.1007/s11205-017-1585-5.

Cummins, R. A., Walter, J., & Woerner, J. (2007a). Australian Unity Wellbeing Index: Report 16.1 - “The Wellbeing of Australians - Groups with the highest and lowest wellbeing in Australia”. . Melbourne: Australian Centre on Quality of Life, School of Psychology, Deakin University. http://www.acqol.com.au/publications#reports.

Diener, E., & Fujita, F. (1995). Resources, personal strivings, and subjective well-being: A nomothetic and idiographic approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(5), 926-935.

Khor, S., Cummins, R. A., Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M., Capic, T., Garth, E., Olsson, C. A., & Hutchinson, D. (2019). Australian Unity Wellbeing Index: - Report 35.1 Ageing Well: Predicting Positive Transitions to Retirement. Geelong: Australian Centre on Quality of Life, School of Psychology, Deakin University. (in press).

Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: the architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9, 111-131.

Tomyn, A. J., Weinberg, M. K., & Cummins, R. A. (2015). Intervention efficacy among ‘at risk’ adolescents: A test of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis Theory. Social Indicators Research, 120(3), 883-895. doi:10.1007/s11205-014-0619-5

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/30: 250719Bulletin of the Australian Centre on Quality of Lifehttp://www.acqol.com.au/

Editor: Robert A. Cummins [robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au]Back-issues of the Bulletin are available at http://www.acqol.com.au/projects#bulletins

Note 1: The ACQol site is under development and some content is missing.Note 2: Please address any intended group correspondence to the editor only.

Paper for private studyThe attached paper, on the topic of life quality, is sent to you for your personal private study and discussion within ACQol. You are prohibited from further distributing this paper to any

other person.

Background: General population surveys typically ask respondents to declare their marital status. As a consequence, a huge number of papers report on the level of wellbeing experienced by people who are married, divorced, widowed, et cetera, correlated with other variables. So dense is this coverage that it is difficult to create a new angle. The current paper demonstrates this difficulty. Using data from two major surveys it is found that the Global Life Satisfaction (Satisfaction with life as a whole: GLS) of married>single; that this higher level continues for some time after the actual marriage; and the mid-life dip in GLS is attenuated by marriage. Their claimed novel result is that married people, for whom their partner is also their best friend, have a higher GLS than those whose best friend is someone else. While this may be a new result, it is also intuitive.

My interest in this paper was piqued by the authors’ use of ‘set point’ in the title. They state that “The aim of this paper is to use measures of life satisfaction from different surveys to estimate the size and permanence of the effects of marriage on subjective well-being” (p.374). They test this ‘level of permanence’ by statistically controlling for pre-marriage levels of GLS. They find that “contrary to past papers claiming full adaptation, the benefits of marriage persist in the long-term, even if the well-being benefits are greatest immediately after marriage” (p.384-385). The authors then use this ‘persistence of raised GLS’ as evidence against the existence of setpoints.

In order to understand the critique to be offered below, it is necessary to re-visit the idea of set-point ranges. There are two such ranges (Capic et al., 2018; Cummins, Li, Wooden, & Stokes, 2014a) as:

(a) Each individual person has their own setpoint for Homeostatically Protected Mood (HPMood), which is the major component of GLS [the other component is emotion, which causes the level of measured GLS to move up or down]. The distribution of these setpoints within the population is statistically normal. This ‘setpoint distribution’ ranges over 70-90 percentage points, measured on a 0-100 point scale. Both the setpoint distribution range, and the level of each individual setpoint, is assumed to be under genetic control, and so not to change.

(b) Each individual setpoint has its own operational range, within which homeostasis acts to maintain the level of chronically experienced affect. The extent of this ‘setpoint operational range’ has been estimated as about 8-percentage points on either side of each setpoint (Capic et al., 2018). The measured value of GLS at any moment will normally lie within this range. Variation in the level of GLS is driven by the strength and type of emotion being experienced. Moreover, a positive life event such as marriage will likely make the experience of positive emotion more likely that it was when the two people were single. This will cause

GLS to be generally higher after marriage, but still constrained to lie within its setpoint operational range. So, even though the level of GLS can be demonstrated to be higher, it will only be so by a few percentage points. Notably, changes in measured levels of GLS are the result of changes in emotion, not changes in the setpoint.

In this context, the authors’ use of ‘setpoint’, and their conclusions regarding its stability, are challenged.

Reference: Grover, S., & Helliwell, J. F. (2019). How’s life at home? New evidence on marriage and the set point for happiness. Journal of Happiness Studies, 20(2), 373-390.

Author’s summary: Using [British] data … we control individual pre-marital well-being levels and find that the married are still more satisfied [GLS], suggesting a causal effect at all stages of the marriage, from prenuptual bliss to marriages of long-duration … we [also] find that the married have a less deep U-shape in life satisfaction across age groups than do the unmarried, indicating that marriage may help ease the causes of the mid-life dip in life satisfaction and that the benefits of marriage are unlikely to be short-lived. We explore friendship as a mechanism which could help explain a causal relationship between marriage and life satisfaction, and find that well-being effects of marriage are about twice as large for those whose spouse is also their best friend.

Comment on Grover & Helliwell (2019)It is notable that, despite ‘set-point’ being a feature of their paper’s title, it does not rate a mention in their abstract. An examination of what their paper does say about ‘set-points’ follows:

1. “The existence of high levels of adaptation, or reversion to fixed life satisfaction setpoints determined by genetics or other stable personality traits (Brickman & Campbell, 1971)… would lead to smaller cross-sectional as well as panel estimates [of GLS], since for each individual there would be only a few happy post-marriage years before return to the set point” (Lucas, 2007; Suh, Diener, & Frujita, 1996)” (Grover & Helliwell, 2019, p. 374).My comments on this quotation are:

1.1 Brickman & Campbell (1971) do not mention ‘set-points’, 'genetic', 'genetics' or 'personality'. This is a miss-citation.

1.2 Lucas (2007) reports that from the time of marriage to 7-years following, GLS changed from about 76 points to about 72 points (his Figure 1). This estimated degree of change (4 percentage points) is well within the normal range of values around each setpoint, of around 8 percentage points (Capic et al., 2018). Additionally, when the people who divorced within the 7-year period were removed from the sample, the residual change reduced to <3 points (Lucas, Figure 2). The extent of this persistent elevation in GLS can be accommodated within the ‘setpoint operational range’, and attributed to the additional homeostatic resource of a married partner.

