Glossary of Happiness Science & Positive Psychology Terms

✅ Today's Friday • 📖 19 mins read

Happiness can mean enjoying a moment, feeling satisfied with your life, or believing that what you do matters. These experiences overlap, but researchers do not treat them as the same thing.

Positive psychology studies the strengths, experiences, relationships, and conditions that help people live well. It also examines how well-being can coexist with grief, stress, illness, and other difficulties.

“Happiness science” is an informal name for research into happiness and well-being across psychology, economics, neuroscience, and related fields.

• Feeling good is one part of well-being. Meaning, supportive relationships, and the ability to function well also matter.
• Happiness depends on people and circumstances. Habits and interpretations play a role, alongside health, income, safety, opportunity, and social conditions.
• Positive psychology makes room for difficult emotions. Sadness, anger, and anxiety can convey useful information. Constant positivity is neither a realistic goal nor a requirement for a good life.

This alphabetical glossary explains commonly used and scientific terms in happiness research and positive psychology. Terminology note: Researchers define and measure well-being in different ways. This glossary distinguishes established research concepts from popular expressions where the difference matters.

Glossary of Terms: Happiness Science & Positive Psychology

A

• Accomplishment. Progress toward goals and the experience of achievement or mastery. It is one of the five elements in the PERMA model of well-being. Accomplishment can involve learning a skill, completing a meaningful project, or meeting a personal challenge.
• Active-Constructive Responding. Responding to someone’s good news with genuine enthusiasm, interest, and questions. If a friend shares an achievement, inviting them to describe it can help them enjoy the experience and feel supported.
• Adaptation. Adjustment to changed circumstances over time. In happiness research, this often refers to emotional responses becoming less intense after positive or negative events. See Hedonic Adaptation.
• Affect. The broad experience of feeling, including emotions and moods. Researchers often distinguish positive affect, such as enthusiasm, from negative affect, such as distress.
• Affective Forecasting. Predicting how you will feel about a future event. People sometimes overestimate how intensely or how long an outcome will affect them. See Impact Bias.
• Altruism. Motivation to benefit another person for their sake. Altruistic behavior can contribute to well-being, although helping may also involve sacrifice, stress, or conflicting responsibilities.
• Anhedonia. Reduced interest in or pleasure from activities that would ordinarily be rewarding. Persistent anhedonia can be a symptom of depression or other health conditions and deserves attention beyond generic happiness advice.
• Authenticity. Experiencing and expressing yourself in ways that align with your values and considered beliefs. Authenticity allows room for tact, privacy, learning, and changes in identity.
• Autonomy. The experience of acting with willingness and personal endorsement. In self-determination theory, autonomy is a basic psychological need. You can act autonomously while accepting help or honoring responsibilities.
• Awe. An emotion arising when you encounter something vast or extraordinary that challenges your existing understanding. Nature, music, scientific ideas, and acts of moral courage can evoke awe. Some experiences of awe also involve fear.

B

• Basic Psychological Needs. In self-determination theory, the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Their satisfaction supports motivation and well-being; persistent frustration of these needs can undermine both.
• Belonging. Feeling accepted, included, and meaningfully connected to others. Belonging depends on the quality of relationships and social environments, rather than simply having people nearby.
• Benefit Finding. Recognizing something valuable that has emerged from adversity, such as changed priorities or stronger relationships. People should never be pressured to identify benefits in suffering.
• Best Possible Self. A reflective exercise in which you imagine a future where things have gone well through realistic effort and favorable circumstances. Writing about that future can clarify goals and support optimism.
• Broaden-and-Build Theory. Barbara Fredrickson’s theory that certain positive emotions temporarily broaden attention and possible actions, helping people build lasting psychological, social, and other resources.
• Burnout. An occupational phenomenon associated with chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It involves exhaustion, increased distance or cynicism toward work, and reduced professional efficacy. Individual coping cannot resolve every organizational cause.

