Implicit Well-being And Its Relationship With Explicit Well-being

These years, well-being has become an important topic of all the society, and it’s also the main research focus of positive psychology. Many researches about well-being have been carried out by psychologists, most of which just used questionnaire survey method. As we know, this method also has several limitations, for example, response bias and contextual interference effects can not be ignored, while at the same time, testees can be easily influenced by social desirability effect and the implicit suggestions of testers. Above all, it’s necessary to discuss and explore well-being from the view of implicit social cognition.This study from the implicit perspective about well-being, used experimental methods and aimed at discussing the possibility of measuring well-being with GNAT and EAST paradigm. What’s more, we expected to investigate whether implicit and explicit well-being are independent structures, This investigation may suggest a new direction for happiness study and enrich the theory series.In the first research using GNAT paradigm,92 testees reacted to different conception words and attribution words by pressing buttons, both of which contain two kinds. The results showed that the discrimination index combining self and happiness words is significantly higher than that with unhappiness words. Meanwhile, what can not be ignored is that the discrimination index combining others and happiness words is significantly lower than that with unhappiness words.In the second research using EAST paradigm,92 testees also reacted to different conception words and attribution words by pressing buttons, both of which contain two kinds. The results showed that the reaction time and error rate combining self and happiness words aren’t different significantly than that with unhappiness words. Meanwhile, the reaction time combining others and happiness words is significantly slower than that with unhappiness words, the error rate combining others and happiness words is significantly higher than that with unhappiness words.In the third research, the testees’ explicit well-being was measured by some questionnaires. What’s more, the researcher separated all the testees into two groups according to three explicit well-being scores, and compared the implicit well-being of the two different groups. The results revealed that the GNAT score and the EAST score of the higher life satisfaction group are significantly smaller than the lower group, the GNAT score and the EAST score of higher affect balance group aren’t different significantly from the lower group. At the same time, the GNAT score of the higher and lower well-being index groups differs critical significantly, but their EAST scores aren’t different significantly.Through three researches above, we can obtain the conclusions as follows:first, the GNAT effect of well-being is significant, the testees always connect happiness words with themselves, but unhappiness words with others. It’s feasible to measure well-being with GNAT paradigm. Second, the EAST effect of well-being is also significant, the testees always connect unhappiness words with others. In some extent, it is feasible to measure well-being with EAST paradigm, but further study is needed to discuss the validity. Third, the LS score, the AS score and the WB index of the testees all change in a different way from the GNAT and EAST implicit well-being score, the explicit and implicit well-being may be independent structures.