Journal of Happiness Studies最新文献

The current study examined the intervention effects of a culturally tailored positive psychological intervention on the well-being profiles of Hispanics/Latinos with uncontrolled hypertension. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups (N = 96), either the ¡Alégrate! ("Get Happy!") positive psychological intervention arm (N = 51) or a wait-list control group (N = 45). The intervention consisted of eight weekly in-person sessions, facilitated by a licensed psychologist or social worker, aimed at improving positive affect and overall psychological well-being. Outcome measures of well-being included dispositional optimism, positive affect, life meaning and purpose, emotional vitality, and engagement in happiness-inducing behaviors. The analysis utilized independent two-sample t tests and intention-to-treat multivariable linear regression methods. There were no significant baseline differences in psychological well-being scores between the intervention and wait-list control groups. Half of the participants were female, with a mean age of 57.9 years, and 90.6% reported Mexican heritage. In regression analyses examining between-group differences, the ¡Alégrate! positive psychological intervention led to significant improvements in optimism (β = 1.23, p = 0.011) and engagement in happiness-inducing behavior (β = 14.98, p = 0.005) from baseline to post-intervention, while no such changes were seen in the wait-list control arm. Findings suggest that the strengths-based ¡Alégrate! positive psychological intervention effectively enhanced well-being measures in Hispanics/Latinos with uncontrolled hypertension, providing a promising approach to address mental health disparities in this underserved group. Future research should examine long-term impacts of the intervention in a larger and more heterogeneous sample of Hispanics/Latinos, considering factors such as acculturation, country of origin, and other culturally relevant variables.

Gender equality has been found to positively affect life satisfaction. However, the reason why gender equality affects life satisfaction remains relatively unexplored. In this paper, we hypothesize three mediators for this relationship: individual autonomy, income per capita, and generalized trust. All three variables have been found to positively affect life satisfaction. We argue that each mediator may, in turn, depend positively on gender equality, suggesting that individual autonomy, income per capita, and generalized trust positively mediate the relationship between gender equality and life satisfaction. Using a sample of 81 countries from 1990 to 2020, we find that individual autonomy and income per capita are important channels that together explain 98% of the total relationship between gender equality and life satisfaction. While the mediation effect of individual autonomy is robust, the significance of income per capita is less consistent when using alternative estimation techniques. For generalized trust we do not find evidence of mediation.

Thought control ability (TCA) refers to the ability to control unwanted thoughts, which is important for mental health and well-being. Previous studies indicated that TCA has a beneficial influence on happiness, but the underlying neural mechanisms of their relationship were poorly understood. The present study used the connectome-based predictive modelling (CPM) approach to examine the shared neural basis between TCA and happiness. The positive correlation between TCA and happiness was initially demonstrated in the behavior analysis. Results from the two CPM analyses (using TCA-related connectome to predict individuals’ happiness and using happiness-related connectome to predict individuals’ TCA) revealed the common and distinct neural connectomes between TCA and happiness. Specifically, the common neural connectomes between TCA and happiness exist at the network level, which involves the connections between the frontal-parietal network and the limbic lobe. In contrast, at the individual edge level, the TCA-related connectome was more concentrated in the posterior brain with key nodes in the ITG and precuneus, which were associated with self-referential processing and negative coping. Whereas the happiness-related was more concentrated in the anterior brain with key nodes in the insula, OFC, and SFG, which were associated with cognitive control and emotional regulation. Collectively, our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the TCA-happiness relationship, providing valuable insights for future research in promoting well-being through enhancing thought control ability.

This article explores the determinants of life satisfaction in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France. We use the capability approach as the theoretical framework of the research, which enables us to select variables that reflect freedom of access to leisure activities, everyday life services and mobility. We also focus on place by taking account of amenities. Using Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) on data from 1,039 questionnaires completed in 2021, measures of life satisfaction are regressed locally on synthetic variables that reflect place-based capabilities and amenities, and control variables that reflect more general socio-economic conditions. Empirical results show that though life satisfaction levels are generally high across the study area, space does play a role in explaining those levels as the most contributing variables differ from one area to another. In particular, all synthetic variables of place-based capabilities and amenities contribute to well-being variation, as well as household economic situation and housing condition, which reflect broader capabilities. Therefore, capability- and amenity-related variables largely explain life satisfaction, and GWR captures spatial differentiation.

Self-regulation is important for coping with demands of flexible work designs (FWD) such as telework, remote work, or flextime. This article evaluates a web-based intervention based on self-regulation models to enable workers meet challenges of FWD and thus improve recovery, work-life balance, and well-being. Over six weeks, participants learnt self-regulation strategies to detach from work, segment work and private life, and organize their workday. In a randomized controlled trial, participants were assigned to an intervention group or a waitlist control group. Study participants rated their levels of self-regulation, psychological detachment, strain-based work–family conflict (WFC), and affective, cognitive and work-related well-being (indicated by positive affect, stress, and work engagement) before and after the intervention, and at a four-week and six-month follow-up. The final sample after the training included 358 participants (intervention group: n = 147; control group: n = 211). As expected, covariance analyses revealed that the intervention improved positive affect and work engagement, and that it reduced stress and strain-based WFC. Moreover, we found positive effects on psychological detachment for participants with low baseline levels of psychological detachment. Self-regulation mediated intervention effects on positive affect and work engagement. Effects hold at four-week and six-month follow-ups, except for work engagement. Overall, findings indicate that the intervention is an effective tool for promoting self-regulation and enabling workers to achieve their goals regarding recovery, work-life balance, and well-being.