C

• Capitalization. Sharing positive events with others and potentially gaining additional enjoyment or connection from the exchange. The listener’s response matters. See Active-Constructive Responding.
• Character Strengths. Positively valued capacities expressed in thoughts, feelings, and behavior, such as curiosity, kindness, perseverance, and fairness. The VIA framework organizes 24 strengths under six broad virtue categories.
• Cognitive Reappraisal. Changing how you interpret a situation to alter its emotional impact. Viewing a setback as specific and potentially manageable can produce a different response from treating it as proof of permanent failure.
• Compassion. Concern for suffering accompanied by a motivation to help. Compassion can be directed toward others or yourself and does not require agreeing with harmful behavior.
• Competence. Feeling capable of acting effectively and developing mastery. In self-determination theory, competence is a basic psychological need. Appropriate challenges and useful feedback can support it.
• Contentment. A feeling of satisfaction or sufficiency with the present situation. Contentment can coexist with ambition and an interest in improving your circumstances.
• Coping. Thoughts and actions used to manage stressful demands. Coping strategies may address the problem, regulate emotions, seek support, or help someone tolerate circumstances they cannot immediately change.

D

• Daily Diary Method. A research approach in which participants report experiences, feelings, or behavior repeatedly across days. It helps researchers examine how everyday events relate to well-being within the same person.
• Dampening. Thoughts or behaviors that reduce a positive emotional experience, such as dismissing good news or immediately anticipating failure. It differs from reasonably recognizing an achievement’s limits.
• Diener’s Tripartite Model of Subjective Well-Being. A framework describing subjective well-being through life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. These components are related but distinct.

E

• Elevation (Moral Elevation). The uplifting feeling that can arise when witnessing exceptional kindness, generosity, or moral courage. It may motivate people to act more helpfully themselves.
• Emotion Regulation. Processes that influence which emotions you experience, when they arise, and how they are expressed. Effective regulation depends on the situation; no single strategy works best everywhere.
• Emotional Granularity. The ability to distinguish emotional experiences precisely, such as telling disappointment from shame, frustration, or loneliness. Clearer emotional distinctions can help identify a fitting response.
• Emotional Well-Being. The quality of a person’s emotional experience, commonly assessed through positive and negative feelings. Definitions vary, so researchers specify the emotions and time period being measured.
• Empathy. Understanding another person’s perspective or sharing aspects of their emotional experience. Empathy differs from compassion, which includes concern and a motivation to help.
• Engagement. Deep involvement in an activity, often involving attention, interest, and the use of skills. It is an element of PERMA. Flow is one particularly absorbing form of engagement.
• Eudaimonic Well-Being. Well-being understood through meaning, personal development, and functioning well. Researchers use several frameworks to study it, rather than one universally accepted definition.
• Experience Sampling Method (ESM). Collecting reports of feelings and experiences repeatedly during daily life, often through phone prompts. It reduces reliance on broad recollections of how life usually feels.
• Extrinsic Motivation. Doing something for an outcome separate from the activity itself, such as pay, recognition, or a valued future benefit. Extrinsic motivation varies in how freely and personally it is endorsed.

F

• Flow. A state of deep absorption in an activity, often involving clear goals, useful feedback, and a good match between challenge and skill. Self-consciousness may decrease, and the passage of time may feel altered.
• Flourishing. Living well across multiple dimensions, which may include positive feelings, meaning, relationships, competence, and social functioning. Its precise definition depends on the framework used.
• Flourishing Scale. An eight-item self-report measure developed by Ed Diener and colleagues to assess perceived success in areas such as relationships, purpose, competence, and self-respect.
• Forgiveness. A process of reducing resentment or retaliatory motivation toward someone who caused harm. Forgiveness does not require reconciliation, excusing the behavior, abandoning boundaries, or giving up justice.
• Fredrickson’s Broaden-and-Build Theory. See Broaden-and-Build Theory.

G

• Goal Concordance (Self-Concordance). The degree to which a goal fits your interests and personally endorsed values. Self-concordant goals are pursued with a sense of ownership rather than mainly through pressure or guilt.
• Gratitude. Appreciation for something valuable received or experienced, often involving recognition of another person’s contribution. Gratitude can coexist with dissatisfaction and efforts to address unfairness.
• Gratitude Journal. A practice of recording things you appreciate and, ideally, why they matter. Its usefulness varies by person and context; repeating a list mechanically may offer little benefit.
• Gratitude Letter. A written expression of appreciation to someone who has positively affected your life. Delivering it is optional and should depend on the relationship and circumstances.
• Grit. Perseverance and sustained interest in long-term goals. Grit overlaps with other traits, including conscientiousness, and should not be treated as a universal explanation for achievement.
• Growth Mindset. The belief that an ability can develop through learning, effective strategies, and support. Effects of growth-mindset interventions vary, and effort alone cannot remove every barrier.

