Agency, Identity Development, and Subjective Well-Being, Among Undergraduate Students at a Central United States University

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 488-493
Author(s):  
Jordan A. Booker ◽  
Rachel Wesley ◽  
Natasha Pierre
2021 ◽  
pp. 216769682094050
Author(s):  
Jordan A. Booker ◽  
Kristen E. Johnson

Emerging adulthood is an important period for managing the pressing developmental tasks of identity exploration and formation. Affiliation with a religion can inform how emerging adults understand themselves and commit to aspects of their identity, which may have implications for well-being. The present studies tested the ways in which identification with and commitment to Christianity inform identity development (i.e., exploration and commitment) and well-being (i.e., positive affect, negative affect, life satisfaction) among two samples of central U.S. college adults, both concurrently (Studies 1 and 2) and with a 2-month follow-up (Study 2 only). Across studies, self-identification as a Christian and greater commitment to Christianity were positively associated with identity exploration and subjective well-being. Further, indirect effects were supported between Christian affiliation and well-being, given differences in identity exploration. The current studies motivate a continued focus on social identities as contributors to adjustment in emerging adulthood.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristopher Velasco ◽  
Pamela Paxton ◽  
Robert W. Ressler ◽  
Inbar Weiss ◽  
Lilla Pivnick

Since the creation of Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) in 1964 and AmeriCorps in 1993, a stated goal of national service programs has been to strengthen the overall health of communities across the United States. But whether national service programs have such community effects remains an open question. Using longitudinal cross-lagged panel and change-score models from 2005 to 2013, this study explores whether communities with national service programs exhibit greater subjective well-being. We use novel measures of subjective well-being derived from tweeted expressions of emotions, engagement, and relationships in 1,347 U.S. counties. Results show that national service programs improve subjective well-being primarily by mitigating threats to well-being and communities that exhibit more engagement are better able to attract national service programs. Although limited in size, these persistent effects are robust to multiple threats to inference and provide important new evidence on how national service improves communities in the United States.


2005 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 468-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy A. Judge ◽  
Timothy D. Chandler

Employee shirking, where workers give less than full effort on the job, has typically been investigated as a construct subject to organization-level influences. Neglected are individual differences that could explain why employees in the same organization or work-group might shirk. Using a sample of workers from the health care profession in the United States, the present study sought to address these limitations by investigating subjective well-being (a dispositional construct), job satisfaction, as well as other indiuidual-level determinants of shirking. Results indicate that whites shirk significantly more than nonwhites, and that subjective well-being, job satisfaction, and age have significant, negative effects on shirking. The implications of these results are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-72
Author(s):  
Murat Yıldırım

Identifying factors that influence well-being are fruitful for improving the knowledge held about the correlates and predictors of well-being in both practice and theory. This research for the first time aimed to investigate whether irrational happiness beliefs, a newly presented construct, contribute to the affective components of subjective well-being over time. The sample included 103 undergraduate students (88 females and 15 males) whose ages varied from 18 to 29 years (M = 19.39 ±1.62). Participants completed measures of irrational happiness beliefs, positive affect, and negative affect both at Time 1 and Time 2 over three months apart. The findings showed that irrational happiness beliefs were significantly negatively related to positive affect only at Time 1. However, the research failed to provide evidence regarding the value of irrational happiness beliefs in predicting positive and negative affect over time. The results suggest that the impact of irrational happiness beliefs upon well-being may occur momentarily not over time. Implications and limitations of the findings are discussed and directions for future studies are provided.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-350
Author(s):  
Fabian Kratz ◽  
Alexander Patzina

Abstract According to theories of cumulative (dis-)advantage, inequality increases over the life course. Labour market research has seized this argument to explain the increasing economic inequality as people age. However, evidence for cumulative (dis-)advantage in subjective well-being remains ambiguous, and a prominent study from the United States has reported contradictory results. Here, we reconcile research on inequality in subjective well-being with theories of cumulative (dis-)advantage. We argue that the age-specific endogenous selection of the (survey) population results in decreasing inequalities in subjective well-being means whereas individual-level changes show a pattern of cumulative (dis-)advantage. Using repeated cross-sectional data from the European Social Survey (N = 15,252) and employing hierarchical age-period-cohort models, we replicate the finding of decreasing inequality from the United States with the same research design for Germany. Using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (persons = 47,683, person-years = 360,306) and employing growth curve models, we show that this pattern of decreasing inequality in subjective well-being means is accompanied by increasing inequality in intra-individual subjective well-being changes. This pattern arises because disadvantaged groups, such as the low educated and individuals with low subjective well-being show lower probabilities of continuing to participate in a survey and because both determinants reinforce each other. In addition to allowing individual changes and attrition processes to be examined, the employed multi-cohort panel data have further key advantages for examining inequality in subjective well-being over the life course: They require weaker assumptions to control for period and cohort effects and make it possible to control for interviewer effects that may influence the results.


2005 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 863-866 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor M. Ruiz

The relationships between the five-factor model of personality, subjective well-being, and social adaptation were examined in two Spanish groups, one of 112 undergraduate students and one of 177 participants from the general population. Analyses showed a clear pattern of low but positive associations among scores on well-being, social adaptation, and four of the five factors of personality (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability), very similar to those obtained by previous research in the American context.


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