Search Results (9)

Happiness is the ultimate life goal for most people, and the pursuit of happiness serves as the fundamental motivation driving human behavior. Orientation to Happiness (OTH) represents the aspect that individuals seek when making decisions or engaging in activities, including values, priorities, motivations, ideals, and goals. Nevertheless, existing research has predominantly approached OTH from an individualistic perspective, emphasizing an individual’s internal emotional state and personal goals, thereby neglecting the significant influence of a collectivist cultural background on the pursuit of happiness. To address this research gap, our study employs qualitative research methods, enabling us to delve deeply into the intricate interplay between cultural context, societal influences, and individual motivations that collectively shape OTH. Our research is dedicated to understanding the structure of OTH within the Chinese cultural context. Through semi-structured interviews with 26 Chinese adults and the utilization of an inductive style of thematic analysis, we have identified two core themes within the OTH of Chinese adults: Self-focused and Other-focused. Notably, the “Other-focused” theme emphasizes the pursuit of group harmony and the fulfillment of group responsibilities, highlighting the paramount role of “relationships” in the study of happiness within collectivist cultures. This insight forms a robust foundation for future research in this area. Full article

Due to different understandings of happiness, people adopt different tendencies to act, which is called orientation to happiness (OTH). Our previous study found that OTH had two core themes, Self-focused and Other-focused in Chinese culture, which was different from OTH structures in Western culture. However, no corresponding measurement tool has been developed or revised. The Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives for Activities Scale (HEMA) was the most commonly used measurement tool of OTH in recent years. The present study aimed to develop a Chinese version of the HEMA. A total of 1729 Chinese adults participated in this study. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used to examine the underlying structure of the Chinese version of the HEMA. The results supported the 3-factor structure of the translation instrument, and the 15-item scale had good convergent and discriminant validity. The three dimensions were named Hedonism, Eudaimonism, and Otherism. Among them, Otherism is a new dimension, which means “the pursuit of the harmony of the group and achieving happiness by fulfilling their responsibilities in the group”. The revised tool was named the Hedonic, Eudaimonic, and Otheristic Motives for Activities Scale-Chinese (HEOMA-C). The results showed that the HEOMA-C has good reliability and validity. Overall, the present study provided an effective tool to assess the OTH in Chinese culture. Full article

Personality accounts for how individuals differ in their enduring emotional, interpersonal, experiential, attitudinal and motivational styles. Personality, especially in the form of the Five Factor Model, has shown usefulness in personalized systems, such as recommender systems. In this work, we focus on a personality model that is targeted at motivations for multimedia consumption. The model is composed of two dimensions: the (i) eudaimonic orientation of users (EO) and (ii) hedonic orientation of users (HO). While the former accounts for how much a user is interested in content that deals with meaningful topics, the latter accounts for how much a user is interested in the entertaining quality of the content. Our research goal is to devise a model that predicts the EH and HO of users from interaction data with movies, such as ratings. We collected a dataset of 350 users, 703 movies and 3499 ratings. We performed a comparison of various predictive algorithms, as both regression and classification problems. Finally, we demonstrate that our proposed approach is able to predict the EO and HO of users from traces of interactions with movies substantially better than the baseline approaches. The outcomes of this work have implications for exploitation in recommender systems. Full article

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD, SDG 4) and human well-being (SDG 3) are among the central subjects of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this article, based on the Questionnaire for Eudaimonic Well-Being (QEWB), we investigate to what extent (a) there is a connection between EWB and practical commitment to the SDGs and whether (b) there is a deficit in EWB among young people in general. We also want to use the article to draw attention to the need for further research on the links between human well-being and commitment for sustainable development. A total of 114 students between the ages of 18 and 34, who are either engaged in (extra)curricular activities of sustainable development (28 students) or not (86 students), completed the QEWB. The students were interviewed twice: once regarding their current and their aspired EWB. Our results show that students who are actively engaged in activities for sustainable development report a higher EWB than non-active students. Furthermore, we show that students generally report deficits in EWB and wish for an improvement in their well-being. This especially applies to aspects of EWB related to self-discovery and the sense of meaning in life. Our study suggests that a practice-oriented ESD in particular can have a positive effect on the quality of life of young students and can support them in working on deficits in EWB. Full article

Internationally, about 25% of all children experience physical abuse by their parents. Despite the numerous odds against them, about 30% of adolescents who have experienced even the most serious forms of physical abuse by their parents escape the vicious family violence cycle. In this study, we analyzed longitudinally the data from a sample of N = 1767 seventh-grade high school students in Switzerland on physical abuse by their parents. We did this by conducting an online questionnaire twice within the school year. We found that in our sample, about 30% of the participating adolescents’ parents had physically abused them. We considered violence resilience a multi-systemic construct that included the absence of psychopathology on one hand and both forms of well-being (psychological and subjective) on the other. Our latent construct included both feeling good (hedonic indicators, such as high levels of self-esteem and low levels of depression/anxiety and dissociation) and doing well (eudaimonic indicators, such as high levels of self-determination and self-efficacy as well as low levels of aggression toward peers). By applying a person-oriented analytical approach via latent transition analysis with a sub-sample of students who experienced physical abuse (n_w2 = 523), we identified and compared longitudinally four distinct violence-resilience patterns and their respective trajectories. By applying to the field of resilience, one of the most compelling insights of well-being research (Deci & Ryan, 2001), we identified violence resilience as a complex, multidimensional latent construct that concerns hedonic and eudaimonic well-being and is not solely based on terms of psychopathology. Full article

