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Getting off the hedonic treadmill, one step at a time: The impact of regular religious practice and exercise on well-being
Abstract
Many studies have shown that few events in life have a lasting impact on subjective well-being because of people’s tendency to adapt quickly; worse, those events that do have a lasting impact tend to be negative. We suggest that while major events may not provide lasting increases in well-being, certain seemingly minor events – such as attending religious services or exercising – may do so by providing small but frequent boosts: if people engage in such behaviors with sufficient frequency, they may cumulatively experience enough boosts to attain higher well-being. In Study 1, we surveyed places of worship for 12 religions and found that people did receive positive boosts for attending service, and that these boosts appeared to be cumulative: the more they reported attending, the happier they were. In Study 2, we generalized these effects to other regular activities, demonstrating that people received boosts for exercise and yoga, and that these boosts too had a cumulative positive impact on well-being. We suggest that shifting focus from the impact of major life changes on well-being to the impact of seemingly minor repeated behaviors is crucial for understanding how best to improve well-being.
... A growing research literature suggests that time spent by physicians on the EHR has been linked to their reduced satisfaction with work. 4-6 An analysis of EHR log data on the distribution of work time of 471 primary care physicians (in family medicine, internal medicine, or pediatrics) suggests that over 50 percent of their time is spent on desktop medicine tasks. 1 A study of 142 family physicians reports that managing the EHR's in-basket takes about 23 percent of their doi: 10 workday. 7 Despite concerns about the amount of physicians' time spent on EHR in-baskets, 7,8 the literature is relatively silent regarding the sources of in-basket messages and their relative volumes. ...
... As federal meaningfuluse regulations continue to shape how health care organizations deliver care, the impact of desktop medicine workload on physicians' wellbeing can have critical policy implications. 10 ...
... Variable Definitions Three dependent variables came from the one-item burnout measure (a validated five-point scale, with a score of 3 or higher indicating burnout), 12 intention to reduce clinical work time, and a three-item general life satisfaction scale used in previous research on well-being. 10 For explanatory variables, we examined the volume of in-basket messages during a six-week period in late 2016. The in-basket messages included those from patients and other clinicians, as well as messages generated by the EHR system. ...
Despite concerns about physicians' workload associated with electronic health records (EHRs), little attention has been paid to the relationship between physicians' well-being and the in-basket messages physicians receive-specifically, their volume and sources. Analyses of EHR work performed by physicians in a multispecialty practice found that in-basket messages generated by the EHR system accounted for almost half (114) of the 243 weekly in-basket messages received per physician, on average-far exceeding the numbers received from their colleagues (53) and patients (30). In a survey, 36 percent of the physicians reported burnout symptoms, and 29 percent intended to reduce their clinical work time in the upcoming year. Receiving more than the average number of system-generated in-basket messages was associated with 40 percent higher probability of burnout and 38 percent higher probability of intending to reduce clinical work time. Physicians' perceptions of a positive work environment were associated with lower odds of burnout and intention to reduce clinical work time and with greater satisfaction with life. Female physicians had a higher risk of burnout and lower satisfaction with life, compared to males. Meaningful redesign of EHR in-basket workflow and a wellness-enhancing work environment are necessary to effectively improve physicians' well-being.
... Most of the previous studies on the relationship between religiosity and happiness is cross-sectional. Mochon, Norton, and Ariely (2008) is one of the few studies to show that people report higher subjective well-being after attending religious services compared to before attending religious services for different Christian denominations. Following Mochon et al.'s (2008) spirit, 1 There are certain exceptions. ...
... Therefore, our findings could overestimate the happiness effects of Ramadan. Our finding is in line with Mochon et al. (2008) in which Christian adherents were found to report higher well-being after participating in a religious service than before. Our findings are also consistent with Campante and Yanagizawa-Drott (2015) and Mousavi et al. (2015) in which they found happiness-increasing effects of Ramadan. ...
The lunar month of Ramadan is an important time period for Muslims around the world. In this study, we examine whether Ramadan brings happiness to individuals. For this purpose, we conducted a survey once before Ramadan, three times during Ramadan, and once after Ramadan. Our results show that with every week in Ramadan, a small boost of happiness is reported. Yet, two weeks after Ramadan, people seem to return to their baseline level of happiness. We suggest that Ramadan is associated with higher well-being due to increased socialization as non-fasting and those who fast partially also has statistically higher happiness scores than pre-Ramadan sample. Yet, those who have highest happiness scores are those who fasted fully.
... This substantiates prior findings in the literature. Many other researchers discovered that stronger correlations exist between life satisfaction and attendance to religious services, rather than frequency of prayer (Assari 2013;Ferriss 2002;Mochon et al. 2008). Frequent attendance to services appears to provide small frequent bursts of well-being that add up in the long run (Mochon et al. 2008). ...
... Many other researchers discovered that stronger correlations exist between life satisfaction and attendance to religious services, rather than frequency of prayer (Assari 2013;Ferriss 2002;Mochon et al. 2008). Frequent attendance to services appears to provide small frequent bursts of well-being that add up in the long run (Mochon et al. 2008). Other researchers have reported that frequent prayer also boosts psychological well-being, optimism and hope (Lambert et al. 2009;Maltby et al. 1999;Sethi and Seligman 1993) and translates into elevated life satisfaction. ...
Religious behaviour tends to correlate positively with life satisfaction. The predictive power of this relationship is associated with various socio-demographic factors such as age, gender and religious affiliation. We investigated the relationship between religious involvement and life satisfaction in a multi-religious population of undergraduate medical students of the University of the West Indies. We used a cross-sectional design to assess 228 undergraduates (50 males and 178 females) on religiosity, religious well-being and life satisfaction using the Religious Orientation Test, Religious Well-Being subscale and the Satisfaction with Life Scale, respectively. Respondents also provided socio-demographic information such as age, gender and religious affiliation. “How religious one considers oneself” was the religiosity construct most significantly associated with life satisfaction while “frequency of prayer” was the least. Christians registered higher religiosity and religious well-being but non-Christians reported significantly higher life satisfaction. Muslim and Hindu scores on religiosity, religious well-being and life satisfaction were not statistically different. Females scored higher than males on religiosity (borderline significant, p = .054) and significantly higher on religious well-being (p < .01); however, there was no significant difference between males and females on life satisfaction. The “religious affiliation” group scored significantly higher on religiosity and religious well-being compared with the “no religious affiliation” group but there was no difference between these two groups on life satisfaction. Religiosity and religious well-being were overall significantly and positively associated with life satisfaction. However, in demographic groups where there was higher religiosity, for example females, Christians, people affiliated with a religion and older people, it was not associated with greater life satisfaction.
... Moreover, religious involvement may serve as a source of social support derived from membership in a community of believers and greater social "networking" through regular attendance at religious services. A number of prior studies reveal a positive association between regular participation in religious services and well-being (Mochon et al., 2008;Pawlikowski et al., 2019). However, during the pandemic, the possibility of participating in communal religious services might have been restricted or discouraged due to the possibility of viral transmission. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic shook up societies, leaving a stigma on the health and well-being of many individuals. How big this stigma was depended on individual factors, which researchers are now trying to relate. One aspect affecting well-being during the pandemic may have been religiosity. In our longitudinal study of a representative sample of Poles, we took two measurements, in March 2021 and April 2022, obtaining a sample of N=622 repeated respondents out of 1000. We categorized participating individuals as religious, fuzzy or secular and, partly using retrospective questions, we compared their levels of well-being (WHO-5 index, Q-LES-Q-SF) before the outbreak as well as one and two years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that in the general population, despite a decline in well-being one year after the pandemic outbreak (2021), there was an improvement in the following year (2022), with religiosity proving to have a positive impact on well-being. The religious category achieved higher well-being values than the secular, especially in March 2021, when the effects of the pandemic were strongly felt in society in the form of lockdowns and the highest number of deaths.
... Using a survey questionnaire, Darviri et al. (29) showed that personal choices like how and when we sleep, dietary choices, physical exercise, and the social and mental balance in our daily routine can affect the stress in our lives and our health and well-being. Daily activities like commuting (30), working (31), when we eat (32), religious participation, and exercise affect our well-being (33). Using two subjective data sources, socio-economic survey and DRM data, Möwisch at. ...
Self-reported subjective judgments about well-being, mood, or mental state are at the core of analytical and empirical tools in many social sciences. However, technological advances (particularly in neuroscience) are opening new ways of monitoring physiological processes through non-intrusive means. Such dense continuous data provide new and fruitful avenues for complementing self-reported data with a better understanding of human dynamics and human interactions. Thus, in this study, we follow more than 300 individuals over a period of 24 hours, mapping their core activities (5,000 recorded activities in total) with measurements of their heart rate variability (HRV) and their assessment of subjective hedonic well-being (positive affect). Our results indicate a robust correlation between physiological measurements and self-reported affect. A lower HRV is positively correlated with self-reported positive affect. We also find that physical activities as well as relaxation are important for well-being, no matter what sort of actions follow, increasing positive feelings and inducing positive spillover effects on later endeavours. Individuals also report higher positive feelings prior to performing physical activities, providing new insights on how to harness activity data to extrapolate to the future.
... But, in economics many results are obtained using the weaker assumption requiring utility to be only ordinal, which means we are back at how SWB is actually measured in surveys (including in the European Social Survey; ESS), for example as an ordinal measure (see Method section). Empirically, the disagreement on effects of religion on SWB is found in numerous studies (e.g., Clark & Lelkes, 2006;Eichhorn, 2012;Ellison, 1991;Mochon, Norton, & Ariely, 2008;Stark & Maier, 2008). ...
There is no convergence in empirical literature about the effects of religion on subjective wellbeing although religious denomination is increasingly used as an important explanation of different developments in modern societies. In this study it is assessed whether religious denomination affects happiness through application of the European Social Survey that covers 2002-2018. Descriptive results indicate a advantage for Protestants. Once we control background factors, this advantage is considerably reduced. Although the advantage is statistically significant it has a low magnitude, and the happiness across religions is practically the same. In contrast, there is a huge effect of the degree of religiosity, while prayer load and the frequency of visiting places of worship are negligible. Results are generally stable across survey years and countries.
... The importance of these programs may not lie entirely in their explicit content, but in their capacity to create an ongoing enabling environment. Mochon, Norton and Ariely (2008), also note that "shifting focus from the impact of major life changes on well-being to the impact of seemingly minor repeated behaviors is crucial for understanding how best to improve well-being" (p. 642). ...
