Showing papers on "Happiness published in 1987"

Environmental and dispositional influences on well‐being: Longitudinal follow‐up of an American national sample

Abstract: Both laypersons and social scientists typically assume that psychological well-being or happiness is a response to objective circumstances or events. The present study contributes to recent literature showing that stable individual differences are more useful than life circumstances in predicting well-being. Responses to items from the General Well-being Schedule were examined for 4942 men and women surveyed in a follow-up of a national sample. Results showed substantial stability for well-being scales for total group and demographically defined subgroups, and stability coefficients were as high for those who had experienced changes in marital or employment status or state of residence as for those who had not. These findings point out the need for caution in interpreting well-being scores as indices of the quality of life, because well-being is strongly influenced by enduring characteristics of the individual.

The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic

Abstract: W TrHEN the American colonists commenced rebellion against the British government and assumed the separate and equal station to which they believed the laws of God and nature both entitled them, they found in marriage-"that SOCIAL UNION, which the beneficent Creator instituted for the happiness of Man"-a metaphor for their ideal of social and political relationships. In the republic envisioned by American writers, citizens were to be bound together not by patriarchy's duty or liberalism's self-interest, but by affection, and it was, they believed, marriage, more than any other institution, that trained citizens in this virtue. Thus "L," writing in the Royal American Magazine in 1774, explained why this "social union is so essential to human happiness." The married man, he wrote, "by giving pleasure . . . receives it back again with increase. By this endearing intercourse of friendship and communication of pleasure, the tender feelings and soft passions of the soul are awakened with all the ardour of love and benevolence.... In this happy state, man feels a growing attachment to human nature, and love to his country."' Marriage was the very pattern from which the cloth of republican society was to be cut. Revolutionary-era writers held up the loving partnership of man and wife in opposition to patriarchal dominion as the republican model for social and political relationships. The essays, stories, poems, and novels

What is a ‘Community of Inquiry'?

Abstract: When we speak about the aim of doing philosophy on the elementary school level with children as transforming classrooms into ‘communities of inquiry’, we make certain assumptions about nature and personhood and the relationship between the two. We also make certain assumptions about dialogue, truth and knowledge. Further, we make assumptions regarding the ability of children to form such communities that will engender care for one another as persons with rights, a tolerance for each other's views, feelings, imaginings, creations as well as a care for one another's happiness equal to the concern one has for one's own happiness. Lastly, we make assumptions about children's ability to commit themselves to objectivity, impartiality, consistency and reasonableness. The latter has social, moral and political implications. This paper is an attempt to identify and clarify some of these assumptions.

Aristotle on friendship and the shared life

Abstract: In this paper I want to consider the value of friendship from an Aristotelian point of view. The issue is of current interest given recent challenges to impartialist ethics to take more seriously the commitments and attachments of a person.' In what follows I want to enter that debate in only a restricted way by strengthening the challenge articulated in Aristotle's systematic defense of friendship and the shared life. After some introductory remarks, I begin by considering Aristotle's notion that good living or happiness (eudaimonia)2 for an individual necessarily includes the happiness of others. Shared happiness entails the rational capacity for jointly promoting common ends as well as the capacity to identify with and coordinate separate ends. This extended notion of happiness presupposes the extension of self through friends, and next I

The role of attributions in the development of dating relationships.

Abstract: In this study, we examine the role of attributions in the context of dating relationships. A large sample completed a questionnaire comprising structured ratings and a free-response relationship description. As expected, cognitive or attributional activity was more frequent within relationships when they were in the early stages, when important choice points or changes were occurring, and when the relationships were perceived as unstable. Also as predicted, subjects who reported higher relationship happiness, commitment, and love for their partners tended to describe the relationship in more interpersonal terms, to rate the causal inputs of the partners as equal, and to attribute lower external attributions for relationship maintenance. Finally, some evidence was obtained that attributions for relationship maintenance are causally related to relationship happiness over a 2-month period. The results are discussed in terms of the relationship between cognitive processing and the development of dating relationships.

Belief in a Just World and Physical Attractiveness Stereotyping

Abstract: Just-world theory provides a possible explanation of physical attractiveness stereotyping, in that believing in a just world should lead to a positive bias toward "winners," such as the physically attractive. Several hypotheses derived from this premise were tested by having adults complete the Just World Scale and rate the personality traits and expected life outcomes of an attractive or unattractive stimulus person. Predictions for the personality trait ratings were borne out for male but not for female stimulus persons: (a) Believers in a just world perceived the personalities of attractive, male stimulus persons as more socially desirable than nonbelievers and also attributed more socially desirable personalities to male stimulus persons who were attractive rather than unattractive; and Co) no effects were found for female stimulus persons. Predictions for the life-outcome ratings and differences in correlations between personality and life-outcome ratings as a function of belief in a just world were clearly supported. Implications for just-world theory, status-characteristics theory, and physical attractiveness stereotyping are discussed. Dion, Berscheid, and Walster (1972) were among the first researchers to postulate and demonstrate a stereotype for physical attractiveness. They presented university students with college yearbook photographs of stimulus persons previously categorized by other judges as attractive, average looking, or unattractive. Each stimulus person was rated on a series of personality traits selected to provide an index of overall social desirability. The subjects also estimated the stimulus person's suitability for various roles (e.g., marital partner, parent, etc.) as well as his or her likelihood of finding success and happiness in different spheres of life.

