Showing papers on "Happiness published in 1977"

Locus of desired control and positive self-concept of the elderly.

Abstract: In two studies, positive self-concept correlated with belief in one's internal locus of desired control. Examining only institutionalized subjects, the first study found this relationship to be particularly prominent for male subjects (r = .68). In the second study, comparing institutionalized persons sampled from several homes for the aged and noninstitutionalized elderly, this relationship was once again most prominent for the institutionalized males (r = .53). Among these studies internality also correlated positively with nurses' rating of subject's happiness, self-ratings of contentment and happiness, and correlated negatively with length of residency in old age home and age. In response to concerns raised by Rotter (1975) over locus of control research and issues raised by Mischel (1968, 1973) and others concerning personality research in general, the present study used a more situationally specific locus of control measure specially designed to take into consideration the environmental circumstances as well as interests of the subject population being studied. Included in the measure is a desire of outcome index which added substantially to the validity coefficient.

The Marital Happiness of Remarried Divorced Persons.

Abstract: A comparison of the reported marital happiness of ever-divorced and never-divorced white respondents to three recent U.S. national surveys reveals significantly greater marital happiness fbr never-divorced females but not fbr never-divorced males. Even among females, the difference in the percentage of "very happy" responses was less than 10 points. It is concluded that remarriages of divorced persons which do not quickly end in divorce probably are, as a whole, almost as successful as intact first marriages. The findings do not support the view, based on the recent increase in divorce, that American marriage has become obsolete and ineffective in serving the needs qf individuals.

The dimensions of life quality in a community

Abstract: In this study the dimensions of the quality of life construct were investigated; 454 residents of a large suburban community were asked questions on life changes, psychiatric distress, happiness, and effective participation in life concerns. Selected variables from this survey were factor-analyzed in order to define the dimensions of life quality and six demographic variables; age, sex, marital status, education, income, and religious participation were studied to see how they influenced those dimensions. The results of the analysis revealed that life quality is measurable in terms of a person's happiness, his community participation, and his preferences, answering three major questions that person may pose for himself: (1) How well do I like the life I lead? (2) In what meaningful ways do I spend my time? (3) Why? Each of the six demographic variables influenced these dimensions. Marital status and age, two life-cycle statistics, had the most powerful effects on quality-of-life ratings.

The Logic of Relative Frustration

Abstract: This text, theoretical in nature, is intended as a contribution to a particular debate. This debate is concerned with the paradox in there being a relation between both inequality and satisfaction and material plenty and satisfaction. In fact classical sociology is full of paradoxical statements of this sort. For Tocqueville greater equality tends to produce envious comparisons: as they become more equal individuals find their inequality harder and harder to bear. C. Wright Mills has also taken up this theme. For Durkheim individual happiness does not increase in direct ratio to the quantity of available goods. The relation between happiness and goods has the form of a reversed U-shaped curve: on this side of and beyond a particular optimum satisfaction decreases. Again, for Tocqueville, dissatisfaction and frustration may grow when each person’s opportunities begin to open out and improve. In Marienthal, Lazarsfeld observes the converse of Tocqueville’s theorem: when an individual’s future is blocked, recriminations against the social system may well be weak. Stouffer’s works show that individuals may well grow more discontented with the social system to which they belong as it offers them what are, on average, better opportunities for success and promotion.

Health status indexes: the trade-off between quantity and quality of life.

Abstract: In the last decade many attempts have been made to combine mortality and morbidity statistics in a single, overall health index. In this paper all of these indexes are shown to involve the same general trade-off between quantity and quality of life. All of them allow increases in the quantity of life to offset decreases in average health status. A formally identical trade-off between population size and average happiness has long been debased in utilitarian ethics, with a marked tendency among modern philosophers to decide in favor of average happiness, that is, precisely contrary to recent health-index researchers. Other considerations also suggest that the trade-off implicit in recent health status indexes may not have general support. The paper concludes with a discussion of various ways of proceeding from this point.

Motivation--Hygiene Theory Adapted for Education.

Abstract: As educators, are we stifling learning by using non-motivating, dissatisfying factors and concepts to try to motivate our students? According to the work of Dr Frederick Herzberg, many teachers may be doing the wrong thing for the right reason Dr Frederick Herzberg, an internationally famous management consultant and a clinical psychologist with a Master's of Public Health (MPH), has devoted his professional efforts throughout his lifetime to try to determine the "nature of man" and what motivates him to work A few of the questions he has asked include: What makes man happy unhappy? What brings satisfaction dissatisfaction? What motivates man to perform? He came to some simple but profound conclusions One of these conclusions is that man seeks to avoid pain and discomfort and to seek pleasure or happiness Many motivation efforts used by teachers, parents and supervisory personnel cause pain and unhappiness rather than motivate This brings to light a point Herzberg suggests concerning society, that is, we are oriented to being either happy or unhappy If one is to ask the question, "What is the opposite of happy?," the general response for most people often is unhappy or sad Herzberg points out that there is no word for a halfway point between happiness and unhappiness If you were asked by a friend, "How are you today?," and your response is "Fine" or "OK," your friend is likely to say "What's the matter?," when actually nothing is the matter In reality, most of us are just "OK" or "fine" most of the time If we were extremely high or happy all the time, or the opposite, sad or depressed, the same friend might be recommending a mental health counselor Thus there is a state in the middle a "happy" medium to one's mental health, which most of us function under most of the time with variations of "highs" and "lows"