... In line with these findings, Aghili & Kumar (2008) mention that religiosity is associated with happiness; the more religious, the greater happiness gained. Many empirical studies also find a positive relationship between religiosity and happiness (Campante & Yanagizawa-Drott, 2013;Mochon et al., 2008;Ugur, 2018). Li & Bond (2010) examined the effect of secularism on life satisfaction using World Value Survey data. ...
If people are religious, are they happier? This study tries to answer the preceding question and to determine the factors affecting happiness among Indonesian labor. The dummy generation variable was used to know whether Gen X, Gen Y, and baby boomers can affect happiness. Several variables were also examined related to happiness. This study can be categorized as empirical research using ordinary least squares. The data were sourced from the Indonesian Family Life Survey 2014 (IFLS5). The number of samples selected was 21,919 individuals with the criteria of individuals aged 15 years and over who worked and earned income. The data analysis technique used OLS regression to prove the factors that influence happiness. The results of the research showed that religiosity, education, ownership of assets, social, job satisfaction, and the dummy generation have a positive and significant effect on people’s happiness. This study has confirmed that religiosity is a factor that can affect people’s happiness. Another factor, the generation the person belongs to, also affects happiness.
... A wealth of empirical studies find a positive relationship between religiosity and happiness (Campante & Yanagizawa-Drott, 2015;Mochon et al., 2008;Ugur, 2018). Many studies also find that religious people are happier, particularly in religious places (Diener et al., 2011;Gebauer et al., 2012Gebauer et al., , 2017Stavrova et al., 2013). ...
In this study, we shed light on how the social aspect of religiosity affects well-being of religious and non-religious individuals utilizing a province-level representative dataset with more than 196,000 observations from Turkey. The large-scale data from an Islam-dominant country is one of the strengths of this article. First, in line with previous studies, we show that the average religiosity in the province where individuals live matters especially for the well-being of religious individuals. Second, the bulk of non-religious people do not care about others’ religiosity nor what others think of their own religiosity. Moreover, 94% of the non-religious do not feel under pressure. When put together, the analysis results suggest that what drives person–culture fit in religiosity in Turkey is not non-religious people’s marginalization. Rather, religious people seem to benefit from being in the company of fellow religious individuals as they attach an importance to others’ religiosity.
... The cumulative benefits over a longer period may be substantially different if participants are better able to make plans for upcoming cash and time infusions. For example, longer-term time-saving services may provide increasing marginal returns and more persistent benefits if people spend their additional time on repeated rewarding activities like learning a new skill, applying for new jobs, establishing a new business, or volunteering 47 . ...
Poverty entails more than a scarcity of material resources—it also involves a shortage of time. To examine the causal benefits of reducing time poverty, we conducted a longitudinal field experiment over six consecutive weeks in an urban slum in Kenya with a sample of working mothers, a population who is especially likely to experience severe time poverty. Participants received vouchers for services designed to reduce their burden of unpaid labor. We compared the effect of these vouchers against equivalently valued unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) and a neutral control condition. In contrast to our pre-registered hypotheses, a pre-registered Bayesian ANCOVA indicated that the time-saving, UCT, and control conditions led to similar increases in subjective well-being, reductions in perceived stress, and decreases in relationship conflict (Cohen’s d’s ranged from 0.25 to 0.85 during the treatment weeks and from 0.21 to 0.36 at the endline). Exploratory analyses revealed that the time-saving vouchers and UCTs produced these benefits through distinct psychological pathways. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for economic development initiatives.
Protocol registration
The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 27/06/2019. The protocol, as accepted by Nature Human Behaviour, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4368455.
... While elevations in positive affect can be harnessed by the general population (e.g. Mochon et al., 2008), it could be more difficult for people with psychiatric disorders, especially those with anhedonia who experience a lack of positive emotional experiences. Although findings from Nylocks et al. (2018) clearly suggested similar processes driving healthy behaviors in patients with anxiety and depression, they did report generally lower levels of positive affect and fewer behaviors. ...
Identifying causes of healthy behaviors is important for harnessing health benefits. A growing body of experience sampling research suggests that positive emotion may drive these behaviors. However, it is not known how long elevations in positive emotion facilitate these behaviors in daily life. The present study tested how time between signals moderates the association between within-person positive affect and healthy behaviors. A sample of 197 college students completed a 10-day experience sampling diary, with 5 signals a day, measuring affect and healthy behaviors. We replicated results from Nylocks and colleagues (2018) finding that within-person positive affect predicted engagement in healthy behaviors; however, this association was only significant within the same day, and not across days (i.e. overnight). Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of considering positive affect, rather than negative affect in patients with psychopathology, to improve behavioral interventions targeted to increase engagement in healthy behaviors.
... [16][17][18] Ayrıca bazı yabancı kaynaklı ve farklı gruplara uygulanmış çalışmalarda da katılımcıların düzenli egzersizlerinin yapılmasının sağlıklı ve mutlu hissetme durumları üzerindeki olumlu etkileri araştırma sonuçlarını destekler niteliktedir. 19,20 Mutluluk ile beslenme arasında da anlamlı ve pozitif ilişkinin varlığı beslenmenin insanlarda güzel hazlar uyandırması ve sağlıklı beslenmenin kişisel görünüm ve tatmini etkilemesiyle yorumlanabilir. Ayrıca, sporcular ve fintess merkezine gelen erkek yetişkinlere yönelik yapılan çalışmalarla da aynı doğrultuda sonuçlara ulaşılmıştır. ...
Çağımız sağlık öngörüsü; bireyin iyilik halini sürdürecek, koruyacak ve geliştirecek davranışlar elde etmesini ve kendi sağlığı ile alakalı yerinde ve doğru kararlar alabilmesini sağlamak adına dayandırılmış ve bu kararlar bireylerin mutlulukları ile ilişkilidir. Araştırmada bir vakıf üniversitesinin sağlık yönetimi bölümünde eğitim gören öğrencilerin Sağlıklı Yaşam Biçimi Davranışlarının (SYBD) mutluluk düzeyleri ile ilişkisini ve etkilerini tespit etmek amaçlanmıştır. Evrenin tamamına ulaşılmak hedeflendiği için örneklem seçimi yapılmamıştır. Araştırmada bağımlı değişken mutluluk düzeyi iken bağımsız değişken SYBD'dir. Değişkenler arasındaki ilişkinin analiz edilmesi için Pearson Korelasyon Analizi, etkilerin ölçülmesi için ise Çoklu Regresyon Analizi kullanılmıştır. Araştırmaya katılan öğrencilerin mutluluk düzeyleri ile SYBD alt boyutları arasında anlamlı ve pozitif yönlü ilişkilerin olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Analiz sonucunda anlamlı bir regresyon modeli, F(6, 296) = 52,356, p<0,001 ve bağımlı değişken varyansın %50'sinin (R 2 adjusted = ,505) bağımsız değişkenler tarafından açıklandığı bulunmuştur. Regresyon katsayılarının anlamlılığı t-testi sonuçlarına göre ise; modelde stres yönetimi (ß=,484, t (296)= 7,89, p<.001), manevi gelişim (ß=,405, t (296)= 7,87, p<.001) ve sağlık sorumluluğu (ß=-,152, t (296)=-2,49, p<.05) değişkenleri öğrencilerin mutluluk düzeyi üzerinde anlamlı yordayıcılar olduğunu; fiziksel aktivite (ß= ,026, t (296)= ,367, p=.714), beslenme (ß=-,014, t (296)=-.244, p=.807) ve kişiler arası ilişkilerin (ß=-.012, t (296)=-.195, p=.846) ise anlamlı yordayıcılar olmadığını göstermektedir. Sonuç olarak; katılımcıların stres yönetimi ve manevi gelişimi arttıkça ve sağlık sorumlulukları düştükçe mutluluk seviyelelerinin de arttığı tespit edilmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Mutluluk, Sağlığı geliştirme, Sağlıklı yaşam biçimi davranışları. ABSTRACT Health foresight of our age is based on ensuring that individuals acquire behaviours that will sustain, protect and develop their well-being and make the right decisions about their own health, and these decisions are related to the happiness of individuals. The purpose of study is determining the relationship and effects of Healthy Lifestyle Behaviours (HLB) with happiness levels. For this, the health management department students of a foundation university were included in the study. Sampling selection was not made, as it was aimed to reach the entire universe. The dependent variable of the research is happiness level and the independent variable is HLB. For analyzing relationship between variables used to Pearson Correlation Analysis, for measuring the predictor used to Multiple Regression Analysis. It has been determined that there are positive and significant relationships between the happiness levels of the students participating in the study and the HLBD sub-dimensions. It was found that a significant regression model, F (6, 296) = 52.356, p <0.001, and 50% of the dependent variable variance (R 2 adjusted= .505) were explained by independent variables. According to the t-test results, the significance of the regression coefficients is; stress management in the model (ß = .484, t(296) = 7.89, p <.001), spiritual development (ß =.405, t(296)=7.87, p <.001) and health responsibility (ß=-.152, t(296)=-2.49, p<.05) are significant predictors of students' happiness level; physical activity (ß= .026, t(296) = .367, p = .714), nutrition (ß =-.014, t (296)=-.244, p=.807) and interpersonal relationships (ß=-.012, t(296) =-.195, p=.846) show that they are not significant predictors. As a result; It was determined that as the stress management and spiritual development of the participants increased and their health responsibility decreased, their happiness level also increased.
... [16][17][18] Ayrıca bazı yabancı kaynaklı ve farklı gruplara uygulanmış çalışmalarda da katılımcıların düzenli egzersizlerinin yapılmasının sağlıklı ve mutlu hissetme durumları üzerindeki olumlu etkileri araştırma sonuçlarını destekler niteliktedir. 19,20 Mutluluk ile beslenme arasında da anlamlı ve pozitif ilişkinin varlığı beslenmenin insanlarda güzel hazlar uyandırması ve sağlıklı beslenmenin kişisel görünüm ve tatmini etkilemesiyle yorumlanabilir. Ayrıca, sporcular ve fintess merkezine gelen erkek yetişkinlere yönelik yapılan çalışmalarla da aynı doğrultuda sonuçlara ulaşılmıştır. ...
... H6: Drivers who perceived a large immediate impact of the intervention, have a higher afective post-driving state. Existing research indicates that interventions with strong immediate efects can have longer-lasting efects on well-being, specifcally if the interventions are recurring [48]. ...
