Journal of Happiness Studies最新文献

The role of social capital, the social networks that influence human wellbeing has been explored by empirical research in the US and Europe, however no study so far has undertaken a systematic investigation of the impact of the various dimensions of social capital in metropolitan areas. Addressing this gap in knowledge can have practical and policy-oriented implications by contributing to more informed decision-making processes in metro areas, better targeted interventions and ultimately an improved quality of life for residents. This study adopts a multi-level modelling approach to investigate life satisfaction and social capital heterogeneity within metropolitan areas in Australia. Our dataset was collected by the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey and includes almost 4,000 individual respondents. Our results show that social trust, social engagement and connection, and a psychological sense of community measured at an individual level have a strong positive influence on individual life satisfaction. Conversely negative individual perceptions about neighbourhood criminality and shabbiness are associated with a lower level of life satisfaction. The application of a model using random slope coefficients for social capital variables suggests that most of the spatial heterogeneity between census districts is explained by between-individual (compositional) variations, rather than contextual differences. Only social connection and engagement appeared to have a distinctive contextual influence. These findings confirm the importance of social inclusion in enhancing wellbeing for everyone and may inform social policy on how to promote social networks in urban areas by all levels of government.

Despite the rising global interest in well-being and its various dimensions, research in this area has been criticized for its Western-centric conceptual and geographical emphasis. In this cross-sectional study, we leverage more than 30 indicators of well-being from three years of Gallup World Poll (2020–2022) data to explore the diversity of well-being in nationally representative samples from 40 countries on the African continent (N = 90,093). Our descriptive analysis provided evidence of between-country differences in well-being, including among countries within the same region. There was also some evidence of within-country variation across the indicators of well-being. We draw on several theoretical perspectives to discuss the diverse experiences of well-being in the African context, highlighting the importance of applying a culturally sensitive lens to understanding and promoting well-being. Our descriptive exploration of multidimensional well-being in Africa shines a spotlight on a part of the world that has received comparatively less empirical attention in this area, and provides a useful foundation for future research toward building a more inclusive and diverse global picture of human flourishing.

This paper examines the integration and unification of the philosophy and psychology of well-being. For the most part, these disciplines investigate well-being without reference to each other. In recent years, however, with the maturing of each discipline, there have been a growing number of calls to integrate the two. While such calls are welcome, what it means to integrate well-being philosophy and psychology can vary greatly depending on one’s theoretical and practical ends. The aim of this paper is to provide a novel conceptual framework for thinking about integrating well-being philosophy and psychology that systematically categorizes different kinds of integration projects. We divide existing attempts in the literature into three broad categories according to the perspective from which the integration takes place: (1) top-down meta-theoretical unification; (2) psychological integration within philosophy; and (3) philosophical integration within psychology. These categories are then broken down into various further subcategories. Our aim in providing this framework is both to facilitate the assessment and comparison of existing integration attempts and to provide a roadmap for future integration attempts. For each category, we discuss one or two representative examples of the approaches. By doing so, we hope to generate interest in the wide variety of existing integration projects, as well as to generate discussion concerning the benefits and pitfalls of different approaches.

Abundant research has shown that the support of students’ basic needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence contributes to higher motivation and mental health. Yet, whether students themselves can craft their own need satisfactions and be trained herein has rarely been examined. The findings of the present online intervention study among university students indicates that a brief 7-day training on need crafting during a stressful period suffices to foster greater need satisfaction and well-being, while reducing need frustration and ill-being, with enhanced need crafting accounting for the training benefits. These effects were somewhat stronger for participants who were more actively engaged in the program, but did not depend on participants’ type of motivation to initiate the training, the self-chosen pacing of the training or their use of WhatsApp during the training. Yet, more autonomously motivated participants, those using WhatsApp and choosing the fast track were less likely to drop-out of the training. The discussion focuses on the role of need crafting as a pro-active skill that fosters well-being and resilience in students.

Humor is an effective strategy in regulating emotion. Whereas most previous studies have investigated the correlational relationship between self-directed humor and mental health, it is largely unknown whether self-directed humor causally regulates emotions. The purpose of this study is to examine the causal effect of two types of self-directed humor (self-enhancing vs. self-defeating) on emotion regulation. Initially, participants (N = 75, M_age = 20.31 ± 1.19 years, 62.67% female) were asked to immerse themselves in negative scenes by reading paragraphs. They then rated their feelings of positive and negative emotions before and after reading sentences of different conditions (including baseline, cognitive reappraisal, self-enhancing humor, and self-defeating humor) that randomly matched the scenes. Humor feelings for strategies were rated in the last stage. Results of ANOVA indicated that compared to the baseline, participants experienced an increase in positive emotion and a decrease in negative emotion in the other three conditions. Self-enhancing humor was the most effective in regulating emotion, whereas no significant difference was observed between self-defeating humor and cognitive reappraisal. Furthermore, participants reported that the feeling of humor from self-enhancing humor was higher than from self-defeating humor, as well as from cognitive reappraisal than in the baseline. Mediation analysis suggested that the difference in humor feelings might be due to the changes in positive and negative emotions caused by different conditions. In short, the findings demonstrate that different styles of self-directed humor can causally regulate emotions, and this paper provides new evidence for using self-directed humor to improve emotional well-being.

