Tech Writing Invades

One fundamental element of positive psychology is the idea of the subjective well-being. This is the question that asks, all things considered, how good is your life right now? This is different from happiness as an affect (emotion) which lasts very temporarily. This is also interesting because something that could make you happy might not be the best choice for your overall subjective well being. I have found this to be true whenever I make spur of the moment decisions that come to bite me in the butt later on down the road. We all have our share of tales to tell regarding decision making based on happiness rather than subjective well-being, but the principle at the end of the story is often the same. 

As indicated above, different wordings of similar states can evoke very different responses. If someone is very sick one day and you ask them how happy they are, a miserable result would likely follow the question. However, if on that same day you asked them how good their life is overall, they would likely look past the temporary sickness and answer accordingly. Veenhoven argues that there are four distinct categories of happiness that should be considered in order to have a complete view. These include; livability of environment, life-ability of the individual, external utility of life and inner appreciation of life. 

While the psychology of this article is interesting, I think for the purposes of this class it is more appropriate to discuss the issue this article is getting at- word choice. This document is about technical writing and knowing your audience. You must know what to ask in order to know how to get the response you are looking for (contextually, not subjectively). This article reminds me of the methods classes I have taken and created my own experiments in which we refined the questionnaire time and time again to make sure that the questions were unbiased and evoking the proper response. Even within the discipline of psychology, technical writing is playing a huge role.  

Veenhoven, R. (1999). The Four Qualities of Life Ordering Concepts and Measures of the Good Life. Journal of Happiness Studies, 1, 1-39.