... This is in line with what Diener (2000) and scholars (e.g. Suh, Diener & Fujita, 1996;Mochon, Norton & Ariely, 2008) suggested, albeit not in the context of events, namely that significant life events do not have a significant effect on overall subjective well-being and quality of life assessments. Diener (2000) suggested that "intense experiences are not the cornerstone of a happy life" (p. ...
Sport mega-events are often supported for their supposed ability to achieve positive social outcomes for the host country residents. However, empirical evidence regarding the effect of sport mega-events on subjective well-being is ambiguous, and therefore there remain questions regarding the effectiveness of sport mega-events in producing positive subjective well-being outcomes, to what extent, and how these outcomes may occur. The purpose of this chapter is to outline an example of how subjective well-being and social experiences have been addressed in relation to a sport mega-event, and to offer considerations for future research in this area. The study presented here was conducted via questionnaire during (n=402), and after (n=401) the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and investigated if social impact experiences from the event could explain variance in subjective well-being amongst host country residents. During the event, we found that social impact experiences were not predictors of subjective well-being. Results following the event demonstrated similar findings. These results indicate that social experiences promoted by hosting Rio 2016 did not change the subjective well-being of host country residents. The results are consistent with existing literature on social impacts of sport events, however are not consistent with existing literature regarding sport event hosting and subjective well-being. We suggest avenues for future research to further investigate subjective well-being and sport events in regard to possible underlying mechanisms of subjective well-being, the longevity of sport mega-event effects on host residents, as well as possible contextual and theoretical advancements in this line of inquiry. © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Allan Stewart Jepson and Trudie Walters.
... The value that is placed on personal well-being can differ across persons, communities, cultures, and nations (8,9). In a recent upsurge of interest in community well-being, researchers have reported a positive association between well-being and income, work productivity, sociability, creativity, and physical health (3,(10)(11)(12)(13). ...
A visualization of comprehensive data on health care enhances performance of decision-making in health promotion programs. We describe the design and prototype of a Dashboard Decision Support System (DDSS) as a web-based advanced tool for executives and health officers to plan and generate effective programs in health promotion and disease prevention. Data were obtained from 10 communities surrounding oil refinery, using Family and community Assessment Program (FAP), in operation since 2010. The system was developed using web-based technology and open standards, i.e., MySQL, PHP, Highcharts JS, and Google Maps. Perception of the system and its effectiveness were evaluated using a questionnaire after participants had had an approximately one month period of experience of using the system. The responses to the questionnaire were positive about the system features and system process. Using the DDSS, executives and health officers can deploy effective and appropriate programs to enhance health care in their communities.
... Yet, active leisure has cumulative effects on wellbeing. For example, attending a religious service, practicing yoga, or exercising not only provides a positive boost in mood but can also result in higher overall well-being over time (Mochon et al., 2008). ...
There is widespread consensus that income and subjective well-being are linked, but when and why they are connected is subject to ongoing debate. We draw on prior research that distinguishes between the frequency and intensity of happiness to suggest that higher income is more consistently linked to how frequently individuals experience happiness than how intensely happy each episode is. This occurs in part because lower-income individuals spend more time engaged in passive leisure activities, reducing the frequency but not the intensity of positive affect. Notably, we demonstrate that only happiness frequency underlies the relationship between income and life satisfaction. Data from an experience sampling study (N= 394 participants, 34,958 daily responses), a preregistered cross-sectional study (N= 1,553), and a day reconstruction study (N= 13,437) provide empirical evidence for these ideas. Together, this research provides conceptual and empirical clarity into how income is related to happiness.
... In general, wanting money, making money, and keeping it is OK. 6 E.g., see Diener, Lucas, and Scollon 2009;Mancini, Bonanno, and Clark 2011;Mochon, Norton, and Ariely 2008;Wu 2001;Frederick and Loewenstein 1999;Lyubomirsky 2010. 7 Easterlin 1974. ...
... For example, in these contexts, religion provides insurance against difficult life events such as unemployment, death of a loved one and consumption hardships (Chen 2010). Active participation in religion and spirituality may reinforce the effects of positive experiences (Mochon et al. 2008) and mitigate negative effects (Brickman and Campbell 1971;Di Tella et al. 2010). Especially in poor non-Western countries, religion offers a hedge against the negative aspects of life and presents hope for the good life (Bonsu and Belk 2010). ...
This chapter introduces and examines the role of spiritual consultants—religious agents who operate in the market as experts of spiritual matters and offer their services to consumers for a fee—in the marketization of religion in Ghana. Spiritual consultants in Ghana and many other African countries include church pastors, traditional priests and Islamic spiritualists (mallams), among others. We pursue answers to the question: what specific services and value do spiritual consultants offer to their consumers in order to authenticate their role as agents of the gods and spirits? Our data, including news media coverage and roadside (outdoor) advertising by these agents, allows for historical anchoring to suggest that unlike the Western religious institution whose adoption of market logics defines its success, spiritual consultants in Ghana succeed because they engage local historical motifs and cultural heritage to their advantage. We seek to extend Robin Horton’s thesis on the shared teleological function between traditional African religion and modern science—to explain, predict and control—to situate these functions as value outcomes in the commercial practice of spiritual consultancy in Ghana. In so doing, we note how the historicized marketization of religion has supported and been supported by the practices of contemporary spiritual consultants and the market in which they operate.
... 4,30,[35][36][37][38][39][40] Life satisfaction has also been shown to be associated with burnout. 41,42 In our PWB survey, these correlates of burnout were measured with questions asking about the department climate, 39, 43 degree of control over work schedule and workload (from the American Medical Association's Mini-Z survey derived from the Physician Worklife Survey), 44 degree of life satisfaction, 45 and self-care practices (sleep hours, exercise frequency, mindfulness practices [46][47][48] (Table 1). After specification tests as described below, the following variables were included in the analysis: a continuous variable indicating the degree of life satisfaction and dichotomous variables indicating calmer department climate (1: calm to 3: reasonable vs. 4 to 5: hectic to chaotic), good control over the schedule, and willingness to choose to work in the same practice again. ...
Background:
Primary care physician (PCP) burnout is prevalent and on the rise. Physician burnout may negatively affect patient experience of care.
Objective:
To identify the direct impact of PCP burnout on patient experience in various domains of care.
Design:
A cross-sectional observational study using physician well-being (PWB) surveys collected in 2016-2017, linked to responses from patient experience of care surveys. Patient demographics and practice characteristics were derived from the electronic health record. Linked data were analyzed at the physician level.
Setting:
A large non-profit multi-specialty ambulatory healthcare organization in northern California.
Participants:
A total of 244 physicians practicing internal medicine or family medicine who responded to the PWB survey (response rate 72%), and 30,701 completed experience surveys from patients seeing these physicians.
Measurements:
Burnout was measured with a validated single-item question with a 5-point scale ranging from (1) enjoy work to (5) completely burned out and seeking help. Patient experience of patient-provider communication, access, and overall rating of provider was measured with Clinician & Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers & Systems (CG-CAHPS) survey. Patient experience scores (0-100 scale) were adjusted for age, gender, race/ethnicity, and English proficiency.
Results:
Physician burnout had a negative impact on patient-reported experience of patient-provider communication but not on access or overall rating of providers. A one-level increase in burnout was associated with 0.43 decrease in adjusted patient-provider communication experience score (P < 0.01).
Limitations:
Data came from a single large healthcare organization. Patterns may differ for small- and mid-sized practices.
Conclusion:
Physician burnout adversely affects patient-provider communication in primary care visits. Efforts to improve physician work environments could have a meaningful positive impact on patient experience as well as physician well-being.
... 51 In contrast, activities, such as yoga, that offer small but frequent boosts to well-being may provide an effective mechanism to increase longer-term well-being due to their cumulative effects. 52 Consistent with previous studies, respondents strongly believed that yoga had a positive impact on their physical and mental health. 23 26 Many reported its value in managing a range of health conditions, most notably musculoskeletal and mental health conditions. ...
Objectives
Despite the popularity of yoga and evidence of its positive effects on physical and mental health, little is known about yoga practice in the UK. This study investigated the characteristics of people who practise yoga, reasons for initiating and maintaining practice, and perceived impact of yoga on health and well-being.
Design, setting and participants
A cross-sectional online anonymous survey distributed through UK-based yoga organisations, studios and events, through email invites and flyers. 2434 yoga practitioners completed the survey, including 903 yoga teachers: 87% were women, 91% white and 71% degree educated; mean age was 48.7 years.
Main outcome measures
Perceived impact of yoga on health conditions, health outcomes and injuries. Relationships between yoga practice and measures of health, lifestyle, stress and well-being.
Results
In comparison with national population norms, participants reported significantly higher well-being but also higher anxiety; lower perceived stress, body mass index and incidence of obesity, and higher rates of positive health behaviours. 47% reported changing their motivations to practise yoga, with general wellness and fitness key to initial uptake, and stress management and spirituality important to current practice. 16% of participants reported starting yoga to manage a physical or mental health condition. Respondents reported the value of yoga for a wide range of health conditions, most notably for musculoskeletal and mental health conditions. 20.7% reported at least one yoga-related injury over their lifetime. Controlling for demographic factors, frequency of yoga practice accounted for small but significant variance in health-related regression models (p<0.001).
Conclusion
The findings of this first detailed UK survey were consistent with surveys in other Western countries. Yoga was perceived to have a positive impact on physical and mental health conditions and was linked to positive health behaviours. Further investigation of yoga’s role in self-care could inform health-related challenges faced by many countries.
... Moreover, a closer examination of the literature offers indications that religious beliefs can promote both the hedonic and eudaimonic aspects of well-being. Additionally, communal activities and rituals such as socializing, singing, dancing, and praying promote hedonic wellbeing (Cohen-Zada & Sander, 2011;Lim & Putnam, 2010;Mochon, Norton, & Ariely, 2008), while activities such as giving, volunteering, social engagement and spiritual rituals elevate eudaimonic well-being (Bennett & Einolf, 2017;Gr€ onlund & Pessi, 2015;Heineck, 2017;Schnable, 2014). Several studies also suggested that religious affiliations and practices are associated with physical or health benefits (George, Ellison, & Larson, 2002;Green & Elliott, 2010;Idler, 2009). ...