1.3 Suh et al. (1996) do not report the subjective wellbeing (SWB) level of their 8 respondents who were married (all of their 115 respondents were 20-21 year-old students).

Conclusion: The cited material does not support the proposition by Grover & Helliwell (2019) of “only a few happy post-marriage years before return to the set point.” They also

make the unwarranted assumption that marital happiness is the over-riding determinant of GLS levels.

2. “Two widely cited papers have used panel data to show life satisfaction gains after marriage that are dissipated within a few years … Lucas et al. (2003) … concluded that the set point theory applies to marriage because they found that married individuals’ well-being reverts to their pre-marital baseline after a few years. Second, Clark and Georgellis (2013) … show that married people are more satisfied in the years immediately before and after their marriage, but that [the marriage effect had dissipated after] 5 years” (Grover & Helliwell, 2019, p. 375). My comments on this quotation are:

2.1 Lucas, Clark, Georgellis, and Diener (2003) evidence a misunderstanding of homeostatic set-point theory. They state “According to this [set-point] idea, people have happiness set points to which they inevitably return following disruptive life events” (p. 527). This is a basic misunderstanding of what ‘setpoints’ represent [see ‘background’ above].

2.2 Clark and Georgellis (2013) make no mention of ‘set-point’. They simply show that GLS rises slightly in the 3-4 years before marriage, and then falls back to baseline after 5 years.

By citing these sources, and also their own results, which essentially replicate the findings that have been listed, Grover & Helliwell (2019) deduce that the idea of setpoints for GLS has been discredited. They state “ These results … demonstrate that life evaluations are not fully determined by genetic and other factors to define immutable long-term individual happiness set points” (pp. 385-386) citing Cummins et al. (2014a).

Conclusion: The gap between what homeostasis set-point theory claims, and what Grover & Helliwell suppose it claims, is a barrier to rational scientific discourse.

References: see end of Bulletin

Further discussion of this paper, for circulation to members, is invited. Send to: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Substantive comments received by midnight on Monday 29th July Oz time will be published in the following Bulletin. Such comments may offer a novel extension to the view that has been

put, an alternative and informed view, or offer a critique.

ACQol members are invited to send papers on the topic of life quality, for distribution and discussion by members under these same conditions.

Brief reportSourced from the Analysis & Policy Observatory

Kurti, P. (2019). CRACKING UP? Culture and the Displacement of Virtue. Sydney: The Centre for Independent Studies https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2019/06/ap4.pdf

The argument presented here is that the fracturing of our culture can be accounted for, in large part, by the crisis of moral authority that confronts our society. The eclipse of virtue by values has led to a distorted view of morality that is no longer informed by principles of

reason but by emotion. The communal norms of morality expressed by virtue have been displaced by a new primacy afforded to feelings.

The fissures in our culture can be closed only by a reinstatement of a moral authority that appeals to norms that transcend the felt concerns and experiences of the individual, and instead locates them in the wider frame of a common human nature so that all may flourish. This must be done, in other words, by appealing to virtue. Yet this is no easy task.

Media newsTanika Roberts [trobe@deakin.edu.au]

Executive Volunteer, Bulletin Co-Editor– Media

'Burn-Out' Is Now a Legitimate Syndrome According to The WHO. Here Are The SymptomsCARLY CASSELLA | 29 MAY 2019

https://www.sciencealert.com/burn-out-is-now-officially-recognised-as-a-legitimate-syndrome-by-the-world-health-organisation?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1

Workplace 'burn-out' has become such a serious health issue in the modern age, it's now been reclassified by the World Health Organisation. Within the agency's widely-used manual, known as the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), burn-out will be officially listed: not as a medical condition (as some initial reports have wrongfully stated), but instead as an 'occupational syndrome'. The WHO characterises burnout: "feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and reduced professional efficacy.” The parameters of burn-out are in desperate need of clarity, and these new international standards could greatly improve diagnosis and treatment

Membership changesSimone Thomas simonet@deakin.edu.au

Membership RegistrarWelcome to new members

Ms Nour Imane LakmacheUniversity of Algiers 2, university of Algiers 2, Algeria Keywords: well-being life satisfaction quality of life

Ms Charlene BorgParent Relations Manager, Inspire, MaltaKeywords: Resources, Resilience, Openness, Awareness, Malleability.

-----------------------ReferencesBrickman, P., & Campbell, D. T. (1971). Hedonic relativism and planning the good society. In M. H.

Appley (Ed.), Adaptation-level theory: A symposium (pp. 287-302). New York: Academic Press.

Capic, T., Li, N., & Cummins, R. A. (2018). Confirmation of Subjective Wellbeing Set-points: Foundational for Subjective Social Indicators. Social Indicators Research, 137(1), 1-28. Retrieved from 10.1007/s11205-017-1585-5.

Clark, A. E., & Georgellis, Y. (2013). Back to baseline in Britain: adaptation in the British household panel survey. Economica, 80(319), 496-512.

Cummins, R. A., Li, L., Wooden, M., & Stokes, M. (2014a). A demonstration of set-points for subjective wellbeing. Journal of Happiness Studies, 15, 183-206. doi:10.1007/s10902-013-9444-9

Lucas, R. E. (2007). Adaptation and the set-point model of Subjective Well-Being: Does happiness change after major life events? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 75-79.

Lucas, R. E., Clark, A. E., Georgellis, Y., & Diener, E. (2003). Reexamining adaptation and the set point model of happiness: Reactions to changes in marital status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84 (3), 527-539. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.84.3.527

Qari, S. (2014). Marriage, adaptation and happiness: Are there long-lasting gains to marriage? Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 50, 29-39.

Suh, E., Diener, E., & Frujita, F. (1996). Events and subjective well-being: Only recent events matter. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(5), 1091-1102. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.70.5.1091

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/29: 180719Bulletin of the Australian Centre on Quality of Lifehttp://www.acqol.com.au/Editor: Robert A. Cummins [robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au]Back-issues of the Bulletin are available at http://www.acqol.com.au/publications#bulletins

Note 1: The ACQol site is under development and some content is missing.Note 2: Please address any intended group correspondence to the editor only.

