PERMA Is a Detailed View of Happiness, Not a Different One (Goodman et al., 2018)

The Question

Seligman argued PERMA's five pillars measure something richer than ordinary 'happiness'. Do the numbers actually back that up?

What They Found

• The PERMA-Profiler's overall score correlated with general subjective well-being measures at r = 0.96 or higher, statistically nearly identical
• Each individual pillar (P, E, R, M, A) also correlated strongly with general well-being, ranging from r = 0.74 to r = 0.91
• Confirmatory analyses suggested PERMA and subjective well-being likely measure the same underlying construct, just with more or less granularity
• The five pillars still gave more granular information about which aspects of life feel strong or thin, even if the overall score wasn't a brand-new construct
• PERMA's distinct value is diagnosis and direction (telling you which pillar lags) rather than measuring something entirely new

How They Tested It

• Recruited adult samples and administered both the PERMA-Profiler and standard subjective well-being measures (life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect)
• Used structural equation modeling to test whether PERMA's five-factor structure explained variance beyond a simpler well-being model
• Compared correlations across multiple samples to confirm that the strong overlap with subjective well-being held up

Caveats

• The paper doesn't argue PERMA is useless. It argues only that the overall score isn't a fundamentally new construct. Pillar-level information remains useful
• Sample sizes and populations were limited; replications across more diverse samples would strengthen the conclusion
• This is a methodological critique, not an intervention study. Practical implications depend on what you use the measure for. For validation, see Butler & Kern (2016)