Recent research suggests that individuals differ in the extent to which they seek
activities that promote hedonic or eudaimonic well-being. Prioritizing positivity describes a
strategy of pursuing happiness by seeking pleasurable activities or circumstances that can
lead to naturally occurring positive emotions, while prioritizing meaning describes a strategy
of cultivating well-being by purposefully seeking activities that are conducive to
experiencing meaning in life. While these notions have been examined among the general
population, little is known about how these prioritizing patterns are linked with well-being in
closed religious groups, who often promote the benefit of the collective group in lieu of the
individual’s personal choices and interests. Based on a sample of 407 Ultra-Orthodox Jewish
individuals (mean age=33.58, SD=8.89), 55.5% of which were women, the results
demonstrated that prioritizing meaning and sense of community were positively associated
with life satisfaction. Moreover, a significant interaction of sense of community × prioritizing
positivity was found, indicating a positive connection between prioritizing positivity and life
satisfaction for individuals with a high sense of community, but a negative connection for
those with a low sense of community. Our findings suggest that even in extremely close-knit
community-oriented societies, a strong sense of belonging to a community enables
individuals to prioritize more hedonic aspects of their lives in order to promote their life
satisfaction.
... It is likely that when people buy time on a regular basis, the benefits of timesaving services would be subject to hedonic adaptation. To promote longterm shifts in well-being, people might need to replace the time they have purchased with a regularly scheduled, rewarding activity (Mochon, Norton, & Ariely, 2008). People could pair the free time they have received from hiring a housecleaner with an activity that accumulates benefits over time, such as learning a new language, going to a cross-fit class, or learning how to play guitar. ...
... Psychologists argue for a 'set point' of happiness that is determined by genetics and stable personality traits. However, according to Mochon et al. (2008), smaller but more frequent encounters with events that impact on an individual positively or negatively can boost well-being, particularly if repeated with sufficient frequency. Parenthood entails frequent encounters with the child, at least up until a certain age. ...
This study investigates the effect of having children on parents’ life satisfaction and happiness in Europe. We utilize four waves of the European Values Survey (EVS) from 1981 to 2008. To identify causality, we use instrumental variables estimation. We exploit time and country level variation in five family policies as instruments for having children. For parents who have had children due to the generosity of family policies, having children increases parent’s life satisfaction by 0.33–0.41 points on a 10 point scale. This effect is significantly more pronounced when parents are over the age of 50. Yet, children’s effects on life satisfaction and happiness is negative for single and full-time working parents. The positive effect of having children on life satisfaction and happiness has substantially eroded over the EVS waves which explains the reductions in the fertility rate in Europe.
... In another study where the effects of regularly attended physical activity to participants' health and happiness levels, recreative physical activities such as cycling and hiking increases both the levels of healthiness and happiness (Rasciute and Downward, 2010). In a separate study analysing the concepts of feeling good and happiness, a significant difference was noted on feeling good in groups that attended both fitness and yoga activities in a fitness centre (Mochon et al., 2008). As seen in these studies, regular physical activity is able to create a significant increase in people's levels of happiness. ...
... (Crisp 2003;Gurley, Wood, and Nijhawan 2007;Hegarty and Sims Jr. 1978 "degree to which consumers are both restrained in acquiring and in resourcefully using economic goods and services to achieve longer-term goals" (Ellemers, Kortekaas, and Ouwerkerk 1999, p. 88) Consumers who have strong religious values of frugality will exhibit more economic shopping behavior (being price conscious, buying on sale, avoiding credit use, low impulse purchase) as compared to consumers with weak or no religious values. (Arruñada 2010;Belk 1983;Guiso, Sapienza, and Zingales 2003;Lastovicka et al. 1999;Pepper, Jackson, and Uzzell 2011;Renneboog and Spaenjers 2011;Schor 1999) One possible explanation for the display of low materialism is that religious individuals are known to have high subjective well-being (Mockon, Norton, and Ariely 2008;Tao 2008). Well-being is defined as "individuals' cognitive and affective assessments regarding their life satisfaction" (La Barbera and Gürhan 1997, p. 72). ...
This article is a summarizing review on religiosity and consumer behavior. Review findings from marketing literature indicate that religiosity influences consumer outcomes like materialism, intolerance, ethics, and risk aversion. It also impacts consumer attitude toward religious products and economic shopping behavior. A conceptual framework is presented to depict how certain dimensions of religion can explain the psychological mechanisms underlying these effects. Specifically, we propose prayer (religious rituals), religious exclusivism and divine retribution (religious beliefs), frugality (religious values) and religious community involvement and religious identity (religious community) as possible antecedents that drive the previously established differences in consumer behavior. For each of these antecedents, we offer definitions and integrate research findings from psychology, religion and marketing to build testable propositions. This essay complements preceding work and at the same time expands and broadens it by developing theory regarding the causal linkages between religiosity and consumer outcomes.
... Las valoraciones encontradas se encuentran en la media. Es posible que los participantes perciban su situación de seguridad de manera neutral ya que, como predicen las teorías de adaptación(Mochon, Norton, & Ariely, 2008) las personas tienden a acostumbrarse con las circunstancias adversas de la vida y es posible que este proceso suceda en este rubro en concreto. Es decir que la gente eventualmente pierde la noción de que tan protegida está contra amenazas físicas y que tanto los espacios e instalaciones son adecuados para sus actividades cotidianas por lo que eventualmente su evaluación es más o menos regular. ...
... A pesar de ello, al considerar la capacidad adaptativa de los individuos, el bienestar subjetivo de los individuos parece mostrar resistencia al cambio. Por lo cual, son muy pocos los eventos que tienen un impacto duradero a largo plazo sobre la felicidad de las personas, aquellos eventos que, si afectan longitudinalmente a los individuos, tienden a ser negativos (Mochon, Norton, & Ariely, 2008). ...
Este libro ofrece una breve descripción de los postulados teóricos que enmarcan el estudio del bienestar subjetivo. Posteriormente, se realiza una revisión de antecedentes empíricos que analizan la felicidad, en función a variables demográficas, sociales y económicas. Se propone la utilización de una Escala de Bienestar Subjetivo, determinando sus principales propiedades psicométricas. Finalmente, se discuten algunas observaciones respecto al abordaje cualitativo del bienestar subjetivo.
... Czynnikiem sprzyjającym zarówno fizycznemu jak i psychicznemu zdrowiu jest aktywność fizyczna (patrz Machon, Norton, Ariely, 2008;. Potwierdzają to również dane Diagnozy. ...
... It has been suggested that the repetition of smaller positive experiences ('hedonic boosts'), such as exercise or religious practices, has a more lasting effect on our wellbeing than major life events (Mochon, Norton, & Ariely, 2008). ...
Full-text download available at https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/be-guide/the-behavioral-economics-guide-2017/
... If people are so remarkably adaptive to stimuli, there could be drastic implications to goal setting and motivation. For instance, small, frequent pleasures tend to improve wellbeing more than large, periodic thrills (Mochon, Norton, & Ariely, 2008). If a person fixates on momentous achievements that may only be realized occasionally, it follows that the triumphs would have only a short-lived effect on overall happiness and well-being due to hedonic adaptation. ...
Goal setting is a fundamental mechanism used to enhance performance and to promote individual and organizational achievement. Accordingly, developing ways to improve goal effectiveness can be a valuable endeavor. The current project proposes that the way in which goals are framed should be positively correlated with success rates. Based on prospect theory, the framing effect applied to goal setting was tested in two surveys conducted in early 2017. New Year's resolutions were collected and judged to be framed either positively or negatively, and then compared to the subject success rates. Survey 1 (N = 769) results confirmed the initial hypothesis (H1); goals with positive framing resulted in higher self-reported success rates than did goals with negative framing. Survey 2 (N = 403) showed similar, albeit less conclusive results. Two other hypotheses were also tested; H2 predicted the Survey 2 success rates would be lower than the first, but the speculation was not verified. Finally, H3 predicted a positive correlation between goal framing and self-reported optimism, which was confirmed.
We suggest that consumer and marketer intelligence is, in its essence, practical. It is derived from adapting to, selecting, and shaping external environments. We review research relating to marketers’ and consumers’ strategies for interacting, intelligently, with their environments. On adapting, illustratively we point to a trend toward more fine-tuned adaptations in marketing communication, enabled by the large amount of information consumers are leaving online. On selection, illustratively we report research relating to customer relationship management: “big data” has enabled more informed, consequently more intelligent, customer selection by marketers. On shaping, illustratively we describe research relating to online customer reviews and the sea change it has had on the retail environment. Taking perspective, we opine that while adapting, shaping, and selection intelligence enable important, immediate outcomes, wisdom is needed, in addition, to achieve longer-term outcomes. A quintessential longer-term outcome for marketers is brand equity and for consumers is psychological well-being.
The purposes of the study are to examine how spectator dysfunctional behavior (SDB) influences spectator sport well-being (SSWB) via anger and how self-construal (i.e., independence vs. interdependence) moderates the relationships among SDB, anger, and SSWB. Two studies based on a scenario-based survey experiment are conducted. Study 1 uses a cross-cultural study (the U.S. vs. South Korea) to examine chronical self-construal. Study 2 applies a self-construal priming method to examine temporal effects of self-construal. The two studies report the significant mediating effect of anger between SDB and SSWB. The relationships between SDB and anger, and between SDB and SSWB are stronger in interdependent self-construal than independent self-construal. Study 2 further shows that anger influences independent individuals more strongly than interdependent counterparts in relation to SSWB. This article contributes the literature on sport spectatorship and consumer well-being by showing how sport spectatorship might impinge on consumer well-being. The illustrating of the moderating roles of self-construal offers theoretical insight into the intricate associations among SDB, anger, and SSWB.
Opracowanie stanowi trzecią część monografii pod wspólnym tytułem „Współczesne problemy wychowania fizycznego”. Podobnie jak poprzednie tomy, które zostały wydane w 2014 i 2016 roku, praca jest miejscem prezentacji badań, poglądów i teorii specjalistów zajmujących się szkolnym wychowaniem fizycznym z różnych ośrodków w Polsce. W związku z tym monografia zawiera zarówno rozdziały typowo naukowe, oparte na badaniach empirycznych, jak i opracowania o charakterze poglądowym. W skład oddanego w ręce czytelników tomu wchodzą trzy części: „Pedeutologiczne i praktyczne aspekty wychowania fizycznego”, „Aktywność fizyczna dzieci i młodzieży w szkole oraz poza szkołą” oraz „Szanse i zagrożenia współczesnego wychowania fizycznego”, które zawierają łącznie 11 rozdziałów. Przedstawione w monografii zagadnienia wyjaśniają jedynie fragmentarycznie obszerną problematykę współczesnego wychowania fizycznego, która zmienia się w szybkim tempie wraz z postępem technologicznym i rozwojem cywilizacji. Ta dynamiczna ewolucja skłania do zastanowienia się nad poruszanymi w książce zagadnieniami i motywuje do podejmowania podobnej merytorycznej dyskusji w przyszłości.