Paper for private studyThe attached paper, on the topic of life quality, is sent to you for your personal private study and discussion within ACQol. You are prohibited from further distributing this paper to any

other person.

Plagiarism: mea culpaRobert A. Cummins

Wikipedia sources ‘Turnitin’ in listing 10 ‘Common forms of student plagiarism’. The ninth is ‘Inaccurately citing the source’ and a common cause is that the student has not, in fact, read the document they are citing. Instead, they have reproduced an opinion about the cited document, as described by another author. I have railed against such practice all my academic life, warning students of the darkness that will fall on them unless they personally read the sources they cite. Now the sin is mine: mea culpa.

BackgroundI was considering my reply to Juanita Wood juanita12@bigpond.com, in the previous issue of the Bulletin. She had written “Stress can become productive and useful. It fires up the brain to concentrate on the matter at hand. It can be negative when it makes life seem too hard to manage.” Her words reminded me of the ‘Yerkes-Dodson Law’ (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908), commonly cited in first-year general psychology text-books. So, with this reference in mind I wrote: “It was the era of ‘Law’ formation in the physical sciences, and two psychological researchers were not to be outdone. Their law states that psychological performance increases with increased arousal (stress), but only up to a point. As arousal

continues to increase, performance decreases once again. Rather amazingly, they were correct and their ‘Law’ still finds a place in more recent research (e.g. Anderson, Revelle, & Lynch, 1989)”. Their 1908 paper has received over 7,000 citations.

The Deakin University library has substantial access to reference material, and I am used to being able to download what I need. However, on this occasion the 1908 reference was not available and I had to order it. But by my deadline, when I needed to despatch that issue of the Bulletin, the paper had not arrived. What to do? Well, to be true to my insistence regarding student advice, I should have not proceeded. But my opportunity to reply to Juanita was effectively limited to that issue, being in the context of our ongoing discussion of stress. So, I checked my sources in two ways. One was to see what Wikipedia had to say, the other was to consult some first-year psychology textbooks. Both confirmed my memory, so I sent out that issue of the Bulletin.

Yerkes & Dodson, 1908The requested paper (see attached) arrived the following day. My interest was immediately piqued because the authors make no claim to have discovered a ‘Law’. Goodness knows who invented that attribution. I also noted problems with the paper likely to affect the reported findings. My summary is as follows:

The study designThe paper describes a set of three studies involving the aversive conditioning of mice. They were presented with the option of entering either a black box (their preference) or a white box. Through the use of electric shocks to their feet, they learned to avoid entering the black box. The number of trials taken to achieve a reliable switch of preference, from black to white, was used as the rate of learning. The experimenters manipulated two variables. One was the intensity of the shock (weak-125 units), medium (300 units), strong (500 units). The other was the degree of relative brightness between the boxes (their level of discrimination). For study 1 the level of brightness of both boxes was the same, as measured by the amount of light entering the box. However, the discriminability of the boxes, one white and the other black, was obvious. In study 2 the brightness of the white box was increased, thereby increasing the perceived differences between the boxes. In study 3 the brightness of the white box was decreased below the level of study 2, to make discrimination between the boxes more difficult.

Successful learning was determined by the number of days of training required to make a correct choice on three successive days (eg 25). Each study used increasing levels (units) of shock, and used different mice for each level. The results from studies 1 and 2 are the average from 4 mice at each level, and for study 3 the averaged from 2 mice at each level.

ResultsThe summary of results from the 3 studies follows. Each study description shows, for each level, days of training and (units of shock).Study 1: ns(125), 12(300), 23(500)Study 2: 18(135), 11(195), 11(255), 12(375), 8(420)Study 3: 30(135), 16(195), 19(255), 26(375)

The comments on each study are as follows:

Study 1: ns(125), 12(300), 23(500)

Weak (125 units): only one of the four mice was able to be trained. The authors conclude that “the stimulus was too weak to furnish an adequate motive for the avoidance of the black box and the experiments were discontinued” (p.469). These results cannot be validly used in further discussion about discrimination learning.

Medium (300 units): The authors comment: “Comparison of these results with those obtained with the weak stimulus clearly indicates that the medium stimulus was much more favorable to the acquirement of the white-black visual discrimination habit” (p.470). The authors’ comparison with the failed (125 units) is invalid as an appraisal of differential learning. As the authors state, the (125 units) stimulus was too weak to be effectively noticed by the mice.

Strong (500 units): The authors comment: “In its results, the strong stimulus proved to be similar to the weak stimulus. All of the mice in this case learned more slowly than did those which were trained with the medium strength of stimulus” (p.471).

Summary: The comparison between these three levels forms the basis of the most commonly cited version of the ‘Yerkes-Dodson Law’. For example, Wikipedia states: “ The law dictates that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point. When levels of arousal become too high, performance decreases”. This interpretation of the results is challenged.

First, the result of the ‘weak (125 units)’level of study 1 is invalid, as stated above. Moreover, the level of strong shock (500 units) was excessive. Common-sense informs that when the level of shock is so high as to cause great distress, all rational behaviors, including learning, will be obscured. In relation to this, the authors note that the strength as “the strong stimulus was decidedly disagreeable to the experimenters and the mice reacted to it vigorously” (pp.467-468). They elsewhere describe this level of 500 units as “positively injurious” (p.471) and even describe a lower intensity of (420 units) as of “harmful intensity” (p.481, point 3). At the level of 500 units, the animal’s behaviour is reflecting reflexive-escape behaviour quite unrelated to discrimination learning. As a consequence, this result reflects the induction of pathology and cannot be used to inform the normal relationship between learning and motivation. In summary, it is likely that only the Medium (300 units) level of shock produced valid data regarding the rate of learning. If this is so, then the claimed differential results concerning learning performance, in relation to the weak and strong shocks, should be ignored.

Study 2: 18(135), 11(195), 11(255), 12(375), 8(420)This used 5 levels of stimulation. The lowest was 9.3% higher than the ‘weak’ of

study 1 and highest was 26.0% lower than the ‘strong’ of study 1. It seems apparent that this new range of stimulation is appropriate to test the author’s hypothesis. “Casual examination of these tables reveals the fact that in general the rapidity of learning in this set of experiments increased as the strength of the stimulus increased. The weakest stimulus (135 units) gave the slowest rate of learning; the strongest stimulus (420 units), the most rapid” (p.472). In other words, the relationship between the stimulus strength and learning was linear.

