The Welleye: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding and Promoting Wellbeing

What we pay attention to is the key determinant of how happy we are, according to new research, published in Frontiers in Psychology. The “Welleye” is a new framework that Paul designed with Dr Kate Laffan from LSE’s Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science (PBS) and Dr Laura Kudrna from the University of Birmingham. The Welleye shows the role of attention in linking the objective circumstances of people’s lives to how they spend their time – and ultimately to how they feel. The Welleye model accounts for how the same stimulus – money, access to healthcare, food, jobs – can have a very different effect on how people feel, depending on the attention allocated to it. For example, how a person’s income affects them will depend on to whom they compare themselves to and how they spend their time – and on the attention they pay to these comparisons and experiences. You can read the paper here.