This study aims to examine the happiness levels of physical education and sports college students studying in Konya, Burdur, and Ankara. A total of 229 students, 64.6% female, and 35.4% male, participated in the study in the 2019-2020 academic year. The "Oxford Happiness Scale" developed by Hills and Argyle (2002) and adapted into Turkish by Doğan and Çötok (2011) was used as a data collection tool in the study. Percentage distribution and frequency values of the students participating in the study were determined by descriptive statistics and skewness and kurtosis test was applied as the normality test. Due to the normal distribution of the data, the independent samples t-test and ANOVA test, which are parametric tests, were applied (α = 0.05). According to the findings obtained in the research; In the comparison made between the genders of the students, a significant difference was observed between the groups in favor of female. In the comparison made according to the age variable of the students, it was observed that there was a significant difference in favor of 19-year-old students. It was found that there is a significant difference in the comparison made between the sports purposes of the students. Another finding is that there is a significant difference between students' living a healthy life variable and their level of happiness. However, in the comparisons made according to the social life variable of the students, it was found that there was no significant difference between the groups. As a result, it has been determined that the happiness levels of physical education and sports college students are significantly effective according to their goals of engaging in sports.
Günümüzde stres ve mutluluk kavramları insanların en çok
merak ettiği konuların başında gelmektedir. Mutlluk tarih boyunca insanların elde etmeye çalıştığı bir iyilik ve esenlik hali
olarak tanımlanmıştır. Pek çok yazar ve filozof bu konuda fikirler
ortaya atarak mutluluğun tanımını yapmaya çalışmıştır. Güncel
literatürde mutluluğu önleyen ve engelleyen pek çok somut durumla birlikte, soyut ve duygusal durumun varlığından da sözedilebilir. Bu soyut durumların başında stres ve strese bağlı olumsuz duygu durumları gelmektedir. Günlük yaşantının içerisinde
pek çok olumsuz durum ve yaşamsal zorluk bireylerin stres kaynaklarını oluşturmaktadır. Örneğin, iş yaşantısı, trafik, ekonomik
kaygılar ve sosyal kaygılar, duygusal durum değişiklikleri, işsizlik
ve bunun gibi unsurlar, bireylerin strese girmelerini ve sürekli
stres halinde yaşamalarına neden olmaktadır. Yapılan çalışmalar sonucunda stresi azaltmak, insanın iyi olma halini artırmak
ve sağlıklı olmak için önerilerin başında düzenli fiziksel aktivite
gelmektedir. Bedensel ve ruhsal sağlığın korunması için düzenli
yapılan aktivite ve egzersizlerin önemi gün geçtikçe artmaktadır.
Çağımızda ülkelerin politik bir problemi haline gelen sağlık sorunlarının çözümü noktasında, bireylerin fiziksel hareketliliğinin
önemi gün geçtikçe daha fazla ortaya çıkmaktadır. Bu araştırmada fiziksel aktivite ve düzenli yapılan spor alışkanlıkların stres ve
mutluluk üzerinde ne kadar etkili olduğu konularında literatüre
katkı yapacağı düşünülerek tasarlanmıştır.
Political economy is one of the sub-diciplines of economics literature. Political economists investigate the effects of political factors on economic outcomes. Institutions and the influence of different institutional structures on markets are among the main research areas of political economy. In the existing literature, the number of empirical analyses which investigate the determinants of institutions is low in comparison to the studies that focus on the effects of institutions on economic performance. Moreover, the analyses which examine the impact of culture, specifically religion, on institutions are scarce. Without doubt, religion can have dramatic effects on social and economic variables. Hence, the aim of this work is to investigate the effects of religion and religiosity on corruption, individuals’ happiness and voting behaviour. We contribute to the existing literature by providing new evidence and by focusing on the countries which are not analysed in the previous studies. [...]
In assessing the personal development of happiness, the criticism has been raised that there are contradictions between results relating to the theoretical foundations in defining happiness. This analysis directly compares two theories of happiness, Martin Seligman’s authentic happiness theory and the theory of the hedonic treadmill. To consider relationships between these theories, generalized linear mixed modeling was used to assess the development of happiness across three timescales: long term in age, intermediate term in marital status, and short term in 3 month repeated measures. Data analyzed were of 884 American respondents to the International Wellbeing Study (http://wellbeingstudy.com), ages 16 to 84, collected between 2009 and 2013. Seligman’s authentic happiness behaved quite differently than the theory of the hedonic treadmill. Age predicted authentic happiness, but not general life satisfaction. Theoretical synthesis and implications for positive psychology are considered.
Human beings are not completely and always rational and are influenced by several cognitive biases and heuristics in how they evaluate and perceive the quality of a product or service offered to them; moreover, their expectations and perceptions of quality varies along customer journey and product lifecycle. Therefore, professionals dealing with product development, marketing and selling cannot deliver results if they do not understand these two perspectives and how to manage effectively customer perception of product quality. The usual perspective of quality management on quality perception on the one hand, and behavioral economics – which deals with how cognitive biases and heuristics affect economic decisions of people in real-life – on the other hand, have been both researched extensively. Yet there are just few research publications proposing a structured knowledge at the intersection of these two domains. This paper proposes a conceptual framework on how to use behavioral economics concepts and understanding in quality management, bringing together these two domains in a synthesized and exhaustive manner. The paper focuses on the influence of cognitive biases and heuristics on how quality of products or services is perceived, and how this influence occurs across customer journey, and consolidates other factors which may influence expected and perceived quality. It proposes a structured approach to manage those perceptions. It provides readers from the quality management and new product development research areas with an exhaustive list of the behavioral (cognitive) biases and heuristics that influence how people (customers) perceive the quality of products and services, and it provides readers from the behavioral economics research area a new, deeper, perspective on quality perception and its role in economic decision making. The paper does not propose itself at this stage to test and demonstrate the theoretical contributions it makes, but rather to make professionals from these domains aware of the possible implications – hypotheses remain to be tested in future research.
This study aims to assess the impact of religiosity on female citizens based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) that finds the factors influencing the behavioral intention of them toward bike-sharing in Comilla, a city corporation in Bangladesh. A survey of 277 female citizens was conducted in a city corporation area of Bangladesh for data and to test the proposed model. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze this study. The findings pointed out that attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control have significant positive impact on women's intention toward shared fleet of bike while religiosity influences female users' intention negatively. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first study which evaluated the effects of religiosity on female users' intention toward bike-sharing.
This paper explores the value creation process in an edutainment context. It attempts to capture the dual, differential value creation processes through two pathways, namely, affective and cognitive. Results revealed that affective and cognitive values not only increase customer satisfaction but also enhance consumer well‐being. Moreover, contrary to conventional belief asserting that value creation is a universal process, this study finds that those who had higher personal relevance with the edutainment context experienced more intense emotional and intellectual values, which in turn enhanced both their satisfaction, well‐being, and revisit intention. Results suggest that marketers need to rethink their engagement strategy in order to create both emotional and intellectual value for customers.
Understanding and promoting sport consumer well-being are essential for legitimizing sport in the policy sector and for building long-term relationships with sport consumers. To better understand the relations between sport consumption (i.e., sport participation, sport spectating, and sport media viewing) and long- and short-term subjective well-being, a study was conducted using ecological momentary assessment and multilevel structural equation modeling. Need fulfillment (detachment-recovery, autonomy, achievement, and belonging) was also tested as a key construct explaining the short-term subjective well-being effects associated with sport consumption. Sport participation and sport spectating were found to have positive relationships with long- and short-term subjective well-being; both positive and negative relations were reported for sport media viewing. The four types of needs fulfillment were significant predictors of short-term subjective well-being. The four needs were fulfilled in the three activities, with the exception of achievement need fulfillment in sport media viewing.
Introduction Open any introductory marketing textbook and you will learn that the role of the firm is to create, communicate, and deliver value to the consumer who, in turn, takes the passive role of paying and consuming. For many years, this was, in fact, how marketers, consumer researchers, and psychologists perceived these two roles; the notion of consumer input into value creation was almost entirely neglected.This began to change when researchers in the area of innovation identified product users modifying and innovating on their own. In fact, von Hippel, De Jong, and Flowers (2012) found that in a representative sample of UK consumers, more than 6 percent had engaged in product modification or innovation during the prior three years, resulting in annual product development expenditures 1.4 times larger than the respective research and development (R&D) expenditures of all UK firms. More broadly, what emerged was the concept of “democratizing innovation,” that getting users actively involved in the process of new product development (NPD) can be a great source of value to the consumer and, thus, the firm (von Hippel, 2005). Today, consumer input is a recognized force in new product development, so much so that the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) listed it as one of its top priorities for exploration for 2008 through 2010.A parallel development in the marketplace has been that firms are going after smaller and more well-defined segments (Dalgic & Leeuw, 1994; Kotler & Armstrong, 2013). This is due to a number of factors, including the abundance of brands competing in many sectors; the rapid growth in media outlets, particularly online; and the increasing amount of information available on individual consumers. The result is that, in both media (Nelson-Field & Riebe, 2011) and products (Dalgic, 2006), the use of niche marketing is on the rise, while mass marketing is becoming an increasingly less viable option, particularly for new products.These two developments, consumer involvement in design as well as smaller target markets, have resulted in the practice of self-customization, where instead of offering ready-made products, the firm equips consumers with the tools to customize and design their own product. This can be viewed as the ultimate form of niche marketing, where the resulting segments consist of individuals.
Objetive: The present study aimed to compare the efficacy of three separate strengths training-based interventions – Gratitude, Savoring, and Optimism – in older adults.
Method: The sample comprised 124 older adults, namely, 74 women and 50 men, non-institutionalized individuals who regularly attend day centers in the provinces of Jaén and Córdoba, southern Spain. Their ages ranged between 60 and 89 years. The measures used were Anxiety, Depression, Life Satisfaction, Positive and Negative Affect, Subjective Happiness, and Resilience.
