Specifics of Happiness Felt Over by Students with Different Life-Purpose Orientations

Abstract

Introduction. The integral concept of happiness relies on understanding the influence on its feeling specifics, the external conditions of life. Moreover, it depends on the individual psychological properties and states of the personality and its semantic and value orientations. Despite a great deal of works devoted to this phenomenon, there are practically no publications in the scientific literature on the relationship between the degree of happiness experienced by students and their meaning-of-life orientations, which determined the purpose of our study – to study the features of the relationship between meaning-of-life orientations and the level of happiness of students. Materials and Methods. The results of an empirical study among students of the Mordovia State University in various fields of training are presented. The sample size is 110 people. The study was conducted using several test methods: “Oxford Happiness Questionnaire” by M. Argyll, “Existence Scale” by A. Langle and K. Orgler (translated by S. V. Krivtsova), “Life-Sense Orientations (LSS)” by J. Crumbaugh and L. Makholik (adapted by D. A. Leontiev). Spearman’s rs rank correlation test, factor, cluster analysis and Mann-Whitney U test were used for mathematical processing. Results. In the course of the study, the features of life orientations, existential values of students and their level of happiness were studied. The results show that the level of happiness, meaningfulness and fulfillment of life among students does not depend on the profile of their education (natural science or humanities). Statistically significant correlations between the level of happiness and the degree of fulfillment of life, self-transcendence, freedom, personality, existentialism, self-distancing, as well as the meaningfulness of students' life, were revealed. As a result of factor analysis, three groups of factors were identified that link the indicators of meaningfulness, existentialism and fulfillment of life with the level of happiness of the subjects: “Meaningfulness of Life”, “Productivity of Life” and “Level of Happiness”. Discussion and Conclusion. The conclusions made by the authors contribute to the development of ideas about the dominant life orientations of students and their influence on the experience of happiness. The materials of the article can be used in teaching and psychological counseling of students to increase the degree of awareness of the meanings, goals and process of life, which can contribute to an increase in their level of happiness.