Reflexive or reflective? Two architectures for the social reproduction of well-being

Research on subjective well-being has established what correlates with flourishing but says little about how the conditions producing it are sustained. This paper proposes that reflexive and reflective happiness are not two kinds of well-being but two architectures through which societies reproduce those conditions. Reflexive happiness is reproduced through participation, where recurring occasions for reciprocal activity transmit the competence to keep organising them. Reflective happiness is reproduced through delegation, where citizens route coordination through specialised institutions. Both architectures are recursive but differ in how competence is transmitted and how they fail. Separating stocks of well-being from the functions that regenerate them yields predictions about thresholds and asymmetric recovery that stock measures cannot generate, and recasts the economics-psychology divide as a division of labour. Politically, delegative capacity can largely be built while participatory capacity can mainly be protected, and development may raise incomes while dissolving machinery no indicator records.