Results: Training in Gratitude and Savoring increased scores in Life Satisfaction, Positive Affect, Subjective Happiness and Resilience, and reduced Negative Affect, whereas training in Optimism failed to produce a significant change in these variables. The Savoring and Optimism interventions decreased scores in Depression but, contrary to hypothesis, this was not the case for Gratitude.
Conclusion: These results represent an important step in understanding what type of strengths work best when it comes to enhancing well-being in older adults and consequently helping them tackle the challenges of everyday life and recover as quickly as possible from the adverse situations and events that may arise.
Objectives: This study examined the effects of savoring valuable life lessons on perceptions of aging and on well-being among older adults.
Method: A total of 303 adults (mean age = 68.12 years) were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: savoring life lessons (n = 95), reflecting on negative aspects of aging (n = 129), or untreated-control condition (n = 79). Participants in the savoring condition wrote about a valuable lesson they had learned in growing older, whereas participants in the negative-aging condition wrote about physical losses they had experienced in aging.
Results: After controlling for baseline happiness, health, gender, and age, participants who savored valuable life lessons reported greater positive perceptions of aging and life satisfaction, compared to participants in the negative-aging and untreated-control conditions. There were no differences across conditions in negative perceptions of aging or in anxiety.
Conclusion: These findings suggest that savoring valuable life lessons could be an effective addition to psychoeducational programs designed to improve perceptions of aging.
Healthcare is often thought of as a negative service; no one wants to get hurt or be sick, and it is unpleasant to contemplate and prepare for the reality that this can happen. Adding to that burden is the degree of uncertainty surrounding whether and when shocks, either chronic or acute, to health will occur. Consumer decisions affecting health can range from routine choices about whether to have salad for lunch, get a flu shot, or select a primary care doctor, to more serious and consequential choices about what is the right insurance to have, when to seek medical care, and what the best treatment is for a serious illness such as cancer. Consumers have greatly benefited from recent advances in medical knowledge about the causes of disease and how to prevent or treat it. Technology now gives consumers the ability to manage uncertainty and negative health outcomes with unprecedented access to excellent sources of information, advice, and feedback. At the same time, the responsibility of making wise healthcare decisions has increasingly shifted to individuals, making them more accountable than ever for their personal choices and spending. So while today's consumer is better informed and more autonomous than those in previous generations, making good health and healthcare choices can still be rife with complexity and difficult trade-offs. Given the theoretical and practical implications for both consumer welfare and public policy, understanding how people navigate the medical marketplace is an important focus for psychologists. To that end, this chapter outlines our understanding of factors that shape consumer health decisions. We begin with individual awareness and perception of health risks, which serve as the foundation for almost any model of health behavior. Next, we explore how risk perceptions lead people to approach the trade-offs they believe are necessary to manage the risks of poor health outcomes. The final section explores how the cognitive factors underlying health decisions combine with significant social, emotional, and environmental forces to guide prevention behaviors, and ultimately health outcomes. Throughout, domains in which consumer research has already made a contribution are noted, along with important areas that warrant future research. Understanding Health Risk A dominant approach to studying health has been to examine risk perceptions, because they are the primary drivers of behavioral change (Brewer et al., 2007). In health, risk is typically defined as a likelihood that an unfavorable event involving injury or loss will occur. In order for people to make a conscious decision to be healthier, they must know and believe they are at some risk of experiencing a negative event. Theoretical models of health risk perception continue to provide fertile ground for researchers in all domains of health, including psychology, public policy, medicine, and consumer behavior. Early models such as the Health Belief Model (Becker, 1974) provided a view that increased risk perceptions facilitated behaviors that either promote good health or prevent bad health. Unfortunately, it is not this simple; a great deal of subsequent research showed that people do not always behave more healthfully when well informed of the risks (Ajzen, 1985, 1991). Cigarette smoking may be one of the best examples illustrating this point. The causal relationship between cigarette smoking and poor health outcomes is definitive, and the warnings are impossible to ignore. Despite broad consumer knowledge of the potential harms, cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, where almost one in five of all American adults smoke (CDC, 2014a).
The construct of power is part of the structural foundation of social psychology. Two of social psychology's most seminal works – Milgram's experiments on obedience to authority (Milgram, 1963) and Zimbardo's prison experiment (Zimbardo, 1973, 1974) – involved differences in power. In more recent years, the contemporary landscape of social psychology continues to feature power prominently. In one recent report, the number of power-related publications appearing in top social psychology journals has approximately doubled in the last five years compared to the previous five years (Galinsky, Rucker, & Magee, 2015).Although work on power has spanned more than fifty years in social psychology, researchers have been largely silent in considering power's role in consumer behavior. As one relevant indicator, only in the last five years have papers on power begun to appear regularly in journals focused more on consumer behavior and consumption contexts such as the Journal of Consumer Research (e.g., Dubois, Rucker, & Galinsky, 2012; Jiang, Zhan, & Rucker, 2014; Jin, He, Zhang, 2014; Kim & McGill, 2011; Rucker & Galinsky, 2008; Rucker, Dubois, & Galinsky, 2011). The recent embrace of power by consumer researchers provides a foothold for the construct but also creates an important pivot point for the field. With power accepted as a topic important to consumer behavior, we explore what must be done to move the research agenda on power forward.In the present chapter, we organize our analysis around three objectives. First, we familiarize readers with the general construct of power and the experimental approach used to study power. This section provides any researchers new to the study of power, or its effects on human behavior, a core foundation upon which to build. Second, we provide a review of power research most directly related to consumer behavior over the last five years. Our emphasis on the last five years is both in the spirit of this handbook and a reflection of power's recent emergence in the study of consumer psychology and consumer behavior. Finally, we emphasize important and unanswered questions for power in the study of consumer behavior. In doing so, we hope to utilize this pivot point to foster the next generation of power-related research in consumer behavior for seasoned and new researchers alike. As a whole, this chapter provides a nomological net or roadmap for the study of power built around antecedents, psychological processes, consequences, and future directions.
What Is Online Social Interaction We often interact with others in our social environment. These interactions have traditionally taken place in a face-to-face context, such as when we interact with loved ones at home, friends at a party, salespeople in a store, or colleagues at work. However, more recently, we have also begun to interact with others in an online setting. For example, we may read product reviews posted by others on review websites, post our status updates on social media websites, follow and comment on blog posts, provide online feedback to firms on corporate websites, join online brand communities, give advice to other consumers on product support websites, and interact with potential partners on dating websites. We formally define online social interaction as Internet-enabled communication and exchange activities involving both consumers and firms (Yadav & Pavlou, 2014). Here, consumers refer to people who purchase products and services for their own use, while firms refer to for-profit or not-for-profit organizations in the marketplace. Online social interactions are likely to occur even more frequently in the future since many consumers are now online more than ever, thanks to smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the availability of Wi-Fi networks at home and work and in public spaces. Given the ubiquity and importance of online social interactions in our daily lives, the broad purpose of this chapter is to synthesize what is known and unknown about the effects of online social interaction on consumer judgment and decision making. Specifically, this chapter is organized into the following three sections: (i) characteristics of online social interactions, (ii) past research on online social interactions, and (iii) future research on online social interactions. These sections have been developed to provide the reader with short, top-line summaries of key research findings, and also to identify promising directions for future research in this emerging topic area.Characteristics of Online Social Interaction As discussed earlier, consumers can interact with one another in the online or offline worlds. Thus, the first question we address in this section is, how does online social interaction differ from offline social interaction Subsequently, we delve deeper into the characteristics of online social interactions by outlining the key motivations that drive consumers to interact with others on the Internet.
Consumers face a wide variety of stressors every day. Some stressors come from “daily hassles” (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984, p.13), such as making difficult purchase decisions or experiencing poor service, and others originate from chronic illness, such as obesity or breast cancer, that requires consumers to make health and consumption decisions. Consumers cope with these stressors in multiple ways to alleviate stress and enhance mental and physical well-being. For example, when consumers are exposed to health messages that warn of the risk of heart disease due to obesity, some consumers “cope” with this stressful situation by making a plan to cut their daily food intake, while others cope by stopping themselves from being upset by distracting themselves from unpleasant thoughts due to the threatening health message. Given the seeming prevalence of coping episodes in consumers’ everyday life, consumer researchers have recently begun to explore how consumers cope with stress stemming from a variety of distinct consumer-oriented stressors, such as long waiting times in negative service environments (Miller, Kahn, & Luce, 2008); purchasing, using, and disposing of products and services (Sujan, Sujan, Bettman, & Verhallen, 1999); adoption of new technology products (Cui, Bao, & Chan, 2009; Mick & Fournier, 1998); difficult decision making (Luce, Payne, & Bettman, 1999); or threatening health messages regarding the risk of disease (Lin, Lin, & Raghubir, 2003). Despite these recent developments in the consumer literature, the prospects for future research to build off these contributions loom larger than ever. The goal of the present chapter is to profile the existing coping research and to summarize the key findings and gaps in the literature. The chapter concludes with a discussion of fruitful future research questions for progress within the coping area.In the present chapter, we organize our analysis around three objectives. First, we familiarize people with the general construct of coping and the antecedents and consequences of coping in the historical context of the literature. This section provides any researchers new to the study of coping, or its effects, a core foundation from which to build. Second, we provide a review of recent coping research most directly related to consumer behavior over the last ten years. Our emphasis on the last ten years is not only in the spirit of this handbook, but is a reflection of coping's recent emergence in the study of consumer psychology and consumer behavior
What is the strength and direction of the relation between religion and subjective well-being in adulthood? We addressed this question by performing a quantitative research synthesis (meta-analysis). The dependent variable was zero-order correlations between religion and subjective well-being. Independent variables were measure, sample, and study characteristics. We found that religion was significantly, positively related to subjective well-being. The relation between religion and subjective well-being is stronger for religious activity than for religiosity measures. The relation is stronger for samples of older than younger adults. The strength of the religion/subjective well-being relation has decreased over time. Religion accounts for between 2 and 6 percent of the variance in adult subjective well-being.
Adaptation level theory suggests that both contrast and habituation will operate to prevent the winning of a fortune from elevating happiness as much as might be expected. Contrast with the peak experience of winning should lessen the impact of ordinary pleasures, while habituation should eventually reduce the value of new pleasures made possible by winning. Study 1 compared a sample of 22 major lottery winners with 22 controls and also with a group of 29 paralyzed accident victims who had been interviewed previously. As predicted, lottery winners were not happier than controls and took significantly less pleasure from a series of mundane events. Study 2 indicated that these effects were not due to preexisting differences between people who buy or do not buy lottery tickets or between interviews that made or did not make the lottery salient. Paraplegics also demonstrated a contrast effect, not by enhancing minor pleasures but by idealizing their past, which did not help their present happiness.
