The pursuit of happiness is an important goal for many people. However, surprisingly little scientific research has focused on the question of how happiness can be increased and then sustained, probably because of pessimism engendered by the concepts of genetic determinism and hedonic adaptation. Nevertheless, emerging sources of optimism exist regarding the possibility of permanent increases i...

The constructs of mental health and happiness overlap with each other to a substantial degree. Positive or negative feelings are intrinsic to each and to their opposites, and the constructs, although distinct, have partly similar causes and consequences. The vitamin model summarized here originated primarily as a perspective on mental health (Warr, 1987) but has since been applied mainly to hap...

Providing a curriculum that promotes personal growth and wellbeing is an overarching learning outcome of the Western Australian Curriculum Framework (Curriculum Framework, 1998). However, little is known about what constitutes and causes wellbeing of students in our primary schools. In the study reported in this paper the happiness of 312 primary-aged students was measured using various instrum...

BACKGROUND While self-control has often been related to positive outcomes in life such as higher academic achievements and better health, recent insights reveal that people with high trait self-control (TSC) may even experience greater life satisfaction or happiness. OBJECTIVE The current study further scrutinizes this potential association between TSC and happiness, and examines how regulato...

In line with self-determination theory and Fredrickson's (2001) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, this study adopts a positive perspective on students' school experiences and their general psychological functioning. The reciprocal effects of positive school experiences and happiness, a dimension of affective well-being, are examined over the course of an academic year. Data were co...

Culture is an important factor affecting happiness. This paper examines the predictive power of cultural factors on the cross-country differences in happiness and explores how different dimensions of cultural indices differ in their effects on happiness. Our empirical results show that the global leadership and organizational behavior effectiveness nine culture indices are all significantly rel...

We examine whether a positive feedback loop exists between spending money on others (i.e. prosocial spending) and happiness. Participants recalled a previous purchase made for either themselves or someone else and then reported their happiness. Afterward, participants chose whether to spend a monetary windfall on themselves or someone else. Participants assigned to recall a purchase made for so...

" We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same. " ~Anne Frank No matter how different people's lives – whether due to age, gender, culture, or life experience – the desire for happiness is widespread. Across cultures, the majority of people include happiness as one of their primary goals in life (Diener, 2000), and many seek ways to render themselv...

Despite the existence of a large volume of literature on subjective well-being (SWB) of the general population, very few studies have focused on individuals with disabilities. The present study uses data on 24,036 Canadians with disabilities to investigate factors affecting their SWB. It found that SWB, measured here by level of happiness, decreases with severity of disability but is independen...