Aspirations,Attainments, and Satisfaction: Life Cycle Differences Between American Women and Men

Aspirations, along with attainments, play an important role in shaping well-being. Early in adult life women are more likely than men to fulfill their material goods and family life aspirations; their satisfaction in these domains is correspondingly higher; and so too is their overall happiness. Material goods aspirations refer here to desires for a number of big-ticket consumer goods, such as a home, car, travel abroad and vacation home. In later life these gender differences turn around. Men come closer than women to fulfilling their material goods and family life aspirations, are more satisfied with their financial situation and family life, and are the happier of the two genders. An important factor underlying the turnaround in fulfillment of aspirations for material goods and family life is probably the shift over the course of the life cycle in the relative proportion of women and men in marital and non-marital unions.     

Happiness in the Garden of Epicurus

Epicurus was a philosopher who lived in Greece in the 3rd century B.C. Like his contemporaries, he was much concerned with the question of how to live a good life. In his view the Chief Good is to decrease pain and increase pleasure. Though Epicurus is reputed for advocating the pursuit of refined sensorial pleasures, he recognized the need for deferring gratification or enduring pain. He advised his followers to lead a modest and contemplative life in friendly communities. His advice can be characterized as ‘serene hedonism’. This paper explains that position and considers its applicability for the present day. It concludes that Epicureanism was quite accurate in describing the conditions of happiness and that he offered valuable guidelines in dealing with hardship and difficult emotional content. His ideas that happiness is the same as the absence of pain and that one should withdraw from society are less fortunate. It made him assume that happiness automatically follows if one is in the right state of mind, and that there is no need to actively seek interaction with the environment for the betterment of the circumstances of life. However, Epicurus’ advice might have been a good option for his contemporaries given the societal turmoil in his times.

Analysing trends in subjective well-being in 15 European countries, 1973–2002

Previous empirical research has been unable to find a sufficient correlation between subjective well-being and per capita income, being hampered by limited longitudinal information and an inability to account for the predictions of competing theories. We bring new evidence to this question by exploiting a long and complete time-series from the Eurobarometer Survey, 1973–2002 allowing an examination of trends in life satisfaction across 15 European countries employing a modified version of Kendall’s Tau. Our results show that while current GDP growth does not affect trends in well-being, accelerations in GDP growth do. In addition, faster GDP growth and faster growth of government consumption than in neighbouring countries induces positive trends in life satisfaction. Our findings are consistent with the predictions of aspirations theory and the theory of reference group comparisons.     

Ancient Chinese philosophical advice: can it help us find happiness today?

Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism are three main classic Chinese philosophy schools, which all deal with the question of how one should live. In this paper, we first review these ancient recommendations and next consider whether they promise a happy life in present-day society. Recommended behaviours found in the ancient texts are compared with conditions for happiness as observed in present-day empirical investigations. Classic Confucianism appears to offer the most apt advice for finding happiness in present-day society, in particular because it recommends that one should be involved in real life. Classic Taoist advice is second best: its strong point is that it advises us against too much social conformism and bookishness. The advice given by classic Buddhists is better not followed in modern society.     

Does subjective well-being show a relationship between parents and their children?

The relationship between the subjective well-being of parents and their own 12–16-year-old children was explored in a Spanish sample of N = 266 families. A positive relationship was expected due to both a shared environment and the possibility of the genetic transmission of subjective well-being ‘set-points’. A positive significant relationship was found for the summated scale of satisfaction domains forming the Personal Well-being Index, and for the specific domains of health and security for the future. However, no relationship was found for the other five domains that make up this Index or for satisfaction with life as a whole. We conclude while these results provide some evidence for the expected influence of a shared environment, they have failed to provide evidence for high heritability of set-points for subjective well-being.     