Study 3: 30(135), 16(195), 19(255), 26(375)These 4 levels of stimulation correspond to the lowest 4 levels in study 2. They used two mice only at each stimulus level.

The authors conclude: “When the boxes differ only slightly in brightness and discrimination is extremely difficult the rapidity of learning at first rapidly increases as the strength of the stimulus is increased from the threshold, but, beyond an intensity of stimulation which is soon reached, it begins to decrease … when discrimination was extremely difficult a stimulus of 195 units was more favorable than the weaker or the stronger stimuli” (p.481, point 4).

These results bear scrutiny as:The lowest stimulus (135): Of the 2 mice, one failed to meet their criterion for learning. The other mouse learned in 24 trials. An average makes no sense – this is an N=1 trial.

The highest stimulus (375): Of the two mice, one learned in 19 trials, the other in 26 trials. This is an ambiguous result. The result of one mouse (19 trials) is consistent with a linear model, the result of the other mouse (26 trials) is consistent with the proposed U-shaped function. Conclusion: The results of study 3 cannot be reliably interpreted.

Overall conclusionThe problems with study 1 and study 3 are so profound that their results cannot be used to either support or deny any form of systematic relationship between the strength of stimulus and rate of learning. Only study 2 provides a coherent set of results. The results of study 2 show a linear relationship between stimulus strength and rate of learning.

The authors’ statements that these studies show “an intermediate range of intensity of stimulation proved to be most favorable to the acquisition of …visual discrimination …” (p.471), and that “an easily acquired habit … may readily be formed under strong stimulation, whereas a difficult habit may be acquired readily only under relatively weak stimulation” (pp.481-482), can be dismissed as fanciful extensions of their data.

Note to self: It really is worth reading original papers.

References: see end of Bulletin

Further discussion of this paper, for circulation to members, is invited. Send to: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Substantive comments received by midnight on Monday 22nd July Oz time will be published in the following Bulletin. Such comments may offer a novel extension to the view that has been

put, an alternative and informed view, or offer a critique.

ACQol members are invited to send papers on the topic of life quality, for distribution and discussion by members under these same conditions.

VolunteeringPlease welcome our new volunteer who will be assisting with the development of the PWI manual.

Courtney McLeanExecutive Volunteer PWI Editor

mcleanc@deakin.edu.au

Courtney McLean is a recently graduated fourth year psychology student from Deakin University with a strong interest in clinical psychology, subjective well-being, and statistical

analysis. Since graduating, Courtney has worked as a Teaching Associate at Monash University, where she is responsible for planning, preparing and delivering tutorials to 2nd

year psychology students. Courtney hopes to commence additional postgraduate studies in the future. When she isn’t working, you’ll find Courtney walking her dogs and discovering

new restaurants.  

Website additions and changesTanja Capic <tanja.capic@deakin.edu.au>

WebMasterThe second-quarter 2019 Bulletin compilation has been archived at: http://www.acqol.com.au/publications#bulletinsACQOL Bulletin Vol: 3 Issues: 14-26 27-06-2019--------------------------A new resource has been listed within the 'Health-related sites' section under the 'Useful sites': http://www.acqol.com.au/instruments#usesful-sitesDrug Rehab Connections - Alcohol Self-Assessment Test

Drug Rehab Connections is an informational website that connects addicts and their families with the help they need to put their lives together. Our goal is to help individuals and loved ones by providing them with information and support on different addictions and recovery resources available to them.

Brief reportSourced from the Analysis & Policy Observatory

Productivity Commission. (2019). A Better Way to Support Veterans, Report no. 93. Canberra: Author https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2019/07/apo-nid246311-1371351.pdf.

Despite some recent improvements to the veterans’ compensation and rehabilitation system, it is not fit-for-purpose — it requires fundamental reform. It is out-of-date and is not working in the best interest of veterans and their families, or the Australian community.

In 2017-18, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) spent $13.2 billion supporting about 166 000 veterans and 117 000 dependants (about $47 000 per client). And

while the veteran support system is more generous overall than other workers’ compensation schemes, this does not mean it is an effective system.

The system fails to focus on the lifetime wellbeing of veterans. It is overly complex (legislatively and administratively), difficult to navigate, inequitable, and it is poorly administered (which places unwarranted stress on claimants). Some supports are not wellness-focused, some are not well targeted and others are archaic, dating back to the 1920s.

The institutional and policy split between Defence and DVA also embeds perverse incentives, inefficient administration and poor accountability, and results in policy and implementation gaps.

A future veteran support system needs to have a focus on the lifetime wellbeing of veterans.[Note: ACQol is in discussion with DVA, who have started to use the Personal Wellbeing Index in their consumer-satisfaction annual surveys]

Media newsTanika Roberts [trobe@deakin.edu.au]

Executive Volunteer, Bulletin Co-Editor– Media

Certain Antidepressants and Antipsychotic Drugs May Increase Your Risk of DementiaGABBY LANDSVERKhttps://www.sciencealert.com/certain-antidepressants-and-antipsychotic-drugs-may-increase-your-risk-of-dementia  

A new study of more than 283,000 elderly people in the UK has found that long-term use of anticholinergic drugs – including some medications for depression, epilepsy, and Parkinson's disease – is associated with a significant increased risk of dementia. The researchers found that patients who took even one strong anticholinergic drug at the minimum effective daily dose for three years had a 50 percent greater likelihood of being diagnosed with dementia, even when taking into account other factors like participants' age, gender, and whether or not they smoked or drank alcohol. The study's authors theorise that if a causal link could be proven with more research, up to 10 percent of dementia diagnoses could be attributable to anticholinergic exposure.

ReferencesAnderson, K. J., Revelle, W., & Lynch, M. J. (1989). Caffeine, impulsivity, and memory

scanning: A comparison of two explanations for the Yerkes-Dodson Effect. Motivation and Emotion, 13(1), 1-20.

Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459–482. doi:10.1002/cne.920180503

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/28: 110719Bulletin of the Australian Centre on Quality of Lifehttp://www.acqol.com.au/Editor: Robert A. Cummins [robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au]Back-issues of the Bulletin are available at http://www.acqol.com.au/projects#bulletins

Note 1: The ACQol site is under development and some content is missing.

Note 2: Please address any intended group correspondence to the editor only.

Paper for private studyThe attached paper, on the topic of life quality, is sent to you for your personal private study and discussion within ACQol. You are prohibited from further distributing this paper to any

other person.

Comments for discussion from last weekIn last week’s Bulletin (3/27) Cummins proposed a novel theoretical relationship between

stress and homeostasis. This proposal is copied into the attached document. Comments from members are shown below, together with Cummins’ replies.

Ivan Brown <ivan.brown@utoronto.ca> “I understand that set-points are primarily genetically determined. It is also possible to get overwhelmed and "stuck" either above or below the set-point when occurrences initially move mood higher or lower and when this challenge to the status quo is stronger than natural homeostatic controls to return it to the set-point. Sean's question was: can you keep your mood level permanently higher (move your set-point higher) by purposive action? A simple example might be to train yourself to see the glass half full rather than half empty. To your way of thinking, if this resulted in a more positive ongoing mood, would that be just a prolonged temporary state, or do humans have the ability to permanently move their set-points to some degree?”

Cummins responds:(1) Can you move your set-point higher? I suspect the answer is yes and no.

(a) In support of the ‘No’ case, the basic genetic setting cannot be changed. So, on a 0 to 100 point scale, someone with a setpoint of 80 points (which is average: Capic et al., 2018) has inherited a homeostatic system which will always be trying to return the output (Homeostatically Protected Mood: HPMood) to correspond with set-point. As circumstantial evidence, there is no reason for the capacity for set-point change within an individual to have evolved. Rather, genetic selection can change the population distribution of set-points, using natural selection, if that is required to optimise the level for average population adaptation.

(b) The capacity to change the resting-level of HPMood, can be effected by a process called Allostasis. Coined by Sterling and Eyer (1988), Allostasis is a general term, referring to changing the levels of operation within supporting systems. It describes a dynamic form of regulatory control that can be switched on or off to cope with demand (McEwen, 1998; McEwen & Wingfield, 2003). Whereas homeostasis refers to regulation designed to defend a single, constant value (setpoint), allostasis describes adaptation in variables such as blood pressure (or mood?), where the level of optimal functioning varies with demand. But there is also a cost (see 2a below).

Allostasis also emphasizes regulation in anticipation of change, such as anticipating stress (Sapolsky, 1994). Thus, allostatic regulation emphasizes feed-

forward regulatory systems and anticipatory actions that allow, for example, adaptive social behaviors (or mood?) in a constantly changing environment (Schulkin, 2011).

BACHGROUND: Before continuing, allow me to describe the crucial differences between mood, emotion, and subjective wellbeing (SWB). Mood refers to the genetically-determined set-point for its managed variable; Homeostatically Protected Mood. HPMood is a composite variable of three affects: Happy, Content, and Alert (see Cummins, 2017 – Attached). HPMood has an average population level of 80 points (on a 0-100 point scale) and does not change. Emotion comprises the affective states induced by the percepts of external events or internally generated thoughts. SWB is the sum of HPMood and emotion as represented, at any moment, in our single stream of consciousness. Emotions challenge homeostatic control by taking our experienced level of affect (HPMood + emotion) away from set-point.

To continue ------

(2) Can you keep your mood level permanently higher?There are two ways this could happen: One is allostasis, as described, the other occurs in people persistently operating below their set-point. To provide the rationale:

(a) If someone is operating at their set-point, then this is the most energy-neutral condition for homeostasis to manage the level of SWB. If allostasis requires a persistently increased level of SWB, there is both a short-term advantage, and there is a cost. The advantage is that they will be feel more strongly positive than their set-point. The disadvantage is the required increase in Allostatic Load (for a physiological description see Bienertová-Vašků, Zlámal, Nečesánek, Konečný, & Vasku, 2016). In physiological terms, these authors describe the ‘ware-and tear costs’ of such load. The psychological equivalent is uncertain but would certainly involve an additional energy expenditure.

(b) If someone is operating at a level of SWB that is below their set-point, then none of the above applies. The homeostatic machinery will be attempting a return to set-point against the affective challenge that is causing low SWB. Thus, almost any relevant intervention, which supplies some of the missing resources, will act in sympathy with homeostasis to lift the SWB level. An example of this is provided by (Tomyn et al., 2015).

(3) Can this be done by purposive action?There are two possibilities:

(a) If the person’s baseline level of SWB is at or above setpoint, no introduction of additional homeostatic resources, or other forms of intervention, will allow SWB to chronically increase. The attempt to increase SWB will be counteracted by homeostasis attempting to drag it back.

(b) If the person’s baseline level of SWB is below setpoint, the introduction of additional homeostatic resources, or other forms of intervention, will potentially allow SWB to chronically increase up to setpoint. Whether such an increase is a short-term or long-term increase, depends on the induced level of homeostatic support vs. the level of chronic stress (challenge).

Mark Stokes <mark.stokes@deakin.edu.au>“I largely agree with your analysis. However, I would point out that any stress raises cortisol, hence so will homeostatic activation. As cortisol rises, there are positive and negative processes. Among the negative are the accumulation of fatty deposits to the waistline, increased appetite and craving for high fat food (going to the aforementioned waistline), increased immune activation (which actually activate some of the recognised auto-immune conditions with prolonged exposure), increase in lipid accumulation to arteries, and elevated levels of many cancers. Thus, even with productive and positive homeostatic activation, we should expect to pay the piper somewhere.”

Cummins responds:I certainly agree that the essence of the stress response, and homeostasis activation, concerns the associated involvement of many other psychological and physiological indicators. This observation was central to Cannon’s insight "The regulating system which determines a homeostatic state may comprise a number of cooperating factors brought into action at the same time or successively" (Cannon, 1932, p.300). I also agree that such management, on a chronic basis, is a double-edged sword, which is one of the propositions of allostasis. That the maintenance of a managed variable above, or below its set-point, is adaptive in the short-term but causes damage to the managed systems in the long term. Finally, I also am taken with cortisol as a most interesting hormone for homeostasis scholars. In a systematic review of 64 papers, Chida and Steptoe (2009) found clear evidence of associations between the rise in cortisol after waking (cortisol awakening response) and measures of daily stress, but a less certain relationship with measures of positive subjective wellbeing. This latter result, had the authors known, is consistent with the homeostatic defence of subjective wellbeing.

