I Am So Happy ‘Cause My Friend Is Happy for Me: Capitalization,Friendship, and Happiness Among U.S. and Turkish College Students

ABSTRACT

Friends usually share positive events in their lives with each other. Referred to as capitalization, this process promotes individual happiness when the discloser perceives that the responses display genuine support. Yet, the specific mechanisms explaining why capitalization is associated with happiness are not known. The present study addresses this empirical issue by testing a mediational model positing that friendship quality would mediate the relationship between capitalization and happiness among U.S. and Turkish college students. Although the psychosocial well-being of the U.S. participants was significantly higher than Turkish participants, the proposed model was supported in both groups. This suggests that part of the reason capitalization is associated with happiness is because of friendship experiences. The authors also provide suggestions for future research.     

Social Values and the Creative Ethos in the Greek Knowledge Society: A Phenomenological Analysis

Departing from Richard Florida's theory of the Creative Class, this article attempts to delineate the Greek creative ethos. The research involved in-depth interviews with knowledge and service workers in Greece. Adopting an existential view of creativity, which emphasizes the natural human inclination to create and engage with one's acts, and using valuing processes as tools to analyze workers’ discourses opens up the elements that underpin workers’ efforts to experience authenticity across life spheres and construct the meaning of work and good living. These efforts were sketched against a backdrop of adverse lived realities and intersected with anxious, alienated, and disempowered constructions of selfhood. Contrary to Florida's claims, the present article goes beyond positions of more or less creative workers and examines the various meanings of creativity underpinned by different lived realities.     

Examining Personal Control Beliefs as a Mediating Variable in the Health-Damaging Behavior of Substance Use: An Alternative Approach

Substance use continues to be a concern for researchers and health professionals alike. One of the most extensive areas of research on health-related behaviors such as smoking and drug use has been on personal control beliefs. Since many health actions (both facilitative and deleterious) depend on voluntary behaviors, and many health-related prevention and intervention programs are predicted on an assumption of controllability, this is an important area to consider. This article is a review of some of the literature and presents an alternative approach that entails using area-specific and domain-specific methods to examine the role that control beliefs play in the health-damaging behavior of substance use.     

Achieving Sustainable Gains in Happiness: Change Your Actions, not Your Circumstances*

Although attaining happiness is a nearly universal goal, surprisingly little research has focused on how happiness can be increased and then sustained. Three studies test predictions of a model (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005) positing that sustainable happiness is possible through intentional activity changes, more so than through circumstantial changes. Study 1 shows that less hedonic adaptation is reported in response to activity changes than to circumstantial changes. Study 2 tests a dynamic process model, showing that while both positive activity changes and positive circumstantial changes predict rank-order increases in subjective well-being from Time 1 to Time 2, only activity changes predict maintained gains at Time 3. Study 3 replicates the Study 2 findings and extends them to psychological well-being (Ryff and Keyes, 1995). Implications for positive psychology and “the pursuit of happiness” are discussed. *This work was supported in part by grants from the Positive Psychology Network.     

The Potential of Anamnestic Comparative Self-Assessment (ACSA) to Reduce Bias in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being

Background: The conventional question (CQ) on subjective well-being (SWB) is e.g. “How is life?”, with ratings between e.g. ‘Best’ and ‘Worst possible’. Disadvantages may be casualness of responses and biases of proximate, peer or cultural relativity. Alternatively, with Anamnestic Comparative Self-Assessment (ACSA), the scale anchors are the respondents’ self-defined memories of their best and worst periods in life. Thus ACSA uses life review and experiential scale anchors. Objective: To compare the validity, sensitivity and responsiveness of the CQ and ACSA. Method: ACSA and the CQ were administered in parallel to 2584 university-hospital patients suffering from a wide range of psychiatric and somatic diseases. Results: ACSA and CQ did not measure the same construct (r = 0.50). CQ ratings were almost normally distributed, whereas ACSA ratings were overall lower, and clearly positively skewed, suggesting greater sensitivity to the respondents’ diseased state. Contrary to CQ, ACSA ratings of critically ill patients with end-stage liver disease were very low. After life-saving liver transplantation, ACSA ratings increased significantly more than CQ ratings, suggesting better responsiveness of ACSA to objective change. Trait-like socio-demographic variables such as sex, age, and marital status influenced CQ, but not ACSA ratings. Conclusion: In between-subject studies, depending on one’s study objectives, ACSA should be considered as a complement or an alternative to conventional SWB instruments. The CQ is probably preferable when socio-demographic variables are study endpoints. In longitudinal or intervention studies and for intercultural comparisons, ACSA, which reduces the need for correction of several biases or confounders, seems more useful.