Subjective Wellbeing

Subjective Wellbeing (SWB) encompasses a cognitive and affective component. The cognitive component refers to subjective judgment of life satisfaction. The affective component of SWB assesses the frequency of positive and negative emotions. Thus, SWB is subjective evaluation of one’s life, presence of positive emotions and absence of negative emotions. People vary in their experience of subjective well-being. Some individuals experience high level of subjective wellbeing despite their diverse living situations. However, some people may experience low level of subjective wellbeing despite having all worldly advantages. Researchers have identified a number of factors that are associated with enduring wellbeing like age, gender, income, employment status, geographical location, personality, intelligence, life events and one important factor is supportive relationships. And for cordial relationships one has to let go of emotionally backed judgments, grievances, attack thoughts and beliefs toward themselves and others i.e Forgiveness. The apparent link of forgiveness to well-being may therefore be due to the fact that forgiveness helps people maintain supportive relationships.
There are indicators of forgiveness among our evolutionary ancestors (Dewall, 2000; Dewall & Pokorny, 2005; Mc Cullough, 2008), suggesting a history of forgiveness that transcends not only culture and time but species as well. Forgiveness is a ‘prosocial change towards a perceived transgressor’ (Mc Cullough, Pargament and Thoresen, 2000) . Victims who forgive their offender become motivated to act prosocially towards them by reconciling their differences, cooperating on interdependent tasks and admonishing ill will. Victims who fail to forgive offenders conversely become motivated to act antisocially by avoiding them or even taking revenge (Fehr, Gelfand and