Adolescent well-being is a multifaceted construct embedded in family, school, and peer socialization contexts. By adopting a social-psychological perspective we examined associations between three sources of support (parents, teachers, and peers) and specific components of subjective well-being (cognitive, affective, global, and domain-specific), to determine whether there is a functional specialization of the role that these socialization agents play in early adolescents’ perceptions of affective well-being and satisfaction with life in different domains. Albanian data from Wave 3 of the Children’s Worlds International Survey were used, including 2339 early adolescents (age range 9–13; girls = 49.3%). A structural equation model (SEM) was employed to examine associations between supportive relationships with parents, teachers, and peers and specific subjective well-being components. Results support a functional specialization hypothesis: Parents’ support was significantly related to global cognitive and affective well-being; teacher support was significantly related to school satisfaction; and peer support was significantly related to all subjective well-being variables (global and domain-based life satisfaction and affective well-being). The present findings contribute to a finer-grained understanding of the role of supportive relationships with adults and peers in proximal socialization contexts (family, school, peer groups) in how early adolescents perceive and evaluate their affective well-being and satisfaction with life globally and in specific domains.

School life is an important determinant of adolescents’ subjective well-being. While there is now an extensive literature on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescents’ well-being, adolescents’ school experience during the pandemic and how it relates to different dimensions of their subjective well-being has received little attention. This study addresses this gap by examining the relationship between young people’s school experience and their cognitive and affective subjective well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic in Luxembourg. We rely on a unique two-wave panel dataset that contains granular information about young people’s lives shortly after the onset of the pandemic in July 2020 and one year later in July 2021. Our study extends the current scientific knowledge on the COVID-19 pandemic by highlighting that while school experience has a weak relationship with affective subjective well-being (i.e., happiness), it is strongly associated with cognitive subjective well-being (i.e., life satisfaction), particularly one year after the pandemic outbreak for those with more negative feelings about school. Our study also reveals that our results on cognitive well-being are stratified by social status.

Contentment and affect are substrates of information people use when making an overall assessment of satisfaction with life. Most studies assume homogeneity across people in the relevance of affect and contentment. This paper studies the existence of heterogeneity across people in the relationship between life satisfaction and affect and contentment. In addition, the paper postulates that, due to the complexity of factors intervening in the relationship, this heterogeneity is unobserved. A technique to study unobserved heterogeneity in the relationship between life satisfaction and affect and contentment is implemented. Based on a large worldwide sample, three groups are identified; these groups have different profiles regarding the role of affect and contentment in explaining life satisfaction. The groups are meaningful, as different relationships between life satisfaction and affect and contentment have implications; for example, income’s relevance in explaining life satisfaction varies across groups.

Affective well-being, as an important component of well-being, is related to an individual’s mental health and quality of life. Previous studies have found that some psychological variables of employees at work can affect their well-being, but most studies use cross-sectional design, and the exploration of the potential psychological mechanism of the relationship between the two is unclear. This study adopted a longitudinal design to explore the dynamic bidirectional relationship between the thriving at work and affective well-being among the primary and secondary school teachers, and further investigated the mediating mechanism of work-family enrichment between them. Thriving at Work Questionnaire, Work-Family Enrichment Questionnaire, and Affective Well-being Questionnaire are used to conduct a three-wave longitudinal study design which with a sample of 778 teachers at an interval of one year. The results of the cross-lagged analysis showed that: (1) There was an interactive and mutually predictive association between teachers’ affective well-being and thriving at work. (2) The relationship between the positive and negative affective dimensions of teachers’ affective well-being and thriving at work was different; the positive affective dimension rather than the negative affective dimension at the former time point significantly predicted thriving at work at the latter time point; and the thriving at work at the former time point significantly predicted the negative affective dimension rather than the positive affective dimension at the latter time point. (3) Teachers’ work-family enrichment mediated the effect of their thriving at work on their affective well-being, but did not mediate the effect of their affective well-being on their thriving at work. (4) For the relationship between positive affective dimension or negative affective dimension and work-family enrichment and thriving at work, only work-family enrichment was found to play a mediating role in the process of thriving at work affecting positive affective. The study revealed the relationship and mechanism between teachers’ thriving at work, work-family enrichment, and affective well-being, and provided empirical research basis for educational administration and school organizations to explore effective measures to improve the working experience and well-being of teachers.

There is a gap in our understanding of people’s longitudinal emotional reactions before and during an ongoing war. The paper analyzes the impact of the Iron Swords War between Israel and Hamas on measures of Israelis’ subjective well-being, including fear and anxiety. Two questions are probed: (1) How are the affective components—negative and positive emotions—which tend to fluctuate, and the more stable components—global life evaluation and meaning in life—affected by war? (2) What protects people’s subjective well-being in wartime? Unique longitudinal data from 1189 individuals who reported their subjective well-being before and during the war is employed. The participants reported their pre-war investments in hedonic capital, including efforts in six life domains—health, friends, community, active leisure, the value of work per se, and work-life balance—as well as their religiosity level. Both our questions are addressed by the results. First, all subjective well-being components worsened significantly during the war compared to pre-war measures. Evaluation of life decreased by 9.6%; meaning decreased by 2.8%, positive emotions decreased by 25.5%, and negative emotions increased by 85.9%. Second, regression analysis demonstrates that all of the pre-war efforts investigated, except those allocated to improving work-life balance and active leisure, have a longitudinal effect on at least one component of subjective well-being during war. Effort at work significantly affects both meaning (p < 0.01) and positive emotions (p < 0.05). Effort within the community significantly affects negative emotions (p < 0.01). Effort in friendships significantly affects positive emotions (p < 0.01), while effort in health significantly affects meaning (p < 0.05). The results are robust for unmet expectations, socio-demographics and objective war-related control factors. Pre-war religiosity longitudinally affects all war-time subjective well-being components, a result which was also found in a difference-in-difference analysis.