H

• Happiness. An everyday term that can refer to pleasant feelings, life satisfaction, or a broader sense of living well. Scientific claims about happiness are clearer when they specify which meaning is being measured.
• Happiness Formula (H = S + C + V). A model popularized by Martin Seligman describing enduring happiness in terms of a set range (S), life circumstances (C), and factors under voluntary control (V). It offers a way to discuss influences on happiness, rather than calculate it. The related popular claim that happiness is “50% genetics, 10% circumstances, and 40% intentional activity” should not be treated as a precise breakdown for an individual or a guarantee of how much happiness someone can change.
• Hedonic Adaptation. The tendency for emotional reactions to changed circumstances to weaken over time. Adaptation varies substantially: people do not necessarily return fully to their previous well-being after every event.
• Hedonic Treadmill. A metaphor describing how repeated gains can become familiar, prompting the pursuit of further gains without lasting increases in happiness. It should not be interpreted as evidence that circumstances never matter.
• Hedonic Well-Being. An approach to well-being emphasizing pleasant experiences, relatively low unpleasant affect, and satisfaction. It is commonly contrasted with eudaimonic approaches emphasizing meaning and functioning.
• Hope. In C. R. Snyder’s theory, hope combines agency, the motivation to pursue goals, with pathways, the ability to identify routes toward them. Hope includes planning and flexibility.
• Human Strengths. Capacities that help people function effectively or contribute positively, including character strengths, talents, and learned skills. These categories overlap but are not interchangeable.

I

• Impact Bias. Overestimating the intensity or duration of future emotional reactions. For example, someone may expect a disappointment to dominate their life longer than it actually does.
• Intrinsic Motivation. Doing an activity because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable. Reading out of curiosity or playing music for enjoyment are examples.

J

• Job Crafting. Changes employees make to aspects of their tasks, relationships, or understanding of their work. Opportunities depend on workplace conditions, and job crafting cannot substitute for fair treatment or safe workloads.
• Joy. A positive emotion often associated with good news, connection, play, or success. Joy is an experience within a life; it does not by itself indicate overall life satisfaction.

K

• Kindness. Considerate or helpful behavior toward others. Acts of kindness can support connection and well-being, particularly when they are freely chosen and appropriate to the situation.

L

• Languishing. A state of low positive mental health, often involving limited vitality, fulfillment, or engagement. It is not itself a psychiatric diagnosis and should not be used to dismiss persistent symptoms that warrant assessment.
• Life Evaluation. A person’s overall assessment of their life, often measured through a satisfaction question or a ladder scale. It differs from reporting emotions experienced during a particular day.
• Life Satisfaction. A reflective judgment about how well your life meets your own standards. It is a central component of subjective well-being.
• Loneliness. The distress associated with a perceived gap between desired and actual social connection. Someone can feel lonely in a crowd or feel well connected while spending considerable time alone.
• Loving-Kindness Meditation. A contemplative practice involving wishes of goodwill toward yourself and others. Responses vary, and some people may find particular forms of the practice uncomfortable or difficult.

M

• Meaning in Life. The experience that life makes sense, has direction, and matters. Researchers often distinguish coherence, purpose, and significance as aspects of meaning.
• Mindfulness. Awareness of present experience with an open, receptive orientation. It can involve noticing thoughts and feelings without immediately reacting to them. Mindfulness does not require an empty mind.
• Mixed Emotions. Experiencing positive and negative emotions together, such as pride and sadness when leaving a valued role. Mixed feelings can be an understandable response to complex events.
• Motivation. The processes that direct and sustain behavior. Positive psychology examines the quality of motivation, including whether action is driven by interest, personal values, rewards, or pressure.

