It is the second component or construct of SWB, which corresponds to what we generally understand as happiness. According to (Prince, & Prince 2001) affect is thought of as how happy or unhappy you are. It results from a balance between positive affect and negative affect (Christopher, 1999). As it has been already indicated, when we appraise how much we appreciate the life we live, we estimate our typical affective experience to assess how well we feel generally, which is referred to here in the study as affective component.
In summary, the affective component can be thought of as how you feel about your life (Susan Hird, 2003). Suh & Diener (1997) observed that feeling pleasant emotions most of the time and infrequently experiencing unpleasant emotions, even if the pleasant emotions are only mild, is sufficient for high reports of happiness. Although people report being above neutral in mood the majority of the time (Diener & Diener, 1995), intense positive moments are rare even among the happiest individuals.
Instead happy people report mild-to-moderate pleasant emotions most of the time when alone or with others and when working or at leisure. One thing is clear, that people need to understand that intense experiences are not the corer stone of a happy life (Diener, 2000). Mood and emotions are called ‘affect’, and there is contradictory evidence as to whether ‘pleasant affect’ and ‘unpleasant affect’ form two independent factors and should be measured separately, or whether they are interdependent (Diener et al. , 1999).
The amount of difference between momentary pleasant and unpleasant affect is still debated, but the separability of long-term affective dimensions is less controversial. Diener and Emmons (1984) found that unpleasant and pleasant affect become increasingly separate as the time frame is increased (Diener et al. , 1999). In the case of the institutionalized elderly, the study examined the affective component in general, mainly how they felt generally about their lives that helped them experiencing a sense of well-being in their lives.
As indicated by Christopher (1999), it is this second aspect of SWB that corresponds to what we generally understand as happiness and it results from a balance between positive affect and negative affect. Contributing Factors toward SWB of the Institutionalized Elderly Apart from delineating the cognitive and affective indicators of SWB, this study also attempted to identify the possible factors which contribute to SWB. A host of factors were identified in the largely western literature. These are presented in the succeeding pages.