Juanita Wood <juanita12@bigpond.com>“Stress can become productive and useful. It fires up the brain to concentrate on the matter at hand. It can be negative when it makes life seem too hard to manage. It can destroy health which takes years to recover from”.

Cummins responds:Indeed so, and this observation formed the basis of a very early systematic study regarding psychological consequences of activation/stress, some five generations ago. It was the era of ‘Law’ formation in the physical sciences, and two psychological researchers were not to be outdone. Their ‘Yerkes-Dodson Law’ (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908) states that psychological performance increases with increased arousal (stress), but only up to a point. As arousal continues to increase, performance decreases once again. Rather amazingly, they were correct and their ‘Law’ still finds a place in more recent research (e.g. Anderson et al., 1989).

Ron Robertson <woodland2@iinet.net.au>“Like Juanita I have just passed ninety years. I can relate to her concerns regarding loneliness associated stress. Fortunately I still am able to operate a few small rural businesses that are rewarding if successful but do not have dire consequences if they fail. They provide a reasonable degree of personal contact and so avoid isolation. In regard to good stress I often used the analogy of an elastic band that should be stretched to the limit just short of breaking. The concept was that your capacity grows so that you progressively push the limit. In my case it was mostly task related in the working

environment but I think students and athletes do much the same thing. It works superbly when achieving goals but problems can arise if the goals become abstract or are not available to you. You then become rudderless until you can align with another task. We probably see this situation sometimes with post career athletes.

Cummins responds:Ron provides sage advice for people of any age, but most especially as they experience the transition into an empty-nest or loss of paid employment. This means they are going to lose two of the three ‘golden-triangle’ homeostatic resources (Cummins, 2018c), thereby leaving themselves open to potential stress. The first loss is that of functional and automatic social contact. The second loss concerns the sense of achieving something useful each day. As people approach this empty-nest/retirement transition, they often underestimate the difficulty of replacing these resources. They feel confident that both losses will be easily compensated, and so they do not need to actively plan for the change. But they do. The establishment and maintenance of meaningful social contacts requires a determined mind-set, the expenditure of energy and time, all directed to the task. The sense of achievement must involve an activity considered to be important, and must also involve a level of difficulty or uncertainty that gives a sense of achievement when completed. While there can be no universal ‘Plan B’, since everyone has different potentials and opportunities, Ron’s solution does tick all the boxes.

References: See end of Bulletin.

Further discussion of this topic, for circulation to members, is invited. Send to: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Substantive comments received by midnight on Monday 15th July Oz time will be published in the following Bulletin. Such comments may offer a novel extension to the view that has been

put, an alternative and informed view, or offer a critique.

ACQol members are invited to send papers on the topic of life quality, for distribution and discussion by members under these same conditions.

Website additions and changesTanja Capic <tanja.capic@deakin.edu.au>

WebMaster

Australian Unity Wellbeing Index Reports 34.1 and 35.0 are now available fromhttp://www.acqol.com.au/publications#reportsEach report is accompanied by a data file and coding map.

Australian Unity Wellbeing Index: Summary Report 2002-2017 Report 34.1 July 2018 Sixteen years of Subjective Wellbeing The Australian Unity Wellbeing Research Team: Tanja Capic, Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, Robert A. Cummins, Sarah Khor, Ben Richardson, Craig Olsson, Delyse Hutchinson.

This report examines the relationship between the Subjective Wellbeing (SWB) of Australian adults and a range of key socio-demographic factors previously linked to wellbeing including: gender, age, household income and composition, marital status and work status. The report also examines trends in age and SWB over time. Data are drawn from the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index (AUWI); a survey that has assessed the wellbeing of Australian adults using repeated, nationally representative samples, collected over a 16-year period from 2002-2017. The overall sample comprised 60,128 participants.

Australian Unity Wellbeing Index: Financial Control Report 35.0 December 2018 The Australian Unity Wellbeing Research Team: Tanja Capic, Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, Robert A. Cummins, Sarah Khor, Ben Richardson, Chris Greenwood, Craig A. Olsson, Delyse Hutchinson.This report examines the relationship between the Subjective Wellbeing (SWB) of Australian adults and a range of key socio-demographic factors linked to wellbeing including: gender, age, household income and composition, marital status and work status. It also examines the relationship between SWB and measures of financial control. Data are drawn from Survey 35 and comprise 1,965 participants.

Brief reportSourced from the Analysis & Policy Observatory

Ferguson, Z., & Thurman, B. (2019). The Practice of Kindness: Learning from the Kindness Innovation Network and North Ayrshire.Dunfermline: Carnegie UK Trust.https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2019/06/apo-nid244236-1369326.pdf

In Scotland, kindness is recognised as a key element in tackling social isolation and loneliness (Scottish Government, 2018), is discussed widely in varied professional debates, and sits alongside values of dignity and compassion at the heart of the new National Performance Framework (Scottish Government, 2018). The acceptance of kindness in public policy … sits alongside a wider, developing narrative around the place of values. The response to New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, described as ‘a leader with love on full display’ (Nagesh, 2019), feels like a gut reaction to a growing politics of fear and division. We no longer feel the need to justify the importance of kindness at the outset of every discussion, it can be taken as given. However, we have found that while the notion of kindness is becoming accepted, there is still much to do to understand what needs to be done to make kindness more commonly part of people’s experiences in communities and in their relationships with organisations and institutions.

Media newsTanika Roberts [trobe@deakin.edu.au]

Executive Volunteer, Bulletin Co-Editor– Media

Study Finally Shows How Disruptive Period Pain Really Is, And We Need to Talk About ItMIKE ARMOUR, CHRISTINA CURRY & FREYA MACMILLAN

https://www.sciencealert.com/period-pain-is-probably-causing-days-of-lost-productivity-each-year

Menstrual symptoms may be linked to nearly nine days of lost productivity per woman every year. We recently reviewed the literature and found that globally, almost three-quarters (71%)

of adolescents and women under 25 reported having period pain. Period pain can be mild for some women, but more severe, and even debilitating, for others. In our research, one in five young women (20%) reported missing school or university due to period pain. Two in five (41%) said pain affected their concentration or performance in class. Many women think of period pain and other menstrual symptoms as "normal". They don't always recognise that their pain may be a health problem, and often believe it's just something they need to "put up with". Whether at school, university or in the workplace, menstrual symptoms cause absenteeism and presenteeism among a significant proportion of women. We need to break down barriers that prevent open discussion of periods, so women of all ages feel they can discuss any period-related problems with their boss, teachers, family or doctor.

