Wage Structures, Fairness Perceptions, and Job Satisfaction: Evidence from Linked Employer-Employee Data
AbstractThe paper investigates the impact of firms ’ wage structures and workers’ wage fairness perceptions on workers’ well-being. For this purpose, worker and establishment surveys are linked with administrative social security data. Four variables are generated, using approximately half a million worker-year observations, that describe firm s’ wage structures and workers’ positions within the wage structures: own absolute wages, internal reference wages within firms, external reference wages, and the wage dispersion in firms. The interrelations between these wage structure variables, workers’ perceived wage ...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - August 29, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Financial Wellbeing and International Migration Intentions: Evidence from Global Surveys
AbstractThis paper investigates the role of subjective financial wellbeing (FWB) in international migration. A large body of literature established that higher relative income deprivation motivates migration. Most of this literature emphasizes income-based measures of relative deprivation (RD) and neglects to account for subjective perceptions of financial and economic wellbeing. We draw on rich global surveys from the Gallup World Poll (GWP) between 2009 and 2018, across 151 countries. Employing a range of indicators, after controlling for initial absolute income, we find that international migration intentions are  not ...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - August 21, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Cultural Variation in Flourishing
AbstractDespite differences in how scholars define flourishing, they tend to approach the question of flourishing from a universalist perspective by assuming that it amounts to a single, overarching concept across cultures. We will review the weaknesses in this approach. First, we highlight limitations in current “cross-cultural” research on flourishing, which prioritizes psychometric validity at the expense of cultural validity. We then review the inherent Western assumptions that seem to underly the flourishing literature, which include the tendency to (1) focus on the person as an independent, autonom ous unit, (2) ...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - July 31, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Subjective Happiness in Behavioral Contracts
AbstractThis paper studies how payment schemes influence subjective happiness. Self-adaptation and interpersonal comparisons are internal and external determinants of happiness, respectively. We study the influence of contracts on employees' subjective happiness, and further on their willingness-to-work behaviors. We use quantitative manners and prospect theory's gain-loss utility function to measure happiness coming from binary payment schemes. Our analysis predicts the existence of a ratio between the bonus and the payment base, under which people who have a relatively high envy level cannot feel happy all the time. We e...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - July 23, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Disentangling the Relations Between Self-esteem and Subjective Well-being in Emerging Adults: A Two-wave Longitudinal Study
This study used four competing structural models of SWB (i.e., the three-factor model, the causal model, the hierarchical model and the bi-factor model) to investigate the relationships between self-esteem and SWB in a total of 997 emerging Chinese adults (Mage = 19.79 years; 65.20% females) through a two-wave longitudinal study. From the point of view of the fit index, the results showed that the bi-factor model fitted our data better than the other three models. Importantly, results for the vast majority of models demonstrated the existence of the reciprocal link between self-esteem and subjective well-being in emerging ...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - July 19, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Flow and Flourishing During the Pandemic: The Roles of Strengths Use and Playful Design
AbstractRuminative thoughts induced by the COVID-19 pandemic have an adverse impact on individual well-being. However, little is known about how to alleviate such a negative effect – let alone how a person can flourish during crises. The current study uses the self-determination model of flow to propose that two proactive behaviors, strength use and playful design, are positively related to the flow experience, which, in turn, is positively related to daily flourishing. More over, we propose that the effects of proactive behaviors on flow are stronger when individuals ruminate more about COVID-19 pandemic. Using a day re...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - July 19, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Life Satisfaction During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Human, Economic, Social, and Psychological Capital
AbstractA cornerstone of well-being research is that the resource-rich are happier with their lives than the resource-poor and better positioned to cope with stressful life events. This paper addresses the role of various resources —human, economic, social, and psychological capital—in life satisfaction during the coronavirus pandemic, using panel data from Germany and the United Kingdom for 2020 and 2021. Cross-sectionally, we find life satisfaction to be clearly related to all these forms of capital, with psychological c apital being the strongest predictor of life satisfaction. Longitudinally, the capital endowments...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - July 18, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

