engleski

Pathways to happiness, life aspirations, and hedonic/eudaimonic well-being

Seligman (2002) speaks about three ways in which people try to find happiness: a pleasant life, a good life and a meaningful life. Based on the previous research it can be expected that people focusing on good and meaningful life respectively are more oriented towards intrinsic life goals and achieve higher well-being, while those oriented on pleasant life more often chose extrinsic life goals and have lower well-being. The aims of the study were to explore whether students can be classified into the groups according to their dominant approach to happiness and how these groups differ in their life goals and well-being. The participants were 950 students (406 males, 544 females), aged 15 to 22 years. Five questionnaires were administered: Approaches to Happiness, Aspiration Index (measuring life goals), The Satisfaction with Life Scale and Subjective Vitality Scale (measuring hedonic well-being), and Psychological Well-Being Scale (measuring eudaimonic well-being). Cluster analysis showed that subjects can be classified into the five groups. Three of them match the described approaches to happiness (pleasant life, good life, meaningful life). Two additional groups had results on all variables consistently higher and lower then average. The results mostly confirmed the hypothesis that students who strive to meaningful life were more oriented to intrinsic goals and showed higher both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, while students who aspire at good life preferred extrinsic goals and had lower both kinds of well-being.

well-being; life goals; approaches to happiness

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