-----------------------ReferencesAnderson, K. J., Revelle, W., & Lynch, M. J. (1989). Caffeine, impulsivity, and memory scanning: A comparison of two explanations for the Yerkes-Dodson Effect. Motivation and Emotion, 13(1), 1-20.

Bienertová-Vašků, J., Zlámal, F., Nečesánek, I., Konečný, D., & Vasku, A. (2016). Calculating Stress: From Entropy to a Thermodynamic Concept of Health and Disease. PloS one, 11(1), e0146667. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0146667

Cannon, W. B. (1932). The wisdom of the body. New York NY: Norton.

Capic, T., Li, N., & Cummins, R. A. (2018b). Confirmation of Subjective Wellbeing Set-points: Foundational for Subjective Social Indicators. Social Indicators Research, 137(1), 1-28. Retrieved from 10.1007/s11205-017-1585-5.

Chida, Y., & Steptoe, A. (2009). Cortisol awakening response and psychosocial factors: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Biological psychology, 80(3), 265-278.

Cummins, R. A. (2018). The Golden Triangle of Happiness: Essential resources for a happy family. International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies, 9(4), 12–39.

McEwen, B. S. (1998). Stress, adaptation, and disease: Allostasis and allostatic load. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 840(1), 33-44.

McEwen, B. S., & Wingfield, J. C. (2003). The concept of allostasis in biology and biomedicine. Hormones and behavior, 43(1), 2-15.

Sapolsky, R. M. (1994). Why zebras don't get ulcers: A guide to stress, stress-related diseases, and coping. New York: W. H. Freeman.

Schulkin, J. (2011). Social allostasis: anticipatory regulation of the internal milieu. Frontiers in evolutionary neuroscience, 2(Article 111), 1-15. doi:10.3389/fnevo.2010.00111

Sterling, P., & Eyer, J. (1988). Allostasis: A New Paradigm to Explain Arousal Pathology. Handbook of Life Stress. In S. Fisher & J. Reason (Eds.), Cognition and Health (pp. 629-649). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Tomyn, A. J., Weinberg, M. K., & Cummins, R. A. (2015). Intervention efficacy among ‘at risk’ adolescents: A test of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis Theory. Social Indicators Research, 120(3), 883-895. doi:10.1007/s11205-014-0619-5

Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459–482. doi:10.1002/cne.920180503

ACQol Bulletin Vol 3/27: 040719Bulletin of the Australian Centre on Quality of Life

http://www.acqol.com.au/Editor: Robert A. Cummins [robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au]Back-issues of the Bulletin are available at http://www.acqol.com.au/projects#bulletins

Note 1: The ACQol site is under development and some content is missing.Note 2: Please address any intended group correspondence to the editor only.

A discussion of stress and homeostasisRobert A. Cummins

BackgroundIn October 2018 we sent our first longitudinal survey (LONG-1) to over two thousand people by postal mail. All had previously responded to one of our annual ‘Australian Unity Wellbeing’ surveys some six years prior, and were now being asked to become involved again. To our surprise and delight 832 people responded. This data-file will form the core of our first longitudinal survey-set and we will be sending all of these people their second survey around October this year.

It has taken us ages to sort this first set of information into a secure and confidential file, but we achieved this about a month ago. So I sent a note of thanks to all the respondents; as those of you who are among the list of respondents will already know. The note described how one of the first uses of these data will be by Kimina Lyall klyall@deakin.edu.au. Kimina is in the second year of her Psychology Doctorate and will be investigating the relationship between people’s experienced level of stress and their felt level of challenge to mood homeostasis. Both of these constructs were measured by scales in the LONG-1 Survey.

Last week I was contacted by Ron Robertson <woodland2@iinet.net.au> who is one of the LONG-1 respondents. Ron commented:

“Stress is an interesting issue. There seems to be good stress and bad stress. I have always worked on the concept that I push the good objective related stress to close to the limit. Bad stress seems to be that imposed where you have no control. Perhaps when that happens the best remedy is to focus on pushing the productive stress”.

Another comment came from Juanita Wood <juanita12@bigpond.com>, who informs us that she will be ‘90 yrs old at Christmas’. Juanita opines that, especially among people who are elderly, a major cause of low wellbeing is the stress of loneliness.

Both of these comments are right on the button, and provide a good insight how aspects of stress are commonly conceived. I can add some complementary understanding, as provided below, from discussions between myself and Kimina Lyall. Some of this is speculative, so further discussion is invited.

-------------------------------------A contemporary understanding of stress: Seven major pointers1. To start on the right foot, the term ‘stress’ in clinical psychology is a misnomer. It wrongly denotes a form of psychopathology. The tortured concept of ‘good stress’ and ‘bad stress’ Selye (1976) just adds confusion. To facilitate an understanding of what the term ‘stress’ really implies, the term can be subsumed within a generic model that describes the

functioning of ‘Homeostatic Units’. These units are ubiquitous within all living organisms, such that each unit is responsible for managing the level of a single key variable. It is proposed that an excessive level of activity within such units may indicate stressed homeostatic functioning, leading to pathological levels of the managed variable.

2. The existence of homeostatic units was originally described for physiological homeostasis by (Cannon, 1932) and for psychological homeostasis by (Cummins, 1995, 2017). Both authors describe the defence of a genetically determined setpoint, which defines the optimal resting level of a variable which is being managed either physiologically (e.g. Core body temperature) or psychologically (Homeostatically Protected Mood: HPMood). The set-point represents the optimal level of the variable for homeostatic functioning under resting conditions.