Hands of light : a guide to healing through the human energy field : a new paradigm for the human being in health, relationship, and disease

Abstract: With the clarity of a physicist and the compassion of a gifted healer with more than twenty years of professional experience observing 5,000 clients and students, Barbara Ann Brennan presents the first in-depth study of the human energy field for people who seek happiness and health, and who wish to achieve their full potential. Our physical bodies exist within a larger 'body' , a human energy field or aura, which is the vehicle through which we create our experience or reality, including health and illness. It is through this energy field that we have the power to heal ourselves.This energy body - only recently verified by scientists, but long known to healers and mystics - is the starting point of an illness. Here, our most powerful and profound human interactions take place, the precursor and healer of all physiological and emotional disturbances. Hands of Light offers: * a new paradigm for the human in health, relationships and disease * an understanding of how the human energy field looks and functions * training in the ability to see and intpret auras * medically verified case studies of healing people from all walks of life with a variety of illnesses * guidelines for healing the self and others

Understanding Emotion in the Family: Children's and Parents' Attributions of Happiness, Sadness, and Anger

Abstract: COVELL, KATHERINE, and ABRAMOVITCH, RONA Understanding Emotion in the Family: Children's and Parents' Attributions of Happiness, Sadness, and Anger CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1987, 58, 985-991 This study is an investigation of children's and parents' attributions of children's and mothers' happiness, sadness, and anger 123 children ages 5 to 15 years answered questions on causal attributions of their own and their mothers' emotions, method of inference, and change of maternal emotion 54 parents were asked reciprocal questions Major findings were age differences in causal attribution of maternal emotion, age increases in use of behavioral rather than expressive cues for inferring emotion, and a majority of children believing themselves able to alter maternal emotion Unlike previous findings, only 5and 6-year-old children attributed maternal anger to themselves only Older children did not causally attribute maternal anger to themselves only; however, across ages children cited themselves as a cause of maternal anger and causally attributed their own anger, rather than their happiness or sadness, to their family

Contemplation and happiness: A reconsideration

Abstract: When one considers Aristotle's contributions to ethical theory one might have in mind any of several different things. One might think of his contributions to the subsequent history of moral philosophy, from Hellenistic and Greek Christian times to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, V i c t o r i a n England and nineteenth-century Germany, say. Or one might consider the ways in which his views have influenced recent and current work in moral philosophy, and ways in which they might further illuminate (or, as may be, darken) current discussions. A distinct third possibility, which I will be following in this paper, is to discuss Aristotle's contributions to ethical theory by addressing his ideas in a systematic way and in some detail on their own, looking for what is unique or specially distinctive about them, without special reference either to contemporary theory or to the ways in which his ideas were interpreted and put to use in the subsequent history of ethics. Along these lines, one could discuss his moral psychology his theory of the nature and function of human reason, how reason when used fully controls nonrational desires and evokes its own kind of motivation (\"rational wishes\", boulgseis in the Greek). Or one might consider his theory of what a moral virtue is, and the ways in which, and reasons why, he thinks such fairly comprehensive states of character, involving judgment, perception and feeling, must take precedence in a philosophical account of the moral life over any appeal to principles of moral behavior (rules or laws). Or one might think of Aristotle's views on the methods of ethics. Or his conception of practical knowledge, of what and how the fully virtuous person can legitimately lay claim to know (and so to be right, as opposed both to wrong and to neither right nor wrong) about how human beings ought to live. All these are aspects of Aristotle's moral philosophy that have recently and deservedly attracted the interest of philosophers and philosophically-minded scholars, and several of them are topics on

The Contribution of Marriage to the Life Satisfaction of Black Adults

Abstract: This chapter presents evidence concerning the effects of marriage on black men and black women. Norval Glenn and C. Weaver did carry out separate and parallel analyses for blacks on the contribution of marital happiness to global happiness. Norval Glenn's findings in regard to the first hypothesis were congruent with one of the most consistent findings in the literature on marital status and life satisfaction in the United States. Campbell and associates, analyzing data on adults of all ages, found that married and widowed blacks reported similar degrees of happiness and life satisfaction. Little difference in the satisfaction level of married and unmarried elderly blacks was found by James, J. Jackson, J. Bacon, and J. Peterson. Richard E. Ball found that, when age, health, social participation, education, and welfare ratio were controlled, there was no relationship between marital status and life satisfaction among black women.