The Repugnant Conclusion

Abstract: On an act utilitarian view it is morally permissible if not obligatory to choose to perform an action which contributes as much as any other action to the total happiness (utility) of all those capable of enjoying happiness. As the view has just been stated, however, there is some question of how we are to understand the phrase “all those capable of enjoying happiness”. For even leaving aside the possibility that animals or spirits might be included, there is still the matter of the size of the population of humans “capable of enjoying happiness”. Furthermore, among our ethical decisions themselves are decisions which would cause a decrease or increase in population and which in perhaps even more specific ways determine the applicability of this phrase “all those capable of enjoying happiness”. According to the socalled classical or total utilitarian principle, the phrase in question is understood as describing some population whose existence will enable one to maximize the net amount of happiness. For on the classical principle what one is obligated to do is simply to maximize net happiness.

Zeno and Stoic Consistency

Abstract: "r,' reek ethics is eudaimonistic", observed Max Pohlenz at the beginning of his account of the ethical theories of the Stoa;1 and it is certainly true that, as Aristotle said,2 L)?ovta is regularly regarded by the Greeks as the moral good. But the Stoic version is rather complicated, and although some of the complications of their theory of the telos and skopos of the moral life have been sorted out, in particular by Rieth3 and Long4, many problems remain, perhaps less in the work of Diogenes of Babylon and Antipater of Tarsus than among the earliest members of the school, indeed in Zeno himself. Part of the difficulty lies in the relation in the thought of Zeno between virtue and happiness, and an investigation of this relationship may conveniently begin with a passage which deals not with Zeno in particular, but with the Stoics in general. According to Stobaeus,5 the Stoics were in the habit of saying that the telos is being happy (TO 68nl[ovCZv). To be happy is something with which we are satisfied; we do not use happiness as a means to achieving something else. Such a state consists in (U7Pv&s) and living naturally (xavr (p9vv). We are not told who specifically made these equations, though the impression we are left with is that all the Stoics would have accepted them. But the passage then goes on to say that Zeno defined happiness as a smooth flow of life (cupoLoc rLou). Cleanthes, Chrysippus, and the rest accepted this definition,6 but, says Stobaeus, they called happiness the skopos, while identifying the telos with "achieving happiness" (r6 ruqeNv rr-iq

The rise and fall of “self-interest”

Abstract: Drawing on Hobbes, Locke, Smith, Mandeville, and Rousseau, Faulhaber's 1977 article argues that self-absorbed self-interest cannot serve as the foundation of society because individual perversities do not sum to the common good. In Faulhaber's own words "the transformation of the water of 'self-interest' into a wine of public interest [is] a fake miracle." His concern is with the choices to be made regarding the interests of the self, the interests of the nation, and the interests of humankind. The key to these choices resides in self-respect in which a person understands that his/her own happiness and the happiness of others are intertwined. Community, in other words, is formed not on the foundation of self-interest through the invisible hand that makes more of self than of others but on self-respect wherein the disparate interests of the self, the nation, and humankind are reconciled by economic agents who exhibit a genuine regard for the well-being of others in everyday economic affairs. Keywords: self-interest, self-respect, community, egoism, self-love, common good ********** All men were, are and will be self-interested. There is no choice in the matter, and without choice there can be no question of the morality of being self-interested. In effect we must admit that every man possesses interests, concerns, preoccupations, goals and so on. No man is without interests; even he who commits suicide can be presumed interested in being dead. Therefore, the term "self-interest" is a redundancy. Interests are referred or belong to the self, if not, to whom? In this sense, no one is "altruistic" or "disinterested," "egoist" or "selfish." The important questions then become--and these are matters of choice--what are and what should be the self's interests, the nation's interests, and, finally, mankind's interests? (1) I This error which is the taproot of the tree of modern problems is not a simple proposition. But without too much risk it can be compressed into a twin doctrine: (1) that interests are radically egoistic, and (2) that the conflicts between such interests do not pose an unsolvable problem for social life, that is, they are able to be resolved into a public interest that can be qualified as good. The first, if not also the second, of these antagonistic beliefs is not peculiar to the modern era. It is a fundamental feature of Sophist, Epicurean and Skeptic views of man. Despite the influence of Platonic and Aristotelian schools, an essentially selfish interpretation of self-interest may well have dominated the classical world, but later the influence of Christianity's doctrines and philosophical attachment to Aristotle forced the notion of selfish interests underground. Yet even in medieval Christianity, the teaching that men must do the will of God does not automatically suppress, and probably stimulates, the narrowest of motives for doing that will since the self is rewarded with eternal happiness and punished with permanent suffering. The theologically correct motivation, love of God, and not a combination of infinite greed and fear, was by no means kept a secret; yet preaching, even up to very recent times, rarely eschewed the efficiency of creating a carrot-stick syndrome in the hearts and minds of the faithful. No doubt, too, Christian (sic) art, especially painting, made a hellish contribution to men's imagination, though that art was not so successful in depicting heaven. (2) All of this suggests that Christianity had concentrated men's attention on the self and tended, in effect, to produce egoists, however religious. It was the self that was saved from eternal damnation, even though salvation was held to be worked out in the Christian community. In Michelangelo's Last Judgment the terrifying look of horror on the face of the man who is contemplating his condemnation may be due not so much to fear of the pit but to the awful realization that it is irrevocably happening to him. …

