Ruut Veenhoven: Worthy Recipient of the Golden Triangle of Happiness

Subjective life quality comprises feelings which can only be experienced by each individual person. So the search for commonality within such feelings at a population level, and the process of measurement validation, is surely one of the most challenging areas for the social sciences. Ruut Veenhoven has contributed mightily to such understanding through his creation of a major public resource for fellow scholars, as the World Database of Happiness. In addition, his training as a sociologist has guided his research into such topics as the livability of society and the ways that culture shapes societal attitudes to happiness. Running parallel and complementary to this work, is another line of research which has a more individual-level focus on happiness. This research concerns issues of psychological measurement, most particularly involving domain-based scales, and their theoretical consequences for understanding the subjective wellbeing construct. From this research has evolved the Theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis and the three ‘golden domains’, which represent the key resources supporting homeostasis.