The Association Between Life Satisfaction and Self‐Reported Health Status in Europe

Previous research has shown that life satisfaction (LS) and self‐reported health status are strongly related to each other. However, it is not clear whether this association holds across different nations or whether certain country‐level indicators significantly affect this association. The study was based on nationally representative samples of 32 countries from the first six rounds of the European Social Survey (N = 291 686). Results from hierarchical multilevel modelling indicated that there was a positive association between LS and self‐reported health status across countries, but this association was slightly stronger in countries where governments spent less on the health care of their residents. Self‐reported health ratings were also more strongly tied to LS judgements in countries where variability in LS ratings was larger. These results suggest that, especially in less wealthy European countries, policies should target reducing overall social inequality and the negative impact of governments' underinvestment in health care on LS. Copyright © 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Conflict,fear and social identity in Nagaland

This survey study tested the effects of exposure to ethnopolitical conflict and violence and social group identification on psychosocial well‐being among a sample of Nagas (n = 280). Nagaland is located in Northeast India, and for decades has suffered from armed conflict and political instability. It was predicted that reported exposure to conflict would be positively associated with reported levels of fear, which in turn would decrease psychosocial well‐being (assessed with the indices life satisfaction, self‐esteem and general health). It was also expected that strongly identifying with being Naga would be positively related to perceived levels of social support, which in turn were predicted to be positively related to well‐being. Last but not least, it was hypothesized that conflict and fear would also directly and negatively impact on levels of identification with being Naga: increased conflict‐induced fear was expected to reduce the strength of the group identification. These predictions were confirmed by structural equation modelling.     

Why are people with insecure attachments unhappy? The mediation of meaning in life

This study explores the mediating role of meaning in life with respect to the relationship between adult attachment and psychological well‐being. This study proposed that because people with insecure attachments have difficulty in connecting with the external world, this may decrease their ability to attain meaning in life, which may in turn diminish their well‐being. Two studies (N = 155 and 234, respectively, with age range from 18 to 31) were conducted. Participants completed self‐report measures of attachment, well‐being and meaning in life. The results consistently revealed a full mediation effect of meaning in life on the relationship between attachment and well‐being. The findings suggested that a deeper sense of meaning in life comes from one's connection with the external world, especially with other people.     

The Complexity of Quest in Emerging Adults’ Religiosity,Well‐Being,and Identity

The construct of quest as measured by the Quest Scale raises complexities that this study addressed with online surveys measuring religiosity, ego identity, and well‐being of graduates from two Christian colleges. Intrinsic questers (those above the scale midpoint in intrinsic and quest scores but below the extrinsic midpoint) made up over half of those high in intrinsic religiosity and did not differ in Christian orthodoxy, religious identity, religious coping, or well‐being from the pure intrinsics (those high in intrinsic religiosity). Indiscriminately pro‐religious questing individuals (those high in intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity and quest) were less religious and showed poorer coping than intrinsic questers. Quest appears to be a reasonable measure of religious orientation, improving prediction of Christian orthodoxy, religious identity, and religious coping, and was more highly correlated with ego identity exploration than with stress. In association with intrinsic religiosity quest does not appear to indicate weak religiosity or poor well‐being. Instead, intrinsic questers may pursue a distinctive developmental trajectory, a path of existential searching by which emerging adults manage the demands of contemporary culture while maintaining a mature faith.     

Spirituality and the Successful Aging of Older Latinos

Using face‐to‐face interviews and a self‐report questionnaire, the authors investigated the contributions of spirituality and religiosity to the well‐being and levels of depression of 60 Latino adults ages 50 to 84 after controlling for age, health, education, and economic strain. Religiosity and spirituality predicted well‐being; however, increases in well‐being were associated with lower levels of externalizing religiosity and higher levels of spirituality. Economic strain overshadowed all other variables in predicting depression. Thus, 2 factors predicted the psychological health of Latino elders: Economic strain predicted depression, and spiritual health predicted well‐being. Several suggestions for implementing the findings are presented.     

Transition to Crisis-Free Development: A Myth or Reality?

This article substantiates the thesis that the outlines of the future and present can be made visible and comprehensible by applying a new methodology for cognition of regularities in the human community development. This methodology made it possible to define that there have been and are only two paradigms of the human system development in the entire multicentury course of the human community development. Cycles, crises, chaos, and all negative phenomena are nothing else but natural products of the second, indirect paradigm of development. The new model of life organization at each local level is at the same time the former, first development paradigm, based on the direct interconnection between production and consumption of specific human beings, but raised onto the new high-tech level. Practical realization of this model is the only feasible precondition for the transition to sustainable and crisis-free development.     

Properties of Being in Heidegger’s Being and Time

Abstract

While it is well known that the early Heidegger distinguishes between different ‘kinds of being’ and identifies various ‘structures’ that compose them, there has been little discussion about what these kinds and structures of being are. This paper defends the ‘Property Thesis’, the position that kinds of being (and their structures) are properties of the entities that have them. I give two arguments for this thesis. The first is grounded in the fact that Heidegger refers to kinds and structures of being as ‘characteristics’ and ‘determinations’, which are just two different words for ‘properties’, in the broadest senses of these terms. The second argument is based on the fact that kinds and structures of being play three roles that properties are supposed to play: they account for similarities between things, they are what predicates express, and they are what abstract nouns refer to.     

佛教幸福感的心理学解读：基于中西比较的视角

幸福感是文化定位的,因此幸福感的研究必须本土化.佛教是影响中国人最重要的三种文化传统之一,正确理解佛教独特的对于幸福感的理解也能够进一步推动幸福感研究的本土化进程.笔者通过对佛教教义的梳理,重点阐述了佛教对幸福的认识是“苦乐圆融”.佛教“苦乐圆融观”主要从“苦受”和“乐受”两方面入手,其核心是“苦受”,关键在“圆融”.最后,通过与西方幸福感研究的比较,加深对佛教“苦乐圆融观”的理解.佛教幸福感的研究作为一个新思路,不但丰富了幸福感的研究,也为今后进一步的研究提供了一定的依据.