Neighborhood type, social disequilibrium, and happiness.

Abstract: This study attempts to relate (a) types of urban neighborhoods with extreme scores on the economic status dimension and rates of social and psychological disequilibrium to happiness of its residents, and (b) both aggregate and individual measures of economic status to happiness. Nonverbal behaviors such as suicide, attempted suicide, homicide, marital separation, and psychiatric disruptions served as indicators of the location of "more or less" happiness in the urban environment. Interviews in two types of neighborhoods revealed that people in the high economic-low misery neighborhood experienced greater happiness than those living in the low economic-high misery neighborhood.

Freedom, Participation, and Happiness

Abstract: Political events and political thoughts have recently conspired to demonstrate both the necessity and the difficulty of evaluating the relative merits of possibly incompatible political goals, in particular the goals of protecting individual rights and of increasing the scope and intensity of political participation. We may quite reasonably expect to find guidance in arriving at such an evaluation by considering those debates reflecting the question of whether a liberal polity or a participatory-communal' polity is a more reasonable and a more worthy object of political aspiration. The opposition within democratic theory of polyarchy or pluralism and participatory democracy,' the debate in the philosophy of law concerning the proper relationship of law and rnorality,3 the question of the open versus the closed society, and the recent controversy stirred by the liberal political theories of John Rawls and Robert Nozick can all be seen as aspects of the dispute between liberal and participatory political theorists. One very important feature of this dispute is the extreme difficulty which the. two sides seem to find in speaking to one another. Commenting on the relationship of Robert Nozick to his critics, John Rodrnan says that the two sides represent a clash between two irreconcilable and mutually incomprehensible paradigms in political thought,'

Toward a Linear Prediction Model of Marital Happiness

Abstract: An attempt was made to replicate Howard and Dawes' (1976) find ing that marital happiness is linearly related to the difference between frequency of sexual intercourse and frequency of arguments. Their finding was confirmed. However, in contrast to the Howard and Dawes results, the present results further suggest that either frequency variable can by it self serve as a predictor of marital happiness.

Time-use auditing: An approach to validating social indicators

Abstract: Following McCal,, ‘quality of life’ is defined as objective social conditions necessary to the general happiness, where ‘happiness’ is understood in the broad sense, as including all forms of intrinsically valuable experience, not just ‘feeling happy’. The argument is then made that in order for this definition to be fully implemented happiness in the broad sense must also be assessed. The latter half of the paper is devoted to describing a set of procedures, collectively called ‘time-use auditing’, for determining the extent to which an individual person is happy, in the broad sense, in a stated interval of time. Intrinsically valuable experience is analyzed into two dimensions: duration and level. The first is determined by time-budgeting and the second (in a general way) by Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Specifically, Maslow's hierarchy is spelled out in concrete terms by means of “time-use rating structures’, each one specific to a particular time-use category; the authors have written rating structures for adolescents of either sex, ages 12 to 17 inclusive. By way of illustration, an audit of three weeks in the life of a 16-year-old girl is presented. The paper concludes with a discussion of what remains to be done, with special stress on writing time-use rating structures for other age groups and modifying structures already in existence to reflect the values of particular social groups.

Romantic attraction and happiness.