Parental Social Networks and Child Development

Abstract: It has often been suggested - but not demonstrated - that parents' links with kin, neighbours, friends and formal organizations are likely to have many effects on children. In the present study independent interviews were held with 305 nine-to eleven-year-old children and their parents. Two aspects of parents' networks displayed strong effects: (a) the parental possession of regularly seen dependable friends ('friends you can call on in a crisis'), and (b) parents' affiliation with formal organizations. Both were associated with a range of effects. The parents' possession of dependable friends was related to the child's self-rated happiness, negative emotions, friendship network, school adjustment and social skills. Parents' formal group affiliations were related to the child's happiness, negative emotions, school adjustment and social skills. Over and beyond network variables, the socio-economic status of the neighbourhood also displayed an effect, primarily on children's social involvement with peers an...

The varieties of fear

Abstract: I shall conclude with a methodological moral. I have tried to show that there are several fundamentally different kinds of fear. One is a pure propositional attitude, one is partially a bodily state, and one is a relation between a person and a nonpropositional object. Other emotions come in similar varieties, such as hope and happiness, but with significant differences. The state of happiness, for example, does not entail any particular bodily state or feeling. So one lesson is this: it is hard to generalize about “the emotions.” Further detailed, analytical studies of particular emotions are needed before a “general theory of the emotions” can be fruitfully attempted.

Hope: Expected Positive Affect in an Adult Sample

Abstract: Hope, the expectation of desirable future events, can be operationalized as the difference between expected positive affect and expected negative affect. Measures of hope and happiness as well as several global measures of quality of life or well-being were obtained from a sample of 257 adults ranging from 25 to 72 years of age. Hope did not decrease with age, but negative affect, both past and expected, did decrease with age. Hope emerged as a robust variable, correlating in an expected fashion with other measures of well-being.

Race, socioeconomic status, and the subjective well-being of older Americans.

Abstract: Causal examination of factors influencing life satisfaction among older Americans can provide knowledge important to social policy development. Using rotated factor analysis, this study isolates two dimensions of life satisfaction, labeled happiness and morale, using data from the 1981 Harris survey on aging. Race, SES characteristics, and the two intervening variables of self-assessed health status and problems experienced are tested through path analysis on the two attributes of life satisfaction. Most of the effects of race and SES are mediated by self-assessed health status and problems experienced, and these two intervening variables are the strongest direct predictors of happiness and morale. Of particular significance are results which demonstrate that racial background has a strong influence on problems experienced, and that education is more influential than income on the life satisfaction factors tested in this study.

Marital Happiness of Returning Women Students and Their Husbands: Effects of Part and Full-Time Enrollment.

Abstract: Forty-four married mothers and thirty-three of their husbands were interviewed in depth at the beginning and the end of the women's first year of enrollment in a university to study changes in marital happiness when women return to school. Marital happiness declined over the year among couples in which wives were enrolled as full-time students, and changed little among couples in which wives were enrolled as part-time students. Marital happiness changed substantially more among husbands than wives. The decline in marital happiness among full-time students and their husbands appears to have been related to changes in the women's performance of family roles over the year, and to husbands' responses to those changes. Implications for practice and policy are discussed.

Correlates of psychological hardiness in Canadian adolescents.

Abstract: An analysis of some of the correlates of psychological hardiness in Canadian adolescents was presented in the present study. In a regression analysis, sex, age, grade in school, religion, and well-being were all significantly associated with differences in hardiness. Exploratory path analyses indicated two possible streams of causality: age and grade in school, and religion, sex, and happiness. A discriminate analysis indicated that these same five variables could be used successfully to classify 73% of the adolescents identified as high or low in hardiness.

Cohort Variation in Happiness: Some Hypotheses and Exploratory Analyses.

Abstract: Research on historical and age differences in well-being suggests that cohort factors explain at least part of the variation in adults' reports of well-being. Theoretical arguments suggest that it is the bases of people's evaluations of their well-being that reflect the characteristic socializing influences of their cohort. Portraits of two cohorts of older adults are drawn from historical and sociological sources and hypotheses about cohort-specific values are tested with data collected by Veroff and his colleagues in 1957 and 1976. Findings do not support the idea that happiness among the adults who produced the post-World War II baby boom is uniquely linked to concerns with marriage and children. Results do provide partial support for the view that adults born before 1900 are distinctive from other cohorts in that their happiness levels are more closely linked with survival needs and more firmly wedded to Protestant ethic values.

