Happiness and positive emotions.

This study aims at contributing to the analysis of happiness, one of the most important issues in the emergent positive psychology. Referring to the terminological distinctions proposed by ancient Greek, the authors present a theoretical model in which happiness is considered as a superordinate category under which other concepts related to positive states (pleasure, well-being, positive emotions and positive mood) take place. Following this model, happiness consists in the progressive realization of an individual existential project which takes into account, in various ways, the biological constraints, the available psychological and material resources, and the social context where the person lives. Happiness cannot be studied directly at an empirical level because of its high complexity and its extended temporal dimension. To overcome this problem, the authors suggest that the researchers focus their attention on positive emotions, considering them as reliable indicators which signal the well-being and the level of realization of the happiness project elaborated by each person. Results concerning two research domains are presented: a) the lexicon of positive emotions, b) the positive emotions in everyday life. Results concerning the first field indicate the presence of a very low percentage of positive emotion terms in both Anglo-Saxon and neo-Latin languages. Results concerning the second field show that the proportion of positive emotional states experienced in everyday life changes with age and cultural context, but does not reach the 50% of total emotional experience in either case. The authors conclude by discussing the biases that characterize the empirical studies presented and suggesting some strategies to overcome them.