Alternative Recipes for Life Satisfaction: Evidence from Five World Regions

In most cross-national research on Life Satisfaction (LS) an implicit assumption appears to be that the correlates of LS are the same the world over; ‘one size fits all’. Using data from the World Values Survey (1999–2014), we question this assumption by assessing the effects of differing personal values/life priorities on LS in five world regions: the West, Latin America, the Asian-Confucian region, ex-Communist Eastern Europe, and the Communist countries of China and Vietnam. We indicate that differing values - traditional family values, friendship and leisure values, materialistic values, political values, prosocial and environmental values, and religious values – are endorsed to varying degrees in different parts of the world, and vary in whether they have positive or negative effects on LS. Personal values provide the basis for alternative ‘recipes’ affecting LS. By ‘recipes’ we mean linked set of values, attitudes, behavioural choices and domain satisfactions that have a positive or negative effect on LS. We estimate structural equation models which indicate that differing values-based recipes help to account for large, unexpected differences between mean levels of LS in the five world regions, compared with the levels ‘predicted’ by GDP per capita. In particular, the high priority given to traditional family and religious recipes in Latin America helps to account for unexpectedly high LS in that region. Deficits in prosocial attitudes and behaviours partly account for low LS in ex-Communist Eastern Europe.

     

宠物犬对"空巢父母"身心健康影响的研究

采用量表法以642个成年人为被试研究了是否拥有宠物犬、依恋宠物犬和身心健康之间的关系。差异检验表明,饲养宠物犬的空巢父母身体更健康,一年内就医次数更少、生活满意感更高。相关分析表明,是否拥有宠物犬与身心健康显著相关。回归分析表明,是否拥有宠物犬、依恋宠物犬对就医次数和生活满意感有较好预测作用。