Self disclosure between husbands and wives: Its relationship to sex roles and marital happiness

Abstract: One hundred and eight married couples were administered an omnibus survey concerning various aspects of their marriages. In the present report, interest is focused on the correlates of their self-disclosure levels. Although four different areas of self disclosure were hypothesized (positive, negative, anger, sex), these were highly related to one another. Husbands and wives in general were found to disclose about the same amount of information, with individual couples showing a high degree of matching. Disclosure levels decreased with time-related factors such as age, length of the marriage and in particular, the number of children. Femininity was found to be a critical variable in the disclosure levels of both husbands and wives with both androgynous and feminine individuals disclosing most and generally being disclosed to most. Marital happiness correlated positively with all aspects of one's own self disclosure and to a lesser extent, all aspects of one's spouse's disclosure level.

Determinants of mood in general practitioners.

Abstract: A pilot study was conducted in which 44 general practitioners completed cognitive behavioural self monitoring diaries. Hourly changes in emotional state were recorded together with associated circumstances. Lowering of mood was associated mainly with "hassle" at work, pressure of time, and domestic dissatisfaction. Improvement in mood was associated with domestic happiness and satisfaction at working efficiently and to time. Mood was significantly lower when the doctor was on call. Women doctors were more prone to mood changes associated with domestic matters. Responses to a questionnaire suggested that the doctors preferred traditional clinical medicine to problems of a social or psychological origin. Managerial skills would help alleviate several of the problems identified in this study and should be more prominent in the training that all doctors receive.

Correlates of morale among Canadian widowed persons

Abstract: The effect of widowhood upon global happiness and morale are considered in this paper. Data come from the Canada Health Survey, conducted from July 1978 through March 1979, using 11,071 subjects age 40 and over. A major objective was to assess the independent contributions of five factors, marital status, sex, socioeconomic status, age, and religiosity in predicting morale. Results showed thatwidowed people of lower socioeconomic status were significantly less happy and more negative in mood than non-widowed persons. No sex differences were found. Younger people had more negative morale than older ones. Religiosity was a significant factor in predicting morale, with people scoring higher in religiosity having higher morale.

A Concept of Happiness

Abstract: I propose a broad concept of happiness as an ultimate moral goal that is consistent with what reflective people desire and what people generally approve. Broad happiness includes many and various pleasures, a minimum of pain, a predominately active life and awareness of what can be attained. Besides these characteristics, which are found in Mill, I add that mental and physical faculties must be developed in accord with biological potential, people must be able to choose activities that exercise their developed faculties and must be able to achieve many of the goals toward which their activities aim. This claim can be established by considering scientific data and analyzing what moralists usually approve. According to it, intellectual activities will be found to be the most important aspects of happiness. My concept will differ from Mill's in that I reject the notion that happiness is synonymous with pleasure and the absence of pain, although both are part of happiness. Because Mill adopted this definition, his theory produced many anomalies. For example, in order to maintain that intellectual activities are morally superior, Mill was led to introduce qualities of pleasure. This maneuver is inconsistent with his empiricism. Moreover, the activities that are most approved from a moral point of view cannot be explained by the pleasure principle. The broad concept of happiness can account for the primacy of intellectual activities and those activities that are most often morally approved. MILL AND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE Utilitarians would have little difficulty in convincing their peers that pleasure is a good; the difficulty lies in convincing moralists that pleasure is the good. On the surface at least, people seek goals not involving pleasure, approve the lives of non-pleasure seekers, and often treat such lives as models. Great moral systems generally approve striving, hard work, and altruism, while disapproving of pleasure for its own sake. Specifically, seeking artistic perfection, intellectual development, and scientific knowledge are looked on as worthwhile goals. Altruism, when it is not fanatically expressed, is treated as desirable. These goals are usually approved for their own sake.

Marital Status and the Meaning of Subjective Well-Being: A Structural Analysis.

Abstract: The impact of marital status on how people organize and interpret subjective experience was investigated by comparing national survey responses of first-married, divorced, and remarried adults. A three-stage confirmatory factor analysis procedure was used to examine how individuals in different marital status groups structure judgments about personal well-being, to compare these organizational structures across groups, and to clarify the nature of any variations found. With the use of a six-factor model empirically validated to describe the generalpopulation (Bryant and Veroff, 1984) as a comparative baseline, the notion that the meaning of similar responses to questions of well-being varies according to one's marital status was supported. The way that first-married, divorced, and remarried respondents structure their subjective evaluations differed significantly not only from one another on four of the six dimensions but also, except for first-married respondents, from the general population pattern as well. Specifically, whereas divorce was associated with an increased emphasis on future morale in defining present happiness, remarriage was associated with increased emphasis on the quality of ongoing role relationships in defining present gratification.