The authors assessed all measures of religious commitment (N = 139) reported in research studies published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and Archives of General Psychiatry in 1978 through 1989 (N less than 35). For nearly two-thirds of the measures, the studies either made no hypotheses or reported no results concerning the relationship of religious commitment to mental health status. For the great majority of the measures assessed, the studies reported a positive relationship between religious commitment and mental health.
The effect of life events on subjective well-being (SWB) was explored in a 2-year longitudinal study of 115 participants. It was found that only life events during the previous 3 months influenced life satisfaction and positive and negative affect. Although recent life events influenced SWB even when personality at Time 1 was controlled, distal life events did not correlate with SWB. SWB and life events both showed a substantial degree of temporal stability. It was also found that good and bad life events tend to covary, both between individuals and across periods of the lives of individuals. Also, when events of the opposite valence were controlled, events correlated more strongly with SWB. The counterintuitive finding that good and bad events co-occur suggests an exciting avenue for explorations of the structure of life events.
While objective measures of impairment, disability and handicap can serve as outcome measures for the providers of medical and vocational rehabilitation services, for persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) themselves the only relevant measure of quality of life (QOL) is their own judgment as to their well-being. Subjective QOL in persons with SCI has been measured as happiness, psychological well-being morale and life satisfaction. Various studies have reported inconclusive or contradictory findings, likely due to small sample size, sample composition, measures used and other methodological issues. A meta analysis was performed to try to resolve these apparent discrepancies. A total of 22 studies with an average sample size of 102, was retrieved. Information on the relationship between QOL and impairment, disability, and handicap, if provided, was abstracted. Findings include the following: persons with SCI tend to report lower subjective well-being than non-disabled people; the relationship between impairment and QOL is weak (mean correlation: -0.05: 95% confidence interval: -0.12 to 0.02), and generally not found to be statistically significant; the association between disability and QOL is somewhat stronger (mean r: -0.21; confidence interval: -0.27 to -0.14), but not found consistently; the relationship between QOL and (aspects of) handicap is strongest (range for mean r: -0.17 to -0.48), and fairly consistently found. The number of studies available is too small to make analysis of factors that explain contradictory findings possible. Further use of subjective QOL measures in research on long-term outcomes of SCI is recommended, in order to properly reflect the perspective of the patients/clients themselves.
People are generally unaware of the operation of the system of cognitive mechanisms that ameliorate their experience of negative affect (the psychological immune system), and thus they tend to overestimate the duration of their affective reactions to negative events. This tendency was demonstrated in 6 studies in which participants overestimated the duration of their affective reactions to the dissolution of a romantic relationship, the failure to achieve tenure, an electoral defeat, negative personality feedback, an account of a child's death, and rejection by a prospective employer. Participants failed to distinguish between situations in which their psychological immune systems would and would not be likely to operate and mistakenly predicted overly and equally enduring affective reactions in both instances. The present experiments suggest that people neglect the psychological immune system when making affective forecasts.
According to adaptation theory, individuals react to events but quickly adapt back to baseline levels of subjective well-being. To test this idea, the authors used data from a 15-year longitudinal study of over 24.000 individuals to examine the effects of marital transitions on life satisfaction. On average, individuals reacted to events and then adapted back toward baseline levels. However, there were substantial individual differences in this tendency. Individuals who initially reacted strongly were still far from baseline years later, and many people exhibited trajectories that were in the opposite direction to that predicted by adaptation theory. Thus, marital transitions can be associated with long-lasting changes in satisfaction, but these changes can be overlooked when only average trends are examined.
The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) assesses how people spend their time and how they experience the various activities and settings of their lives, combining features of time-budget measurement and experience sampling. Participants systematically reconstruct their activities and experiences of the preceding day with procedures designed to reduce recall biases. The DRM's utility is shown by documenting close correspondences between the DRM reports of 909 employed women and established results from experience sampling. An analysis of the hedonic treadmill shows the DRM's potential for well-being research.
Download link at: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/norbert.schwarz/day_reconstruction_method__time_use____well-being
This review highlights recent work evaluating the relationship between exercise, physical activity and physical and mental health. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, as well as randomized clinical trials, are included. Special attention is given to physical conditions, including obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease and sexual dysfunction. Furthermore, studies relating physical activity to depression and other mood states are reviewed. The studies include diverse ethnic populations, including men and women, as well as several age groups (e.g. adolescents, middle-aged and older adults).
Results of the studies continue to support a growing literature suggesting that exercise, physical activity and physical-activity interventions have beneficial effects across several physical and mental-health outcomes. Generally, participants engaging in regular physical activity display more desirable health outcomes across a variety of physical conditions. Similarly, participants in randomized clinical trials of physical-activity interventions show better health outcomes, including better general and health-related quality of life, better functional capacity and better mood states.
The studies have several implications for clinical practice and research. Most work suggests that exercise and physical activity are associated with better quality of life and health outcomes. Therefore, assessment and promotion of exercise and physical activity may be beneficial in achieving desired benefits across several populations. Several limitations were noted, particularly in research involving randomized clinical trials. These trials tend to involve limited sample sizes with short follow-up periods, thus limiting the clinical implications of the benefits associated with physical activity.
Happiness research is based on the idea that it is fruitful to study empirical measures of individual welfare. The most common is the answer to a simple well-being question such as "Are you Happy?" Hundreds of thousands of individuals have been asked this question, in many countries and over many years. Researchers have begun to use these data to tackle a variety of important questions in economics. Some require strong assumptions concerning interpersonal comparisons of utility, but others make only mild assumptions in this regard. They range from microeconomic questions, such as the way income and utility are connected, to macroeconomic questions such as the tradeoff between inflation and unemployment, including large areas in political economy. Public policy is another area where progress using happiness data is taking place. Given the central role of utility notions in economic theory, we argue that the use of happiness data in empirical research should be given serious consideration.
The research agendas of psychologists and economists now have several overlaps, with behavioural economics providing theoretical and experimental study of the relationship between behaviour and choice, and hedonic psychology discussing appropriate measures of outcomes of choice in terms of overall utility or life satisfaction. Here we model the relationship between values (understood as principles guiding behaviour), choices and their final outcomes in terms of life satisfaction, and use data from the BHPS to assess whether our ideas on what is important in life (individual values) are broadly connected to what we experience as important in our lives (life satisfaction).
Over the past few years, there has been a steadily increasing interest on the part of economists in happiness research. We argue that reported subjective well-being is a satisfactory empirical approximation to individual utility and that happiness research is able to contribute important insights for economics. We report how the economic variables income, unemployment and inflation affect happiness as well as how institutional factors, in particular the type of democracy and the extent of government decentralization, systematically influence how satisfied individuals are with their life. We discuss some of the consequences for economic policy and for economic theory.
The validity of self‐report measures of subjective well‐being (SWB) was examined and compared with non‐self‐report measures using a sample of 136 college students studied over the course of a semester. A principal axis factor analysis of self‐ and non‐self‐report SWB measures revealed a single unitary construct underlying the measures. Conventional single‐item and multi‐item self‐report measures correlated highly with alternative measures, with theoretical correlates of SWB, and with a principal axis factor underlying five non‐self‐report measures of well‐being. Comparisons of family versus friend informant reports demonstrated the considerable cross‐situational consistency and temporal stability of SWB. Evidence of the discriminant validity of the measures was provided by low correlations of the various SWB measures with constructs theoretically unrelated to well‐being. It was concluded that conventional self‐report instruments validly measure the SWB construct, and that alternative, non‐serf‐report measures are useful for providing a comprehensive theoretical account of happiness and life satisfaction.
ABSTRACT Cross-sectional studies show that divorced people report lower levels of life satisfaction than do married people. However, such studies cannot determine whether satisfaction actually changes following divorce. In the current study, data from an 18-year panel study of more than 30,000 Germans were used to examine reaction and adaptation to divorce. Results show that satisfaction drops as one approaches divorce and then gradually rebounds over time. However, the return to baseline is not complete. In addition, prospective analyses show that people who will divorce are less happy than those who stay married, even before either group gets married. Thus, the association between divorce and life satisfaction is due to both preexisting differences and lasting changes following the event.
An increased interest in the effects of religion and spirituality on health is apparent in the psychological and medical literature. Although religion in particular was thought, in the past, to have a predominantly negative influence on health, recent research suggests this relationship is more complex. This article reviews the literature on the impact of religion and spirituality on physical and mental health, concluding that the influence is largely beneficial. Mechanisms for the positive effect of religion and spirituality are proposed.
