ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters have examined particular features in a person’s life space that can create happiness or unhappiness. Those environmental characteristics have been placed in 12 principal categories, with subcategories as illustrated in Table 8.1 (p. 239), and their links with subjective well-being (and to a lesser extent self-validation) have been explored. Although causal influences have been demonstrated, observed associations are usually of only moderate size, and environmental accounts leave unexplained a great deal of betweenperson variation. In seeking to understand why some people are happier than others, we clearly need to go beyond a framework that is based only on inputs from the environment.
