What is happiness? Although the scientific study of happiness and subjective well-being (SWB) has thrived over the last 30 years, the concept of happiness has been elusive. In fact, Ed Diener (1984) advocated the use of the scientific term SWB as opposed to happiness precisely because of the ambiguities associated with the term “happiness.” SWB has been frequently operationalized as the subjective evaluation of life as a whole, the presence of pleasant emotions, and the relative absence of unpleasant emotions (Diener, 1984). As SWB research became popular in psychological science, some researchers started using the term happiness (e.g., Lyubomirsky & Ross, 1997). However, the fundamental question regarding the meaning of happiness has been examined only rarely (see Wierzbicka, 2004 for this critique).