Hedonia and Eudaimonia are Different Dimensions of Wellbeing and Life Satisfaction Does Not Capture Them Both

The combination of high life satisfaction and frequent experiences of pleasant feelings issometimes called hedonic wellbeing (HWB). We argue that a good life comprises more thanhedonia and that a taxonomy of wellbeing should also include a eudaimonic dimension(EWB). The paper challenges a fundamental premise in research on wellbeing, which statesthat self-reported life satisfaction provides an unbiased, broad, and reflected evaluation of anindividual’s life “as-a-whole.” Countering this assumption, two studies showed that HWBindicators differ from indicators of EWB, indicating that HWB does not measure EWB. Usingsurvey experiments, the paper further demonstrated that, upon reflection, participantstypically regard eudaimonic values as more important than hedonic values, proposing thatliving eudaimonically is important in people’s lives. A third finding showed that gapsbetween ideal and actual hedonic values predicted life satisfaction, whereas eudaimonicvalues gaps did not. This suggests that life satisfaction is not an unbiased evaluation of all theimportant values in a person’s life. Thus, measures of life satisfaction appear invalid (notmeasuring what they intend to measure). To get more relevant data on how well peopleconsider their lives to be, both hedonic and eudaimonic dimensions should be taken intoaccount.