Journal of Happiness Studies最新文献

Dual-factor models of mental health integrate both positive and negative indicators to provide a more comprehensive understanding of mental health profiles. In this cross-sectional study, we explored the mental health profiles of Swedish high school students by examining five positive indicators of well-being—connectedness, perseverance, optimism, happiness, and engagement—alongside three distress indicators: symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress. We further investigated how these profiles related to gender, environmental sensitivity, coping self-efficacy, and the experience of pandemic-related distress. Utilizing latent profile analysis on a sample of 846 students (M_age = 18, SD_age = 0.85), five distinct mental health profiles emerged: Complete mental health (42.9%) exhibited above-average well-being and below-average distress; Moderate mental health (37.8%) showed average well-being and distress levels; Vulnerable (9.8%) had below-average well-being with slightly elevated distress; Symptomatic but managing (5.4%) reported below-average well-being and high distress; and Troubled (4.0%) displayed significantly below-average well-being with very high distress. Gender played a significant role in differentiating these profiles, with girls particularly overrepresented in the Troubled and Symptomatic but managing profiles, suggesting a higher prevalence of mental health challenges among female students. As expected, students in the Complete mental health profile exhibited higher aesthetic sensitivity and greater coping self-efficacy, while those in the Troubled profile showed the highest ease of excitation and lowest coping self-efficacy, indicating a stark contrast in emotional regulation and resilience between the profiles. Interestingly, despite clear variations in well-being and distress, no significant differences were found between profiles in terms of distress experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, although girls reported higher levels of pandemic-related distress overall.

These findings offer critical insights into the diverse mental health experiences of adolescents, emphasizing the need for targeted interventions. Addressing the specific needs of students in compromised mental health profiles is essential to promoting a healthier and more supportive educational environment.

Does socially desirable responding produce exaggerated correlations between self-ratings of personality and positive psychology constructs? We operationalized social desirability as the tendency to react to evaluative content in questionnaire items and related one standard measure and one evaluatively neutralized measure of the Big Five to measures of five key positive psychology constructs (optimism, purpose in life, satisfaction with life, well-being and sense of coherence). Structural equation modelling (N = 439) revealed substantially different relationships between the Big Five and positive psychology constructs when the evaluative factor was accounted for. The results indicated that although the Big Five still predict the positive psychology constructs when the evaluative factor is accounted for, their influence is strongly reduced and the evaluative factor itself a major predictor. Arguably, this suggests that when the evaluative factor is not accounted for, the use of self-ratings invites social desirability to inflate the estimated relationships between personality traits and evaluatively loaded constructs in positive psychology. Alternative interpretations of the evaluative factor are discussed, as well as the importance of probing different solutions to measurement issues surrounding evaluative psychological constructs.

In research on flow as a constitutive trait, alongside appropriate levels of attention and motivation, the balance between task challenges and individual skills is emphasized. However, accurately determining the optimal balance to maximize the intensity of the flow state remains a complex task. It is evident that both variables, task challenge and individual skills, are interrelated. Nevertheless, how to precisely express the degree of matching between these variables in explaining the flow state remains an open question. One of the recent proposals for analyzing the (mis)matching of predictor variables explaining outcomes is Response Surface Analysis (RSA). In this study, we employed RSA to verify whether the skill-challenge balance could indeed occur in a configuration that best explains the flow state. We measured flow using the Flow Short Scale, which consists of two subscales: fluency and absorption. The study included 528 participants who were online board game players and were asked to assess their perceived skill levels and the current challenge of the game. RSA revealed two intriguing phenomena concerning both the fluency scale and absorption: firstly, flow is higher when the perceived level of skills exceeds task challenge compared to situations where perceived skills are lower than task challenge; secondly, flow is higher when both perceived skill levels and task challenge are higher compared to when they are at low levels. These findings shed light on a crucial aspect of the occurrence of flow, related to perceived skill levels and subjective task challenge.

Character strengths were introduced into the positive psychology literature twenty years ago. The present bibliometric analysis quantitatively summarizes the research conducted in the field so far in terms of impact and themes analyzed. We conduct performance analysis to examine the total number of publications on character strengths, their bibliometric indices, the main journals contributing to the field, and the countries involved in such knowledge accumulation and how this has changed over time. We furthermore conduct science mapping analysis using the keywords of the papers. Specifically, we describe the time-varying occurrence of specific keywords and use network and thematic mapping analyses to determine the dynamic intercorrelations among the emerging research topics. Our results show the significant and growing contribution of character strengths to the positive psychology literature and beyond, but also the need for cross-fertilization with neighboring fields. We also highlight an increasing contribution from non-WEIRD countries in recent years, which calls for in-depth cross-cultural research. Topics such as measurement and well-being appear to be well-established and integrated, while there’s an emerging interest in mental health research. Overall, the present analysis illuminates on the past, present, and upcoming trends in the field.

The demands of pregnancy loss may lead to an adjustment period, which can strain couples’ sexual and relationship satisfaction. Compassion is a mental health promotion tool that may buffer the effect of negative life events, such as pregnancy loss, on well-being. Nevertheless, it is not well-understood how self-compassion or compassion felt for a partner (i.e., compassionate love) are associated with sexual and relationship satisfaction in couples coping with a recent pregnancy loss. We aimed to examine how self-compassion and compassionate love are associated with sexual and relationship satisfaction in couples after pregnancy loss in a pre-registered, cross-sectional study of couples (N = 138) who experienced a loss in the last 4 months. Using structural equation modeling and controlling for age and relationship and loss characteristics, we found no associations between either couple member’s self-compassion and their own or their partners’ sexual and relationship satisfaction. However, for individuals who were pregnant when the loss occurred, higher compassionate love was associated with their own and their partner’s greater sexual and relationship satisfaction. For individuals who were not pregnant, greater compassionate love was associated with their own higher relationship satisfaction (but not that of their partner). Fostering compassion for one’s partner may be a target for intervention post-loss to strengthen couples’ relational well-being after a pregnancy loss.

