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Theory, Research and Practice

Figure 2 | Psychology of Well-Being: Theory, Research and Practice

Figure 2

From: Building a neuroscience of pleasure and well-being

Figure 2

Measuring reward and hedonia. Hedonic reward processes related to well-being involve multifaceted psychological components. Major processes within reward (first column) consist of wanting or incentive salience (white), learning (blue), and - most relevant to happiness - pleasure liking or hedonic impact (light blue). Each of these contains explicit (top rows, light yellow) and implicit (bottom rows, yellow) psychological components (second column) that constantly interact and require careful scientific analysis to tease apart. Explicit processes are consciously experienced (e.g. explicit pleasure and happiness, desire, or expectation), whereas implicit levels of the same psychological processes are potentially unconscious in the sense that they can operate at a level not always directly accessible to conscious experience (implicit incentive salience, habits and 'liking' reactions), and must be further translated by other mechanisms into subjective feelings. Measurements or behavioral procedures that are especially sensitive markers of the each of the processes are listed (third column).

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