Does Gratitude Promote Resilience During a Pandemic? An Examination of Mental Health and Positivity at the Onset of COVID-19
AbstractResearchers have emphasized the detrimental effects of COVID-19 on mental health, but less attention has been given to personal strengths promoting resilience during the pandemic. One strength might be gratitude, which supports wellbeing amidst adversity. A two-wave examination of 201 college students revealed anxiety symptom severity increased to a lesser extent from pre-COVID (January –March 2020) to onset-COVID (April 2020) among those who reported greater pre-COVID gratitude. A similar trend appeared for depression symptom severity. Gratitude was also correlated with less negative changes in outlook, greater ...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - July 14, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Latent State-Trait Modeling of Satisfaction with Life Scale: An Item-Level Analysis Using Dutch Panel Data
This study sought to examine the stability and change of the 5 items of the Satisfaction With Life Scale over several years. The multi-trait-multi-state model was used to separate the variance components attributable to stable influences, time-varying situational influences, and random measurement error. The study used two partially overlapping samples of Dutch adults surveyed annually over 8 and 5 years (N1 = 9,300, N2 = 6,770). Results show that between 54% and 63% of the variance in items is stable over time, whereas between 6% and 26% of the variance is due to occasion-specific influences (i.e., situational influences ...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - July 7, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Does the Weekly Practice of Recalling and Elaborating Episodes Raise Well-Being in University Students?
This study aimed to (a) test the effectiveness of a seven-week well-being intervention, in increasing need satisfaction, self-compassion, emotion regulation, and grateful disposition by curbing need frustration, self-derogation, and emotional suppression, and (b) examine the maintenance and long-term effects of the practices based on recall, elaboration, and writing. One hundred and twenty university students weekly recalled and elaborated for seven consecutive weeks on three recent episodes of gratitude, self-affirmation, goal setting, or meaningful things, according to the group to which they were assigned. Before the in...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - July 6, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Well-being Monism Defended
AbstractIn “Well-Being and Pluralism” (2021), Polly Mitchell and Anna Alexandrova defend conceptual pluralism about well-being. Conceptual pluralism about well-being holds that there are multiple, irreducible concepts of well-being that are employed in different contexts, all equally legitimate as concepts of well-being. Moreover,"Conceptual pluralism about well-being entails that there is no single essence which characterises all and only instances of well-being ” (Mitchell and Alexandrova in J Happiness Stud 22:2411–2433, 2021). Conceptual monism about well-being, on the other hand, holds, at a minimum, that...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - July 6, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Housing prices and the subjective well-being of migrant workers: evidence from China
AbstractOwning a house is important for most young people in urban China, especially for migrants. For migrants who want to settle in their working city, high housing prices may have a negative effect on their subjective well-being. Using nationally representative migrant survey data, this study examines the relationship between housing prices and migrants ’ subjective well-being in China. The results indicate that housing prices play a significantly negative role in migrants’ subjective well-being, especially for low-educated, female, and rural-to-urban migrants. These results are robust to instrumental variable analy...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 29, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Nostalgia and Satisfaction with Life: A Behavioral Genetic Analysis
AbstractNostalgia, a bittersweet but predominantly positive emotion, arises from self-relevant and social memories. Evidence suggests that nostalgia is a potential source of happiness. Indeed, at the phenotypic level, this relation appears to be positive albeit tenuous. At the etiologic level, the relation is unknown. To fill this knowledge gap, we investigated the phenotypic and genetic association between nostalgia and satisfaction with life (SWL). We assessed nostalgia and SWL in 464 twin siblings, including 117 monozygotic twin pairs and 115 dizygotic twin pairs. By comparing monozygotic twins to dizygotic twins, we an...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 25, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The Role of ‘Peace of Mind’ and ‘Meaningfulness’ as Psychological Concepts in Explaining Subjective Well-being
This study investigated whether psychological concepts ‘peace of mind’ and ‘meaningfulness’ contribute to SWB beyond the basic and psychological needs while using several needs theories as a theoretical basis and thereby hypothesizing that both concepts are actionable and help enhance SWB.MethodsThe cross-sectional data (N = 3770) of the Belgian National happiness study (2018) were used. Three components of SWB (life satisfaction, positive and negative affect) were identified as predicted variables and used in threefold stepwise forward regression analyses.ResultsAs expected both basic and psychological needs ...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 23, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The effects of psychological interventions on well-being measured with the Mental Health Continuum: a meta-analysis
