Capturing the Moment in the Workplace: Two Methods to Study Momentary Subjective Well-Being

Subjective Well-Being (SWB) refers to how a person evaluates his or her life ( Diener, Sandvik, & Pavot, 1991 ). This appraisal may take the form of cognitions – when a person makes a conscious evaluative judgment about his or her satisfaction with (working) life; or take the form of affect, when people experience negative or positive emotions in response to everyday life. In this chapter, we concentrate on the latter form of SWB – momentary affective experiences (Russell, 1980, 2003) in everyday working life, which we also refer to as momentary SWB.