N

• Negative Affect. Unpleasant feelings such as fear, distress, anger, or sadness. “Negative” describes emotional tone; it does not mean these feelings are always harmful or inappropriate.
• Negativity Bias. The tendency, in many contexts, for negative information to command more attention or influence judgments more strongly than comparable positive information. Its size and expression depend on the task and circumstances.

O

• Optimism. A general expectation that favorable outcomes are possible or likely. Dispositional optimism concerns broad expectations; optimistic explanatory style concerns how people explain events.
• Other-Oriented Well-Being. A broad expression for aspects of living well connected with care, contribution, and relationships. It is not a single standardized construct or universally agreed measure.

P

• PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule). A widely used set of scales assessing positive and negative affect. Different instructions can ask about feelings at the moment, during a recent period, or more generally.
• Peak-End Rule. A tendency for remembered evaluations of an experience to be influenced disproportionately by its most intense point and its ending. It is context-dependent and does not explain every memory.
• PERMA Model. Martin Seligman’s framework identifying five elements of well-being: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. PERMA is one influential model among several.
• Personal Growth. Continued development of capacities, self-understanding, and openness to experience. It is a dimension of Carol Ryff’s model of psychological well-being.
• Positive Affect. Pleasant feelings such as enthusiasm, interest, joy, or calm, depending on the measure used. Positive affect and negative affect are distinguishable dimensions, allowing both to occur within the same period.
• Positive Education. Educational approaches that integrate academic learning with attention to well-being, strengths, and social-emotional development. Program quality, accessibility, and evidence vary.
• Positive Emotion. An emotion with a generally pleasant quality, such as joy, gratitude, interest, or contentment. Different positive emotions can have different functions and effects.
• Positive Psychology. The scientific study of experiences, characteristics, relationships, and institutions that support well-being and functioning. It complements the study and treatment of distress.
• Positive Psychology Intervention (PPI). An activity intended to improve well-being by developing positive feelings, thoughts, or behavior. Examples include gratitude exercises and strengths use. Benefits vary, and these activities are not substitutes for necessary clinical care.
• Positive Relationships. Relationships characterized by qualities such as trust, care, responsiveness, and mutual support. Their quality matters more than simply accumulating contacts.
• Positive Thinking. A broad popular expression for attending to favorable possibilities or interpretations. It is not synonymous with positive psychology, and unrealistic positivity can interfere with sound decisions.
• Positivity Ratio. A comparison of positive and negative emotional experiences. The claim that flourishing requires a universal ratio of approximately 3 to 1 is not scientifically established; there is no validated magic threshold.
• Post-Traumatic Growth. Positive psychological changes people report in the aftermath of struggling with traumatic circumstances. Reported growth can coexist with distress, and perceived growth does not always establish measurable change. Growth is never an obligation.
• Prosocial Behavior. Actions intended to benefit others, including helping, sharing, and cooperating. Such behavior may arise from altruistic, reciprocal, or mixed motives.
• Psychological Capital (PsyCap). A positive psychological resource comprising hope, self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism, often remembered as HERO. Studied primarily in organizational psychology, PsyCap is considered developable and is associated with employee well-being and performance. It complements supportive working conditions; it cannot compensate for unsafe workloads or unfair treatment.
• Psychological Flexibility. The capacity to remain open to experience and adjust behavior in ways that serve valued goals. It includes tolerating uncomfortable emotions when doing so supports meaningful action.
• Psychological Richness. A proposed dimension of a good life characterized by varied, interesting, and perspective-changing experiences. A psychologically rich experience may be challenging or emotionally mixed.
• Psychological Well-Being. Positive functioning beyond momentary feelings. In Ryff’s model, its six dimensions are autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations, purpose in life, and self-acceptance.
• Purpose in Life. A sense of direction organized around meaningful aims. Purpose can develop through relationships, caregiving, work, creativity, service, or other personally important commitments.

R

• Relatedness. Feeling connected to, cared for by, and significant to others. It is a basic psychological need in self-determination theory.
• Resilience. The process or capacity of adapting relatively well amid adversity. Resilience depends on personal and environmental resources and can vary across situations and time.
• Rumination. Repetitive thinking that circles around distress, its causes, or its consequences without moving toward useful resolution. It differs from reflection that produces understanding or a workable next step.