Although emotion regulation (ER) is a well-researched topic, the proactive regulation of positive emotions (conceptualized as emotion crafting—EC) grants further investigation. Recent research has shown that EC related to higher levels of life satisfaction, vitality, wellbeing, and a lower level of internalizing symptoms through positive affect. Building on this previous cross-sectional study, this research aimed to examine how changes in (planned) EC related to changes in psychological functioning. A 7-day diary study was conducted among 121 Norwegian participants (61.2% female; M_age = 29.41 years, SD = 11.80; range 18–62), where they indicated their planned EC and positive emotion goals in the morning, and reported their actual EC and psychological functioning in the evening. Data were analysed through two-level multilevel path analyses. Planned EC related positively to actual EC, while actual EC related positively to wellbeing and negatively to illbeing through positive and negative affect, both at the between-person and within-person levels. These findings were overall maintained after controlling for other ER measures and when examining lagged effects (but not when controlling for same-day outcomes). Proactively engaging in behaviours aimed at maintaining or strengthening positive emotions is beneficial for individuals’ daily psychological functioning. Future research is needed to determine the causality of the effects of EC, and whether the effects of EC can be generalised across more diverse samples.

Extensive research has explored the link between emotions and life satisfaction, yet a notable gap remains in understanding the prospective connections between teacher work-related emotions and life satisfaction during role transitions—a critical period in teacher development—and the moderating impact of emotional intelligence (EI). To address this, we used cross-lagged models to analyze the relationship between work-related emotions and life satisfaction in 357 novice teachers, from their internship through their first year of teaching, and explored the moderating role of EI in this relationship. The results indicated that positive emotions positively predicted future life satisfaction, while negative emotions had a negative effect over time. Positive emotions exhibited a stronger correlation with life satisfaction compared to negative ones. Furthermore, EI moderated these relationships: Among high-EI teachers, positive emotions predicted increased life satisfaction, which subsequently predicted fewer future negative emotions. In contrast, among low-EI teachers, negative emotions predicted lower life satisfaction. These findings underscore the importance of promoting positive emotions and enhancing emotional intelligence to bolster teachers' well-being.

By adopting approaches based on social expenditures and social rights data to measure the efficacy of social policy, significant advances have been made in international comparative research on social policy and subjective well-being (SWB). However, the question of whether the levels and distribution of welfare provisions play distinctive roles in SWB has remained largely unanswered. To address this issue, the present study adopts a third approach based on benefit recipiency data to clarify the more detailed effects of three dimensions of welfare transfers, namely, transfer share, low-income targeting, and universalism, on SWB and well-being inequality stemming from income. This analysis utilizes benefit recipiency data from the Luxembourg Income Study Database, pooled data from the World Values Survey from 1981 to 2022, and linear regression with country and time fixed effects and a country fixed-effects and slopes model. Through an international comparative analysis, this study reveals that (1) transfer share is positively associated with SWB and that (2) low-income targeting diminishes well-being inequality stemming from income at the cost of SWB among rich individuals. The results of this study indicate that the levels and distribution of welfare provisions play differing roles in SWB and that low-income targeting may have unintended consequences for SWB.

Efforts to reduce work stress among frontline health workers in India, namely the rural Accredited Social Health Activists or ‘ASHAs’ (resident women, lay health workers) have predominantly emphasized on ‘extrinsic’ variables (e.g., financial incentives, or enhanced supervision), with little consideration of ‘intrinsic’ factors like the wellbeing of ASHAs themselves or building their abilities in managing work stress. ‘Character-strengths’ based positive psychological interventions have shown improvements in work wellbeing and engagement, but these findings have been largely observed in the Global North, with no experimental studies in India. This study is a pilot randomized controlled trial where rural ASHAs were allocated to receive regular supervision by their supervisors appointed by the health system (control arm), or a character-strengths based coaching intervention in addition to regular supervision (intervention arm). The intervention included a residential workshop and follow-on weekly individual telephonic coaching support. We aimed to examine the preliminary effectiveness of the intervention on happiness of ASHAs using the Authentic Happiness Inventory (primary outcome). At 3-month follow-up, ASHAs in the intervention arm showed higher total happiness scores (n = 30, Mean = 83.6; SD = 13.32) than ASHAs in the control arm (n = 31, Mean = 76.32; SD = 13.16), with a significant between-arm difference (Cohen’s d: 0.55). Secondary outcomes (e.g., burnout, motivation) showed non-significant between-arm differences at follow-up. We conducted telephone-interviews of ASHAs to gather their experiences of the intervention and used thematic analysis to assess its feasibility and acceptability. This study critically contributes to inform the ways by which rural frontline workers can use character-strengths to improve work wellbeing in low-resource settings.

Empirical happiness research clearly shows that life satisfaction depends, among other things, on relative effects. However, even where the data do not permit any inferences regarding the mechanisms that give rise to relative effects, studies often claim that relative effects are the result of comparisons that individuals make between their situation and that of others. We argue that this interpretation is not always justified because it disregards existing alternative interpretations with strong empirical support and a long tradition in the literature. To structure the interpretation of relative effects, we propose a model that distinguishes between the relative effects that influence aspirations and those that influence capabilities (i.e., the objective opportunities available to a person). We show where a number of relative effects fall into place in this model and we discuss the significance of our model for life satisfaction research.