AbstractThe last decades experienced a rapid growth in the number of studies examining the effects of psychological interventions on well-being, yet well-being is often conceptualized and measured in different ways in these studies. Previous meta-analyses included studies with a plethora of different well-being instruments, which provides an ambiguous picture of the effectiveness. Furthermore, prior meta-analyses mainly included specific types of psychological interventions. The goal of the current study was to synthesize the effectiveness of psychological interventions in improving well-being as measured with one consiste...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 22, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Is there a dose-response relationship? Investigating the functional form between COVID-19 incidence rates and life satisfaction in a multilevel framework
AbstractWhile there is plenty of research linking the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic to a drastic reduction of life satisfaction in the population, there is little information on the functional form of this relationship. Until now, one could suspect that this association is linear and a higher number of COVID-19 infections in a region leads to a continuous decline of satisfaction. However, there are reasons to assume that this interrelation is indeed more complex and deserves further attention. To resolve this question, high-quality panel data of the first wave of COVID-19 from Germany are analysed in a fixed-effe...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 21, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Looking Beyond Linear: A Closer Examination of the Relationship Between Wisdom and Wellbeing
AbstractThere has been some controversy about the relationship between wisdom and constructs of the well-being complex. Some wisdom researchers argue that the ability to maintain a high level of well-being, even in the face of very negative experiences, is a core characteristic of wisdom. Other researchers argue that the willingness of wise people to reflect on the darker sides of life might jeopardize well-being. Studies mostly found moderate positive correlations of well-being with self-report wisdom measures and negative, zero, or low positive correlations with open-ended measures of wisdom. This paper tests the hypothe...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 18, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Resource-Building Processes Across Life Domains: Father-Child Interactions as Starting Points for Resource Caravans
AbstractIn two studies, we examined preconditions of resource-building processes between family and work. Focusing on positive father-child interactions, we investigated positive mood states as links between the two life domains. Fathers employed in information technology (N1 = 59) and the retail sector (N2 = 75) participated in micro-longitudinal studies, both for eight consecutive workdays. Study 1 revealed that fathers with more positive interactions with a child also reported more positive mood states and fathers with more positive mood states perceived more social resources from their supervi sor during the we...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 16, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
When Happiness is Both Joy and Purpose: The Complexity of the Pursuit of Happiness and Well-Being is Related to Actual Well-Being
AbstractPeople differ in how they define and pursue happiness and well-being (HWB). Previous studies suggested that the best way to achieve a high level of well-being might be to pursue different facets of HWB simultaneously. We expand on this idea and introduce the concept ofcomplexity of HWB definitions to describe how many HWB definitions peopleendorse simultaneously, and thecomplexity of HWB-related intentions to describe how many unique facets of HWB peopleintend to pursue in everyday life. To operationalize these novel concepts, we developed two parallel measures that integrate psychological and philosophical definit...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 10, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Networks of happiness: applying a Network Approach to Well-Being in the General Population
AbstractEven though well-being can be seen as a multidimensional construct, made up of a variety of interacting aspects, most studies examine total scores on well-being measures, treating well-being as a latent variable. This so-called common cause perspective assumes that aspects of well-being are mere effects of a common cause, namely well-being itself. The network approach moves away from this approach by suggesting that research should no longer focus only on the mean level of psychological constructs, but on the relations between the different aspects of a construct over time. Instead of a static, common cause approac...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 9, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Grit Across Nations: The Cross-National Equivalence of the Grit-O Scale
AbstractDespite its popularity in practice, the Grit-O Scale has shown inconsistent factorial structures and differing levels of internal consistency in samples outside the USA. The validity of the Grit-O Scale in different contexts is, therefore, questionable. As such, the purpose of this paper was to determine whether the Grit-O Scale could be used as a valid and reliable measure to compare grit across different nations. Specifically, the aim was to investigate the factorial validity, reliability, and concurrent validity of the Grit-O Scale and to investigate measurement invariance across three national cohorts (Europe, ...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 8, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The Roles of Social Media Use and Friendship Quality in Adolescents ’ Internalizing Problems and Well-being
AbstractAdolescents spend increasing amounts of time using social media, but whether social media use has a beneficial or harmful role in internalizing problems and well-being during adolescence remains under debate. The present study explored associations of social media use and friendship quality with adolescents ’ internalizing problems and well-being both concurrently and longitudinally, including the exploration of interactive effects between social media use and friendship quality and the examination of gender differences. Online questionnaire data collected in Spring 2018 and Spring 2019 from 1,298 Du tch adolesce...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 6, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