What ’s Your Humor Profile? A Latent Profile Analysis on the State-Trait Model of Cheerfulness as the Temperamental Basis of Humor
AbstractThe temperamental basis of humor posits that high cheerfulness, low seriousness, and low bad mood contribute to exhilaration and enjoyment of humor. The present study extends the empirical support for this model in an examination of whether different latent profiles exist based on levels of cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood. Latent profile analysis was conducted in a sample of 788 undergraduate participants (71.6% female) 16 to 40  years old (M = 18.28;SD = 1.24) to evaluate humor temperament subtypes based on facets of cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood. Boosting classification machine learning...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - July 1, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Mindfulness and Subjective Well-being Among Chinese Adolescents: A Longitudinal Study and a Weekly Diary Investigation
AbstractEnhancing subjective well-being is essential for enlightening individual pursuit of a better life in positive psychology. Although numerous research projects have preliminarily investigated the effect of mindfulness (MD) on subjective well-being (SWB) and its potential mechanisms, few longitudinal studies have investigated the bidirectional association between MD and SWB at both trait and state levels. On this basis, this study aimed to comprehensively explain the temporary and longitudinal relationships between MD and SWB [positive affect (PA), negative affect (NA), life satisfaction (LS)] at both trait and state ...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 26, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Within-Person Associations Between Subjective Well-Being and Big Five Personality Traits
This study examined the temporal within-person associations between subjective well-being (life satisfaction, positive affect, low negative affect) and the Big Five personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism). A representative American sample was used, collected over a period of approximately two decades and at 3 time points. To separate between-person and within-person levels, the random-intercept cross-lagged panel model was used. Results at the within-person level showed that higher-than-usual levels of subjective well-being were associated with higher-tha...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 25, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Who Benefits from Domestic Market Integration?
AbstractThe historical integration of economic markets between and within nations has profoundly altered human society. Nonetheless, existing literature on this topic has seldom gone beyond the economic repercussions of this phenomenon. Accordingly, this study examines the relationship between domestic market integration and subjective well-being, of which very little is known. Taking China as a case, we match individual-level data from a longitudinal survey with province-level data to construct panel data and use the fixed effect model to estimate the welfare effect of market integration. Our studies suggest that market i...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 23, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

State Contexts, Job Insecurity, and Subjective Well-being in the Time of COVID-19
AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching economic and psychological consequences beyond its direct influence on population health. Guided by stress process theory, we theorize a cross-level amplified stress proliferation process. That is, macro-level epidemiological, economic, and policy shocks proliferate into individual-level perceived job insecurity, which in turn deteriorates subjective well-being; macro-level shocks may additionally amplify the well-being risk of insecurity. To test these propositions, we use fixed-effects models to analyze three-wave, nationally representative data on 1,306 U.S. workers (Ma...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 20, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Pleasure or Meaning: Subjective Well-Being Orientations and the Willingness to Help Close Versus Distant Others
We examined the role of two Subjective well-being orientations,hedonism (maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain) andeudemonia (a desire for meaningful life), in prosocial behavior toward a close help recipient versus a distant one. Study 1 examined individual differences in levels of hedonism and eudemonia, while studies 2 and 3 used a priming manipulation to enhance the salience of the two orientations. In all three studies we found that these orientations interact with the attributes of the help recipient during the decision to help. Specifically, hedonism was found to be positively associated with prosocial acts when t...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 19, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

The Relationship Between Personality Traits and Well-Being via Brain Functional Connectivity
AbstractDifferent single personality traits have been found to be closely related to well-being, and single personality traits and well-being shared multiple neural substrates. Yet little is known about how the multi-trait profile, which better reflects individual differences in terms of taxonomy, is related to multi-faceted well-being, and whether the spontaneous brain activities of their common neural substrates can partially explain this relationship. To advance our understanding, we examined the relationships among personality traits, well-being, and brain functional connectivity generated in resting-state functional M...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 19, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Social Connection Constellations and Individual Well-Being Typologies: Using the Loglinear Modeling Approach with Latent Variables
This study used a pattern-based approach to (1) identify different constellations of quality, quantity, and need in social connection, (2) identify different typologies of well-being (using indicators of life satisfaction, a sense of purpose, depression, and perceived stressed), and (3) investigate their associations holistically. In a sample of 700 individuals (age: 17 –33; 79.9% females; 77.1% White), five social connection constellations (i.e., low, dissatisfied, satisfied, compensatory, and high [social connection]) and three well-being typologies (i.e., distressed, satisfied, and aimless overload [well-being]) were ...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - June 12, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research