Introduction

Money matters, but for those fortunate enough to live in the modern developed ‘western’ world, it is no guarantee of well-being. Over the past 50 years happiness has reportedly not increased in line with GDP (Layard, 2003) and several theories have been developed that seek to explain this poor relationship. The growing despondency with the consuming capitalist philosophy of the 1980s fuelled a change in British and other attitudes into the 1990s and new lifestyles and measures of success were – and still are – being sought.

The idea of measuring successful – positive – outcomes developed from the psychological perspective of self-actualisation (Maslow, 1954). This was the idea that positive well-being was derived from the fulfilment of goals that lie along a hierarchy from basic needs to desires, a key concept being that engaging in activities that lead towards goal fulfilment in themselves may be deemed intrinsically rewarding, giving rise to the positive emotional outcomes associated with the experience of ‘flow’ – a sense of well-being that follows from reflecting on what has been achieved in doing an activity (Csikszentmihalyi and Rathunde, 1992; Csikszentmihalyi, 1999). These ideas are based on the ‘eudaimonic’ perspective of well-being and draw upon an Aristotelian view – that living a life of virtue is of greater worth than seeking out pleasure – the focus being on meaning and self-realisation and the extent to which a person is fully functioning (Ryan and Deci, 2001).

An alternative approach is the ‘hedonic view’ based on the philosophy of Aristippus – that the maximising of pleasure is the fundamental goal in life and means of achieving happiness (Ryan and Deci, 2001). Based on this idea the notion of well-being has become defined as the attainment of pleasure and the avoidance of negative emotion or pain – the components of happiness (Diener and Lucas, 1999).