3. For all such managed variables, challenges to the set-point level occur on a continuous basis. For example, people gain body heat, or short-term emotional reactions add positive affect. These additions take the level of the managed variable away from its setpoint. While such altered levels are likely to be adaptive in the short-term, in the longer-term their influence needs to be dissipated, in order that the managed variable (temperature and HPMood, respectively) can return to its set-point. In response to these challenges, the associated homeostatic system for each variable undergoes ‘Homeostatic Activation’ as it acts to bring the level of its managed variable back to setpoint. This process results in a dynamic interaction between each variable and its environment, such that its measured level oscillates around its set-point. The normal range of these oscillations describes the variable’s setpoint-range. For core body temperature this normal range of fluctuations is 36.5–37.5 °C. For HPMood it is about 65–95 points on a 0–100 percentage points scale (Capic et al., 2018).

4. When the level of each variable moves outside its setpoint range for brief periods, this is both normal and adaptive. Such a changed level may be due, for example, to heavy physical exertion (creating heat) or a sad event (creating low positive mood). These states are adaptive in allowing a period of maximum muscular activity, or a period of introspection regarding the cause of the event. The key to normality, then, lies in the process of recovery. The strength of this recovery process is called ‘resilience’ (for a review see Cummins & Wooden, 2014).

5. A critical feature of adaptive excursions beyond setpoint range, is that homeostatic resilience is strong enough to ensure that the period of the excursion is brief. When the excursion is protracted it indicates a dominance of the challenging agent over resilience, and signals pathology. For example, a protracted period of core body temperature above 38.0 °C become life-threatening, while a protracted period of HPMood below 60 points may indicate depression. Thus, the transition from adaptive change to pathology is defined by both the extent of the change and its duration. However, it is also situation specific. While a period of low HPMood is adaptive following a negative event, if it occurs spontaneously it is pathological.

6. The level of challenge required to cause the failure of HPMood homeostasis, is hard to predict. Apart from individual differences in the level of set-points and differing perceptions of what constitutes a negative experience, there are also differences in resilience capacity. That is, the availability of resources to support homeostatic recovery. There are two major categories of resilience resources, external and internal. The three major supportive external resources are the ‘Golden Triangle’ domains of money (surprise!), an emotionally supportive

intimate relationship (as noted by Juanita), and a sense of achieving something important in life. The internal resources include having a sense of personal control (as noted by Ron).

7. From the above, when ‘stress’ is reconceptualised within the context of ‘Homeostatic Activation’, it can be seen that such activation exists on a continuum, from low to high within any homeostatic unit. The presence of an increasing challenge to homeostatic control, and the defensive rise in Homeostatic Activation, can be observed as heightened oscillations of HPMood around its set-point (Anglim et al., 2015). Psychological distress occurs when the unit concerning Homeostatically Protected Mood is subjected to negative experience which is strong and persistent enough to overwhelm the homeostatic capacity of this homeostatic unit. Such a level of challenge inhibits the return of experienced mood to its normally positive setpoint. As a consequence, the negative experiences of distress, anxiety and depression enter consciousness.

References: see end of Bulletin

Further discussion of this opinion article, for circulation to members, is invited. Send to: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Substantive comments received by midnight on Monday 8th July Oz time will be published in the following Bulletin. Such comments may offer a novel extension to the view that has been

put, an alternative and informed view, or offer a critique.

ACQol members are invited to send papers on the topic of life quality, for distribution and discussion by members under these same conditions.

Brief reportSourced from the Analysis & Policy Observatory

UNHCR. (2019). Global trends: Forced displacement in 2018. Geneva: Author h t t p s : / / a p o . o r g . a u / s i t e s / d e f a u l t / f i l e s / r e s o u r c e - f i l e s / 2 0 1 9 / 0 6 / a p o -n i d 2 4 2 9 5 6 - 1 3 6 7 6 1 1 . p d f.

Over the past decade, the global population of forcibly displaced people grew substantially from 43.3 million in 2009 to 70.8 million in 2018, reaching a record high. Most of this increase was between 2012 and 2015, driven mainly by the Syrian conflict. But conflicts in other areas also contributed to this rise, including in the Middle East such as in Iraq and Yemen, parts of sub-Saharan Africa such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Sudan, as well as the massive flow of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh at the end of 2017. Overall, the refugee population under UNHCR’s mandate has nearly doubled since 2012.

Media newsTanika Roberts [trobe@deakin.edu.au]

Executive Volunteer, Bulletin Co-Editor– Media

Science Says Silence Is Much More Important to Our Brains Than We ThinkREBECCA BERIS | 6 June 2019

https://www.lifehack.org/377243/science-says-silence-much-more-important-our-brains-thanthought?fbclid=IwAR2Xru9ya8TK_AyJmy3G2_70Ef0JQVUMYwXPWsZjRRDrn0sLamL2qOGtqvM

As the world around becomes increasingly loud and cluttered you may find yourself seeking out the reprieve that silent places and silence have to offer. Studies are showing that silence is much more important to your brains than you might think. The effect that noise pollution can have on cognitive task performance has been extensively studied. It has been found that noise harms task performance at work and school. It can also be the cause of decreased motivation and an increase in error making.  The cognitive functions most strongly affected by noise are reading attention, memory and problem solving. This article discusses some of the incredible findings of the impact of silence on the structure and function of our brains.

Report from Google Analytics for the ACQol siteInclusive period: June 2019

Number of users = 719

Membership changesSimone Thomas simonet@deakin.edu.au

Membership RegistrarWelcome to new members

Mrs Calista CastlesMasters Candidate, University of Southern QueenslandKeywords: Developmental Disabilities, Delay Discounting, Safety Climate and Safety Culture

Dr Aurelie CharlesLecturer, University of Bath, UKKeywords: group behaviour, social norms, cognitive biases, identity, ecological self

Dr. Weiyun ChenAssociate Professor, University of Michigan, University of Michigan, USAKeywords: Physical activity, Psychological Well-being, Executive Function, Physical Fitness, Motor Skills

Dr. Nate DeichertAssociate Professor of Psychology, Black Hills State University, South Dakota USAKeywords: social support, stress, gratitude

Mr Johannes HeekerensPhD Candidate, Freie Universität BerlinKeywords: positive psychological interventions, psychotherapy, well-being, meta-analysis, structural equation modeling

Associate Professor Eddie TongAssociate Professor, National University of Singapore

Keywords: positive emotions, religion

.

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