Myers and Diener (1995) asked “Who is happy?” but examined the question of who is more and who is less happy In fact, most people report a positive level of subjective well-being (SWB), and say that they are satisfied with domains such as marriage, work, and leisure People in disadvantaged groups on average report positive well-being, and measurement methods in addition to self-report indicate that most people's affect is primarily pleasant Cross-national data suggest that there is a positive level of SWB throughout the world, with the possible exception of very poor societies In 86% of the 43 nations for which nationally representative samples are available the mean SWB response was above neutral Several hypotheses to explain the positive levels of SWB are discussed
Explores the relevance of the concept of adaptation level to a number of areas of psychology, with special reference to motivation, where it has been incorporated into a number of current theories. Harvard Book List (edited) 1971 #364 (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Hedonic adaptation refers to a reduction in the affective intensity of favorable and unfavorable circumstances. This chapter discusses the purposes, underlying mechanisms, and most common functional representations of hedonic adaptation. The authors then examine some of the methodological problems that hamper research in this area and review the literature on adaptation in 4 negative domains (noise, imprisonment, bereavement, and disability), and 4 positive domains (foods, erotic images, increases in wealth, and improvements in appearance produced by cosmetic surgery). Following this review, the authors discuss several circumstances that promote or impede hedonic adaptation. They conclude by discussing the dark side of hedonic adaptation—the negative consequences for individuals and society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Using data from 4 waves of an Australian panel study, this study offers a dynamic account of relations between personality, life events, and subjective well-being (SWB). Members of the Victorian Quality of Life panel study were interviewed in 1981, 1983, 1985, and 1987. The initial sample size was 942; 649 respondents remain. The study shows that very stable personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, and openness to experience) predispose people to experience moderately stable levels of favorable and adverse life events and moderately stable levels of SWB. However, contrary to previous research (P. T. Costa and R. R. McCrae, 1984) life events influence SWB over and above the effects of personality. A dynamic equilibrium (DE) model is outlined, in which each person is regarded as having "normal" equilibrium levels of life events and SWB, predictable on the basis of age and personality. Only when events deviate from their equilibrium levels does SWB change. The DE model is compared with 3 alternatives: personality models, adaptation level models, and models that treat life events as being wholly exogenous. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
presents some of the findings regarding the impact of mild positive affect on thinking and motivation / explores the processes underlying them and the circumstances under which they are likely to be observed / focus is on decision making, but in order to understand affect's influence on decisions, it is helpful to consider its impact on cognitive organization (or the way material is thought about and related to other material) and on motivation (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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 in happiness. Drawing on the past well-being literature, the authors propose that a person's chronic happiness level is governed by 3 major factors: a genetically determined set point for happiness, happiness-relevant circumstantial factors, and happiness-relevant activities and practices. The authors then consider adaptation and dynamic processes to show why the activity category offers the best opportunities for sustainably increasing happiness. Finally, existing research is discussed in support of the model, including 2 preliminary happiness-increasing interventions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This research examined relationships between alternative measures of affect and supervisory performance ratings. The first study showed that dispositional rather than state affect significantly predicted supervisory ratings of performance over time. Since the measures of affect differed on both content and temporal dimensions, a follow-up study was conducted to explicate the results. The second study found that a pleasantness-based measure of dispositional affect (Berkman, 1971a) again predicted rated performance over time, but activation-based measures of both dispositional and state affect (using PANAS scales) were not predictive of supervisory evaluations of performance. The implications of these findings in terms of research on affect and the longstanding pursuit of the happy–productive worker are discussed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A meta–analysis was performed in an attempt to clarify the proposed relationship between religiosity and psychological adjustment. Specific focus was given to the issue of definition, namely, whether differences in researchers’ conceptualizations of religiosity and mental health could account for the various contradictory findings by psychologists of religion. Analysis of 34 studies conducted during the past 12 years revealed that the definitions of religiosity and mental health utilized by psychologists in this field were indeed associated with different types and strengths of the correlations between religiosity and mental health. Discussion of results assesses the fit between relevant theory and the pattern of change in effect size across categories of religion and adjustment, and concludes with implications for therapeutic uses of religious involvement.
The validity of self-report measures of subjective well-being (SWB) was examined and compared with non-self-report measures
using a sample of 136 college students studied over the course of a semester. A principal axis factor analysis of self- and
non-self-report SWB measures revealed a single unitary construct underlying the measures. Conventional single-item and multi-item
self-report measures correlated highly with alternative measures, with theoretical correlates of SWB, and with a principal
axis factor underlying five non-self-report measures of well-being. Comparisons of family versus friend informant reports
demonstrated the considerable cross-situational consistency and temporal stability of SWB. Evidence of the discriminant validity
of the measures was provided by low correlations of the various SWB measures with constructs theoretically unrelated to well-being.
It was concluded that conventional self-report instruments validly measure the SWB construct, and that alternative, non-self-report
measures are useful for providing a comprehensive theoretical account of happiness and life satisfaction.
The aim of the inquiry was to examine the social network–mortality association within a wider multivariate context that accounts
for the effects of background framing forces and psychobiological pathways. The inquiry was based upon the Berkman et al.
(2000) conceptual model of the determinants of health. Its main purpose was to identify the salient network correlates of 7-year
all cause mortality among Jewish men and women, aged 70 and over, in Israel (n=1,811). The investigation utilized baseline data from a national household survey of older adults from 1997 that was linked
to records from the National Death Registry, updated through 2004. At the time of the study, 38% of the sample had died. Multivariate
Cox hazard regressions identified two main network-related components as predictors of survival: contact with friends, a social
network interaction variable, and attendance at a synagogue, a social engagement variable. Friendship ties are seen to uniquely
reduce mortality risk because they are based on choice in nature, and reflect a sense of personal control. Synagogue attendance
is seen to promote survival mainly through its function as a source of communal attachment and, perhaps, as a reflection of
spirituality as well. Other possibly network-related correlates of mortality were also noted in the current analysis—the receipt
of instrumental support and the state of childlessness.
Happiness, or subjective well-being, was measured on a brith-record-based sample of several thousand middle-aged twins using the Well-Being (WB)scale of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnare. Neither socioeconomic status, educational attainment, family income, marital status, nor an indicant of religious commitment could acciunt for more than about 3% of the variance in WB. From 44% to 52% of the variance in WB, however, is associated with genetic variation. Based on the retest os smaller samples of twins after intervals of 4.5 and 10 years, we estimate that the heritability of the stable component of subjective well-being approaches 80%.
Many empirical studies are ambiguous about whether good formal institutions are conducive to subjective well-being or not. Possibly, this ambiguity is caused by cross-section models that do not account for unobserved cultural and institutional effects. Using the World Value Survey 1980-2005, this paper supports a positive relation in a country panel framework that accounts for unobserved, time-invariant country heterogeneity. This study also shows that using supra-national region dummies (by geography or language) in a country-random effects model appears to be a sufficient substitution for omitted country fixed effects.
This study examines the multifaceted relationships between religious involvement and subjective well-being. Findings suggest that the beneficent effects of religious attendance and private devotion reported in previous studies are primarily indirect, resulting from their respective roles in strengthening religious belief systems. The positive influence of religious certainty on well-being, however, is direct and substantial: individuals with strong religious faith report higher levels of life satisfaction, greater personal happiness, and fewer negative psychosocial consequences of traumatic life events. Further, in models of life satisfaction only, the positive influence of existential certainty is especially pronounced for older persons and persons with low levels of formal education. Finally, there are persistent denominational variations in life satisfaction, but not in happiness: nondenominational Protestants, liberal Protestants, and members of nontraditional groups such as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses report greater life satisfaction than do their unaffiliated counterparts, even with the effects of other dimensions of religiosity held constant. Several directions for additional research on religion and psychological well-being are discussed.
In this paper we discuss recent experimental and clinical findings which lead us to propose that prolonged rhythmic exercise can activate central opioid systems by triggering increased discharge from mechanosensitive afferent nerve fibers (Group III or A-delta) arising from contracting skeletal muscle. We review evidence that supports the concept that many of the cardiovascular, analgesic, and behavioral effects of exercise are mediated by this mechanism and that the same or similar mechanisms are responsible for the central and peripheral effects of acupuncture. Based on this hypothesis, and supporting evidence from human and animal studies, we suggest a mechanism and a potential therapeutic role for exercise in the treatment of selected patients with disorders as diverse as hypertension, addiction, depression, and anorexia nervosa.
In a representative sample of 401 adults in Illinois in 1984, the authors found that increased participation in exercise, sports, and physical activities is associated with improved psychologic well-being. Part of this association is through improved subjective physical health. The authors controlled for potentially confounding factors, including sociodemographic characteristics, instrumentalism, and overweight. They concluded that exercise is associated with decreased symptoms of depression (feelings that life is not worthwhile, low spirits, etc.), anxiety (restlessness, tension, etc.), and malaise (rundown feeling, trouble sleeping, etc.) in the general population, most of which is not severely depressed, and in which many persons are engaged in moderate, nonaerobic exercise.
New studies are revealing predictors of subjective well-being, often assessed as self-reported happiness and life satisfaction. Worldwide, most people report being at least moderately happy, regardless of age and gender. As part of their scientific pursuit of happiness, researchers have examined possible associations between happiness and (a) economic growth and personal income, (b) close relationships, and (c) religious faith.
According to set-point theories of subjective well-being, people react to events but then return to baseline levels of happiness and satisfaction over time. We tested this idea by examining reaction and adaptation to unemployment in a 15-year longitudinal study of more than 24,000 individuals living in Germany. In accordance with set-point theories, individuals reacted strongly to unemployment and then shifted back toward their baseline levels of life satisfaction. However, on average, individuals did not completely return to their former levels of satisfaction, even after they became reemployed. Furthermore, contrary to expectations from adaptation theories, people who had experienced unemployment in the past did not react any less negatively to a new bout of unemployment than did people who had not been previously unemployed. These results suggest that although life satisfaction is moderately stable over time, life events can have a strong influence on long-term levels of subjective well-being.
People spend a lot of time commuting and often find it a burden. According to standard economics, the burden of commuting is chosen when compensated either on the labor or on the housing market so that individuals' utility is equalized. However, in a direct test of this strong notion of equilibrium with panel data, we find that people with longer commuting time report systematically lower subjective well-being. This result is robust with regard to a number of alternative explanations. We mention several possibilities of an extended model of human behavior able to explain this "commuting paradox". Copyright © The editors of the "Scandinavian Journal of Economics" 2008 .
Over the past few years, there has been a steadily increasing interest on the part of economists in happiness research. We argue that reported subjective well-being is a satisfactory empirical approximation to individual utility and that happiness research is able to contribute important insights for economics. We report how the economic variables income, unemployment and inflation affect happiness as well as how institutional factors, in particular the type of democracy and the extent of government decentralization, systematically influence how satisfied individuals are with their life. We discuss some of the consequences for economic policy and for economic theory.
Well-being: The foundations of a hedonic psychology
- S Frederick
- G Loewenstein
Frederick, S., & Loewenstein, G. (1999). Hedonic adaptation. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.),
Well-being: The foundations of a hedonic psychology (pp. 302-329). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Stress that doesn't pay: The commuting paradox. IZA Discussion Papers, 1278. Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor Events and subjective well-being: Only recent events matter
- A Stutzer
- B S Frey
- E Suh
- E Diener
- F Fujita
Stutzer, A. & Frey, B. S. (2004). Stress that doesn't pay: The commuting paradox. IZA Discussion Papers, 1278. Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor. Suh, E., Diener, E., & Fujita, F. (1996). Events and subjective well-being: Only recent events matter. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(5), 1091–1102.
Stress that doesn’t pay: The commuting paradox. IZA Discussion Papers, 1278. Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor
- A Stutzer
- B S Frey
Stutzer, A. & Frey, B. S. (2004). Stress that doesn't pay: The commuting paradox. IZA Discussion Papers, 1278.
Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor.
Events and subjective well-being: Only recent events matter
- Suh