Lucía Macchia, Micah Kaats, Byron Johnson, and Tyler J. VanderWeele

Abstract

Subjective wellbeing (SWB) is a self-reported construct of wellbeing including components like life satisfaction, and positive and negative affect. We explore the role of physical pain in the construct of SWB using data from the Global Flourishing Study (22 countries, N = 187,160) and the Gallup World Poll (163 countries, N = 2,048,494). Consistent with the existing understanding of physical pain, we document that people can experience negative affect-related pain in the absence of physical health problems, and with near perfect physical health. We also find that the current components of SWB are not perfect proxies for pain and that physical pain and other components of negative affect like stress, worry, anxiety, anger, and sadness load on the same factor in principal component factor analysis. Based on this empirical evidence, we suggest that physical pain can be included in the construct of SWB as a component of negative affect. This proposition has the potential to advance the field in the coming decades by providing a better understanding of people’s wellbeing, presenting alternative methods to measure SWB, and informing the design of wellbeing interventions.