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In his highly influential Psychological Bulletin article “Subjective Well-Being”, Diener (1984) proposed that subjective well-being has three distinct components: life satisfaction (LS), positive affect (PA), and negative affect (NA). More recently, Diener, Suh, Lucas, and Smith (1999) also included satisfaction in specific life domains (henceforth domain satisfaction [DS], eg, satisfaction with health) in the definition of subjective well-being. Researchers often distinguish cognitive and affective components of subjective well-being (Diener, 1984; Diener et al., 1999). Life satisfaction and domain satisfaction are considered cognitive components because they are based on evaluative beliefs (attitudes) about one’s life. In contrast, PA and NA assess the affective component of subjective well-being and reflect the amount of pleasant and unpleasant feelings that people experience in their lives.

This chapter examines the structural relations among these components in three sections. First, I examine the structural relations among cognitive components of subjective well-being. Specifically, I examine the relation between life satisfaction and domain satisfaction (LS–DS) as well as the relation among satisfactions in various domains (DS–DS; eg, job satisfaction and marital satisfaction). Second, I review the controversial and inconsistent literature on the relation between the two affective components of subjective well-being (ie, PA and NA). Finally, I examine the relation between cognitive well-being and affective well-being.