宗教现象学的基本问题

客观的宗教现象学是不可能的,因为它将是一个没有主题的现象学:客观的视野是把宗教主体的存在性关怀排除在外的。宗教现象学必须既是存在性的又是诠释性的。这两个特点是由宗教生活或宗教现象本身的两个基本要素决定的,即人与神圣者的关系。     

To(o) Queer the Analyst: Lesbiana,Junguiana and Sudamericana. Towards Woven Onto-Epistemologies1

This is a two-part paper: in the first one, a personal story serves as a conceptual prism through which I address the issue of how a queer analyst can be a problem for analytical psychology; in the second, I present some readings and images—mostly from decolonial feminisms—that have been of interest to me lately in my path to queer Jungian psychology, that is, to de-essentialize and de-individualize its theory and practice. By borrowing (and altering) the title from Gloria Anzaldúa's (1991/2009a) essay “To(o) queer the writer”, this paper explores some themes she has elaborated there on solidarity, theorization and ways of writing and reading from othered points of view. In dialogue with Donna Haraway's (2016) Staying with the Trouble and Ursula K. Le Guin's (1989/2000) The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, together with the imagery of bags, weaving and string figures game, this paper aims to explore the potential of what I have called “woven onto-epistemologies”. By imagining and developing this new condition of knowledge, other stories and theories in analytical psychology may have an opportunity to be told.     

A longitudinal and multi-method examination of interest–occupation congruence within and across time

Remarkably little research has addressed change and stability in person–environment fit across time. The objective of the current study was to address this gap in the literature by investigating Holland interest–occupation congruence across time for a sample of college alumni (N = 167) that were tracked during the first third of their professional career. Congruence was examined in all its complexity, including a repeated assessment of both occupations and interests, the use of objective (O*NET) and subjective (self-report) environment assessment methods, and adopting sophisticated congruence calculation methods (i.e., Euclidean distance and profile correlation). This resulted in a total of 12 interest–occupation comparisons within and across time that could be related to general and career specific well-being. The results first indicated moderate levels of stability in interests and occupations across the 15-year time interval, yet also with room for change. Congruence analyses indicated significant interest–occupation fit at the beginning of the career and 15 years later, with the magnitude of congruence slightly varying depending on which occupation assessment and which congruence method was used. Profile correlation congruence did not change over time in absolute terms and evidenced relative stability. Euclidean distance indices had little relative stability over time but did manifest some absolute changes in levels of congruence. Finally, job change moderated the association between interest–occupation congruence and life satisfaction in such a way that higher levels of satisfaction were reported only when little job change was present.     

Social cognitive predictors of well-being in African college students

Lent and Brown's (2006, 2008) social cognitive model of work well-being was tested in two samples of African college students, one from Angola (N = 241) and one from Mozambique (N = 425). Participants completed domain-specific measures of academic self-efficacy, environmental support, goal progress, and satisfaction, along with measures of global positive affect and life satisfaction. Path analyses indicated that the model fit the data well overall, both in the full sample and in separate sub-samples by country and gender. Contrary to expectations, however, self-efficacy predicted academic satisfaction only indirectly, via goal progress; and goal progress predicted life satisfaction only indirectly, via academic satisfaction. The predictors accounted for substantial portions of the variance in both academic domain satisfaction and life satisfaction. Implications for research and practice involving the social cognitive model are considered.     

Women’s occupational career patterns over 27 years: Relations to family of origin, life careers, and wellness

This study aimed at identifying and describing occupational career patterns (OCPs) from age 16 to 43 by applying optimal matching techniques to sequence data obtained from a sample of Swedish women. Women’s occupational trajectories were found to be diverse. Upward mobility (3 patterns) and stable careers (4 patterns) were prevalent, but there were also women characterized by downward mobility, fluctuation and being outside the labor market (1 pattern each). Women’s OCPs were related to family of origin, but more strongly to their overall life career (i.e., multiple role constellations over the life course). The study indicates that occupational mobility patterns do matter in terms of job perceptions, work attitudes, and quality of life. The results generally confirm the popular belief of the advantage of upward mobility, followed by stable occupational careers, whereas women with downward or fluctuating careers fared worst.