Life satisfaction
A reflective, overall judgment of how well your life is going.
What it means
Life satisfaction is the cognitive, evaluative component of subjective well-being: a person's global, reflective appraisal of their life as a whole against their own standards of what a good life is. Unlike momentary affect, it is a considered judgment, typically captured by scales such as the Satisfaction With Life Scale. Because it is constructed at the moment of judgment, it is vulnerable to the focusing illusion, current mood, and question framing — asking about one salient domain (like income or a recent event) can disproportionately color the global rating. Life satisfaction is fairly stable, predicts health and longevity, and tends to follow a U-shape across the adult lifespan in many countries. It matters because it is the headline metric in well-being research and national accounts, yet its construction makes it easy to nudge or distort.
Examples
Asked about dating just before rating their life, single students give lower overall life-satisfaction scores — the salient domain colors the global judgment.
People rate their lives better on sunny days than rainy ones — unless the interviewer mentions the weather first, which lets them discount the mood and answer the actual question.
Governments now track life satisfaction alongside GDP, because a rise in national income that leaves people no more satisfied with their lives is worth knowing about.
First described in Diener, Emmons, Larsen & Griffin (1985).