The effects of hedonic and eudaimonic orientations on individual well-being have received much scholarly attention. However, the empirical findings from previous research are not consistent, raising the question of when the pursuit of hedonia and eudaimonia lead to actual improvements in individual well-being. We argue that the relationship between orientations to happiness and well-being outcomes are moderated by orientation priorities, which reflect the relative level of importance individuals place on eudaimonic motives compared to hedonic motives. A total of 312 Chinese undergraduate students completed surveys assessing hedonic and eudaimonic orientations, orientation priorities, and well-being outcomes, including psychological well-being, positive affect, and negative affect. The results revealed that a eudaimonic orientation was positively related to psychological well-being, a hedonic orientation was positively related to positive affect, and both relationships were moderated by orientation priorities. For individuals who prioritized eudaimonia over hedonia, both orientations improved well-being. For individuals who prioritized hedonia over eudaimonia, the benefits related to well-being from both orientations decreased or disappeared. These findings suggest that orientation priorities are of equal importance in regard to hedonic and eudaimonic orientations. Full article

(1) Aim: To assess the attitude toward Lifestyle Medicine and healthy behaviours among students in the healthcare area and to demonstrate its association to psychological well-being; (2) Methods: A cross-sectional study is conducted among 508 undergraduates of the University of Palermo (140 (27.6%) in the healthcare area and 368 (72.4%) in the non-healthcare area), during the academic year 2018–2019. Psychological well-being is measured through two dimensions of eudaimonia and hedonia, using the 10-item Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives for Activities-Revised (HEMA-R) scale, with answers coded on a 7-point scale. The association between demographic and modifiable behavioural risk factors for chronic diseases is assessed through crude and adjusted Odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals; (3) Results: Orientation to both hedonia and eudaimonia is significantly associated to the Mediterranean diet (ORAdj = 2.28; 95% CI = (1.42–3.70)) and drinking spirits less than once a week (ORAdj = 1.89; 95% CI = (1.10–3.27)) and once a week or more (ORAdj = 6.02; 95% CI = (1.05–34.52)), while these conditions occur together less frequently for current smokers (ORAdj = 0.38; 95% CI = (0.18–0.81)). Students inclined to well-being consider healthcare professionals as models for their patients and all people in general (OR = 1.96, 95% CI = (1.28–3.00)); (4) Conclusions: The positive relation found between a virtuous lifestyle and psychological well-being suggests the construction, development and cultivation of individual skills are a means to succeed in counteracting at risk behaviours for health. Full article

Engaging in prosocial behavior is considered an effective way to increase happiness in a sustainable manner. However, there is insufficient knowledge about the conditions under which such a happiness effect occurs. From a person-activity congruence perspective, we proposed that an individual’s eudaimonic orientation moderates the effect of prosocial behavior on happiness, whereas hedonic orientation does not. For this purpose, 128 participants were assigned to play a game in which half of them were explained the benevolence impact of playing the game (the benevolence condition), and the other half played the same game without this knowledge (the control condition). Participants’ eudaimonic and hedonic orientations were assessed before the game, and their post-task happiness were measured after the game. The results showed that participants in the benevolence condition reported higher post-task positive affect than those in the control condition. Furthermore, this happiness effect was moderated by participants’ eudaimonic orientation—participants with high eudaimonic orientation reaped greater benefits from benevolence, and their hedonic orientation did not moderate the relationship between benevolence and happiness. The importance of the effect of person-activity congruence on happiness is discussed, along with the implications of these findings for sustainably pursuing happiness. Full article

In organizations, psychologists have often tried to promote employees’ well-being and performance, and this can be achieved through different pathways. The happy-productive worker thesis states that ‘happy’ workers perform better than ‘unhappy’ ones. However, most studies have focused on hedonic well-being at the expense of the person’s eudaimonic experience. This study examines whether orientations to happiness (i.e., life of pleasure/meaning) are related to hedonic (i.e., perception of comfort) and eudaimonic (i.e., activity worthwhileness) experiences that, in turn, improve performance. We applied multilevel structural equation modeling to diary data (68 office workers; n = 471 timepoints). We obtained significant effects of: life of pleasure on self-rated performance through activity worthwhileness, life of meaning on performance (self-rated, rated by the supervisor) through activity worthwhileness, and life of meaning on performance rated by the supervisor through perception of comfort. Results show more significant paths from/or through eudaimonia to performance than from/or through hedonia. The results suggest that the pursuit and/or experience of eudaimonic happiness is more beneficial for work performance than the pursuit and/or experience of hedonic happiness. Theoretical and practical implications for organizations are discussed. Full article