Many have pondered whether happiness is chiefly made of positive feelings and joy (hedonism) or by acquiring meaning via self-actualization (eudaimonism). Drawing on life history theory, we examined if individuals’ early-life experience (i.e., childhood socioeconomic status; SES) colors their notions of well-being. A consistent pattern was found in two studies (Study 1, N = 183; Study 2, N = 168) using MTurk samples; wealthier childhood upbringing predicted stronger endorsement of eudaimonic happiness. This pattern, supporting claims of life history theory, emerged only when perceptions of (economic) instability was salient (chronic, Study 1; experimentally primed, Study 2). Also, only childhood SES, but not current SES, mattered. This research finds novel evidence that childhood experience and current threat perception may interact to shape people’s ideals of happiness.

Moving in adolescence could be a stressful experience, potentially disturbing development into adulthood. This study investigated the relationship between residential mobility in adolescence and life satisfaction in young adulthood, focusing on moving timing, frequency, and distance, using (retrospective) longitudinal German survey data (N = 2998, mean age = 20.18, 45.8% boy, 6.8% first-generation immigrant, 31.0% children of immigrants). Moving twice or more in adolescence was linked to lower life satisfaction in young adulthood, even after controlling for family background characteristics. Moving distance was unrelated to life satisfaction. Exploratory analyses showed that particularly for children of immigrants, frequent moving was related to lower life satisfaction. Since frequent moving in adolescence was more common in disadvantaged families, frequent moving could reinforce social inequalities into young adulthood.

This paper studies the positiveness in most consumed songs during a period of sadness, worry and uncertainty: the COVID-19 crisis in comparison with previous years. In order to perform the analysis, we create an original positive music indicator using a dataset of weekly patterns for music consumption in 31 OECD countries over a five year period. Results show that negative shocks from events such as economic business cycles and the COVID-19 pandemic increase the consumption of positive songs, suggesting that society compensates the negative impact on well-being with positive music. We conclude that society adapts sentiment-based music consumption preferences according to the socioeconomic situation.

Psychological well-being is among the concepts that have attracted significant attention from researchers in the fields of social life, work life, and health in recent years. We conducted bibliometric mapping and content analysis to reveal current trends in the concept and contribute to the literature. Using VOSviewer, Citespace, Bibliometrix and MS Office Excel programs, we analysed 16,885 academic studies published in the Web of Science database between 1980 and 2022. The research results show a continuous increase in publications and citations, with a notable surge observed after 2016. The United States accounts for over a third of the publications. Furthermore, the International Journal of Environment Research and Public Health and Frontiers in Psychology stand out as the most productive journals, whereas Carol D. Ryff is the most prolific and cited author in the field. When the footprints of the keywords over the past 10 years are interpreted, some notable trends are identified. Initially, research themes mainly revolved around children, dementia, and social support. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic emerging as a new thematic focus and the disruption of the person-job and person-environment order due to the repercussions of lockdowns, the emphasis has shifted from the theme of social support to mindfulness, loneliness, and support. Notably, motivation and rehabilitation have emerged as significant focal points, with increased attention on social isolation and healthcare workers in recent publications.

Historically, researchers have conceptualized self-esteem as global self-evaluation; recently, others have suggested that people are selective about what affects their self-worth. Two studies (N = 1,032) used a person-centered approach to examine how six domains of self-worth contingency associate with well-being, virtue, and value outcomes. Latent profile analyses indicated five distinct profiles. Non-contingents (lowest contingency in all domains) reported good well-being outcomes, low self-transcendence and self-enhancement values, and gave the least in a behavioral measure of generosity. Moral Contingents (high contingency in a moral domain; low contingency in other domains) reported the greatest well-being, purpose/meaning, performance virtues, and prosocial virtues, and high self-transcendence and low self-enhancement values. High Contingents (highest contingency in all domains) reported the worst well-being, second-highest others-focused compassion, and high self-transcendence and self-enhancement values. Medium Contingents (moderate contingency in all domains) reported the second-worst ill-being, second-highest purpose, second-highest performance and prosocial virtues, and high self-transcendent and self-enhancement values. Low Contingents (low contingency in all domains) reported the lowest purpose and basic needs satisfaction, and high self-enhancement and low self-transcendent values. Implications for optimal self-esteem and values are discussed.