Researchers are divided between those who consider well-being as a single global construct and those who maintain the need to keep the hedonic and eudaimonic components of well-being separate. Diener et al. proposed two separate scales for measuring well-being: the Flourishing Scale (FS) for eudaimonic well-being and the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE) for hedonic well-being. The aim of this article is to validate the Italian versions of the FS and SPANE, and to provide support for the usefulness of distinct measures of well-being components. In Study 1, we examined an Italian undergraduate student sample (n = 684), whereas in Study 2 we considered two samples of unemployed (n = 282) and healthy control individuals (n = 426). Through multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, we demonstrated that the Italian FS and SPANE obtained strict measurement invariance across administration methods (paper-and-pencil and Internet) and strong measurement invariance across different groups (unemployed individuals seeking work and a healthy control group). In our data, we found a superior fit for a two-factor model over a one-factor model of well-being, which suggests the utility of separate measures of well-being components. Concurrent validity was verified with other well-being, depression, and anxiety measures. Furthermore, we showed that flourishing is more strongly related to the cognitive component of subjective well-being than hedonic affect. In summary, the Italian FS and SPANE are reliable and valid instruments, and may be beneficial in their applications in future Italian studies on well-being.

Perceptual judgments of relative depth from binocular disparity are systematically distorted in humans, despite in principle having access to reliable 3D information. Interestingly, these distortions vanish at a natural grasping distance, as if perceived stereo depth is contingent on a specific reference distance for depth-disparity scaling that corresponds to the length of our arm. Here we show that the brain's representation of the arm indeed powerfully modulates depth perception, and that this internal calibration can be quickly updated. We used a classic visuomotor adaptation task in which subjects execute reaching movements with the visual feedback of their reaching finger displaced farther in depth, as if they had a longer arm. After adaptation, 3D perception changed dramatically, and became accurate at the “new” natural grasping distance, the updated disparity scaling reference distance. We further tested whether the rapid adaptive changes were restricted to the visual modality or were characteristic of sensory systems in general. Remarkably, we found an improvement in tactile discrimination consistent with a magnified internal image of the arm. This suggests that the brain integrates sensory signals with information about arm length, and quickly adapts to an artificially updated body structure. These adaptive processes are most likely a relic of the mechanisms needed to optimally correct for changes in size and shape of the body during ontogenesis.