Happiness Is Not a Feeling: Studies Unveil 3 Factors in Happiness—Feeling, Thinking & Willing, Supporting Our Triarchic Optimal Well-Being Model

Findings from confirmatory factor analyses (N=2,850 in USA; N=300 in Singapore; RMSEA<.08; CFI>.91) support our proposed Triarchic Optimal Well-Being model, comprising three broad factors: Affective-Experiences (feeling), Cognitive-Evaluation (thinking), and Eudaimonic-Conation (willing), providing a novel lens in unifying two major well-being research traditions (Hedonic and Eudaimonic), while addressing their gaps.