S

• Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). A five-item questionnaire developed by Diener and colleagues to assess global life satisfaction. It measures a reflective evaluation rather than a clinical diagnosis or complete picture of well-being.
• Savoring. Attending to, appreciating, and sometimes extending positive experiences. You can savor an anticipated event, a present moment, or a valued memory.
• Self-Acceptance. Acknowledging yourself with a balanced recognition of strengths, limitations, and past experiences. It leaves room for responsibility and change.
• Self-Compassion. Responding to personal suffering or failure with kindness, recognition of shared human imperfection, and balanced awareness. In Kristin Neff’s framework, these elements are self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
• Self-Determination Theory (SDT). A theory of motivation and well-being developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. It emphasizes autonomy, competence, and relatedness, alongside differences in how motivation is regulated.
• Self-Efficacy. Belief in your ability to carry out actions required for a particular task or challenge. It is usually domain-specific: someone may feel highly capable at work and uncertain in social situations.
• Self-Esteem. An overall evaluation of personal worth. It differs from self-efficacy, which concerns capability, and self-compassion, which concerns how you respond to suffering or shortcomings.
• Set-Point Theory. The idea that people tend to return toward a characteristic level of well-being after changes. Evidence supports some stability while also showing that well-being can change meaningfully and persistently.
• Signature Strengths. Character strengths experienced as especially central, natural, or energizing to a person. A questionnaire’s highest-ranked strengths can guide reflection, but should not be treated as fixed identity labels.
• Social Comparison. Evaluating yourself in relation to others. Its emotional effects depend on whom you compare yourself with, the dimension involved, and how you interpret the difference.
• Social Support. Emotional, practical, or informational assistance available from other people. Perceived availability of support and support actually received are related but distinct research concepts.
• Strengths Use. Applying personal strengths in appropriate ways. Effective strengths use requires judgment: perseverance can become costly when a goal should be revised or abandoned.
• Subjective Well-Being (SWB). People’s evaluations and emotional experiences of their own lives. It commonly includes life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect.

T

• Three Good Things. A positive psychology exercise involving recording three things that went well and reflecting on why they happened. The aim is to notice specific positive experiences without denying difficulties.
• Thriving. Developing or functioning well, sometimes while facing challenge. Definitions vary across research areas; workplace research, for example, often describes thriving through vitality and learning.
• Toxic Positivity. A popular, non-diagnostic term for insisting on positivity in ways that dismiss or invalidate distress. Telling someone to “just be grateful” when they disclose suffering can shut down needed support.
• Transcendence. In the VIA classification, a virtue category encompassing strengths that connect people with something beyond themselves and help provide meaning: appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, and spirituality. These connections can involve nature, humanity, or a larger purpose, without requiring religious belief.

V

• VIA Classification. The Values in Action framework of 24 character strengths organized under wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. It offers a vocabulary for strengths rather than a complete measure of someone’s moral worth.
• Values. Enduring priorities or guiding principles about what matters in life. Values help direct choices; goals are more specific outcomes pursued in their service.
• Vitality. The subjective experience of feeling alive and energetic. It can be influenced by physical health, rest, motivation, relationships, and daily demands.

W

• Well-Being. A broad term covering how well a person feels and functions. Different frameworks include emotional experience, life evaluation, meaning, relationships, physical conditions, and social circumstances.
• WHO-5 Well-Being Index. A five-item questionnaire assessing positive mental well-being over the previous two weeks. It can be used in screening and monitoring, but a score alone does not establish a diagnosis.
• Work Engagement. A positive work-related state commonly characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. Engagement is influenced by job resources and demands, as well as individual factors.

Final Words

Happiness science offers a vocabulary for understanding different parts of a good life. Pleasure, purpose, belonging, and personal growth each describe something valuable, but they do not always rise and fall together.

Use these terms to understand your experiences more clearly. You might need rest, closer relationships, meaningful activity, practical support, or professional care—not another demand to feel happy.

A useful starting question is: Which part of my well-being needs attention, and what realistic step could support it?

√ Also Read: 10 Greatest Happiness Hacks From Positive Psychology

√ Please share this with someone who wants to understand happiness and well-being.

» You deserve happiness! Choosing therapy could be your best decision.

...