Abstract: . Summary.-The hypothesis, suggested by both E. Fromm and T. Reik, that level of unhappiness prior to meeting a love partner should be related to current intensity of love experienced was tested for 61 college dating couples. The results showed that current happiness but nor retrospective report of prior unhappiness was related to romantic love. Fromm (1956) and Reik (1957) suggest that a person's level of unhappiness prior to meeting a love partner should be positively related.. to current intensity of love. Walster (1965) provides indirect support for this hypothesis with respect to liking for a stranger of the opposite sex. The present investigation tests the hypothesis more directly for a sample of naturally occurring dating relationships. Sixty-one dating couples were recruited as paid volunteers from a large midwestern university. Members of each couple were separated and asked to indicate how happy they were at the time just before they started dating their partners. Subjects used a five-point scale with the labels: unhappy, not very happy, fairly happy, happy, and very happy. Then subjects rated their happiness at the present time on the same scale. Subjects then completed Rubin's (1973) dating love scale and Driscoll, et al.'s (1972) measure of general love, along with other personality and demographic measures (see Critelli, 1975). The means and standard deviations for the experimental variables follows, with data for males presented first and for females second for each variable. Previous unhappiness: M = 3.31, SD = .91; M = 3.20, SD = 1.09. Present happiness: M = 4.17, SD = .86; M = 4.44, SD = .70. Here a score of one indicates "unhappy" and a score of five indicates "very happy." Dating love for males M = 36.87, SD = 5.17; for females M = 37.54, SD = 5.93. General love for males M = 16.69, SD = 2.95; for females M = 17.66, SD = 2.40. Most subjects had been dating at least G mo., indicating that these were relatively serious relationships. For females previous happiness correlated .27 (9 < .05) with present happiness, and the two love scales were correlated .70 (p < .001). Previous happiness correlated only -.I6 with each love scale. Current happiness, however, was correlated with dating love .38 (p < .01) and with general love .30

Promoting sense of psychological well-being in teachers through in-service education.

Abstract: Promoting Sense of Psychological Well-Being Iri Teachers Through In-Service Education (February, 1978) Dianne Sirna Mancus, B.A., Frostburg State College M.S., Frostburg State College Ed.D., University of Massachusetts Directed by: Professor Gerald Weinstein Most training of in-service teachers focuses on the student and strategies for classroom use. This study, however, suggests that teacher's personal needs are appropriate and important content for in-service education. Using Bradburn's structure of psychological well-being, the balance of positive and negative affect in one's life, this project proposes that sense of well-being can be increased in teachers through in-service courses. The intervention used to promote well-being was the combination of two courses: Education of the Self, which teaches skills of self-observation and changing dissonant patterns of behavior, and a Survey of Humanistic Curriculum which gives teachers strategies for designing more rewarding learning experiences and relationships in the classroom. A quasi-experimental , one-group, pretest/post-test design was used in a summer session, college setting. The Bradburn X Measure of Affect Balance was used in assessing well-being and its proposed change. The Levenson Locus of Control was also used at preand post-intervention times in order to determine whether a relationship between well-being and locus of control exists, and if the intervention affects locus of control. A subjective evaluation of the effects of the intervention was also used in order to show a cause and effect relationship between the intervention and reported changes in well-being and locus of control. Analysis of the data indicates that a more internalized locus of control is rep.orted and that more positive and fewer negative feelings are indicated after the intervention. Well-being is found to be correlated with personal power items on the locus of control measure. Sense of connectedness to co-workers is found to be positively correlated with well-being and inversely correlated with negative affect. Subjects reported more acceptance of self and others, increased sense of personal control, and more assertiveness as a result of the intervention on the subject evaluation. Teachers documented positive changes in their teaching as a result of the courses. Limits of the study and impliations for future research are discussed in the dissertation. xi co-workers was found to be positively correlated with wellbeing and inversely correlated with negative affect. Subjective evaluations were gathered from participants two and one half months after the courses. Students were asked to respond in a paragraph(s) to specific questions regarding well-being, personal and professional competence, and locus of control. Respondents reported more acceptance of self and others, increased sense of personal control, and more assertiveness. Teachers documented positive changes in their teaching as a result of the courses, ^^^hicipants generally reported positive changes in their personal lives as well. Generalizations are not possible from this research, due to the small population and the lack of a control group; however, results are supportive of the hypotheses and indicate the need for future study of sense of psychological well-being as related to school personnel. It expresses a need for a more appropriate measure of well-being, using Bradburn's work as a basis. The relationship between teacher effectiveness and sense of psychological well-being of teachers must be examined before school systems will support in-service education of teachers in more personally oriented classes. According to this study, the responsibility lies with higher education, to give attention to the teacher as person in curriculum development for undergraduate and graduate programs in education, and to render more substantial research in this area.

Arthur O. Lovejoy.

Abstract: His etymological argument is less convincing. Happiness and happening do indeed have the same root, hence implying involvement in some enterprise, as the author puts it. But French bonheur and evenement have no such common bond; in fact, bon-heur implies an element of luck, a "good hour," that is, the right time. German Gluck is used interchangeably for happiness as well as luck. Are we to deduce that English speakers must strive harder to attain happiness than speakers of other languages? Obviously this was not Dr. Dubos's intention, since he uses cross-cultural examples to substantiate his argument.