The Human Pursuit of Well-Being

Describing research and practice from diverse fields of positive psychology, and covering topics such as motivation, happiness and academic performance, this book assembles contributions from around the world and especially from Europe’s growing cohort.

This book brings together the latest research on positive psychology from an international cast of researchers and particularly from the growing body of European researchers. The chapters describe research and practice from diverse fields of positive psychology, covering topics such as happiness and well-being, motivation and goals, personality, academic performance and coping, measurement and interventions. The book emphasizes a cultural approach to the human pursuit of well-being. It is unique in that it presents research from a range of cultures, such as Russia, Croatia, and Egypt, in addition to ten different Western cultures. This approach helps broaden our understanding of those aspects of human experience that make life worth living in diverse cultural conditions.

The book includes well-known and new authors from the field and contains selected papers that were presented at the 4th European Conference of Positive Psychology held in 2008 in Croatia.

Preface: Ingrid Brdar.- Introduction: The Human Pursuit of Well-Being: A Cultural approach, Ingrid Brdar.- Part 1. Happiness and Well-being: 1. Can we get Happier than we are?: Ruut Veenhoven.-2. Self-serving Attributional Bias and Hedonic and Eudaimonic Aspects of Well-being: Pilar Sanjuán, Alejandro Magallares and Rodolfo Gordillo.-3. Affect Specificity as Indicators of National Well-Being, Representative Sample of Croatia: Ljiljana Kaliterna Lipovčan, Zvjezdana Prizmić-Larsen and Tihana Brkljačić.- 4. From Flow to Optimal Experience. (Re)searching the Quality of Subjective Experience Throughout Daily Life: Teresa Freire.-5. Gender Differences in Psychological Well-being and Distress during Adolescence: Dalila Visani Elisa Albieri, Emanuela Offidani, Fedra Ottolini, Elena Tomba, Chiara Ruini.-6. The Impact of Positive Affect: Two weekly Assessment Studies on Benefits of Positive Emotions in Patients with a Chronic Painful Disease: Elin Strand.-7. Studying Predictors of Post-traumatic Growth in Cancer Patients: Marta Scrignaro, Sandro Barni, Maria Luisa Bonetti and Maria Elena Magrin.-Part 2. Motivation and Goals: 8. It’s all about me: Maladaptive self-focused attention as a mediator of the relationship between extrinsic goals and well-being: Mami Yamaguchi and Jamin Halberstadt.-9. The Relation of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Aspirations to Adolescent Life Satisfaction: Marina Merkaš, Zora Raboteg-Šarić and Dubravka Miljković.-10. Where does the motivation for the antiretroviral therapy come from?: Assessing existential meaning, personal growth and motivation towards antiretroviral therapy in people affected by HIV/AIDS: Krzysztof Szadejko and Gabriele Covotta.-Part 3. Personality: 11. The Relationships between temperament, character strengths and resilience: Ann-Marie K. Hutchinson, Anita D. Stuart and Hester G. Pretorius.-12. Character Strengths and Well-being: Are there gender differences?: Ingrid Brdar, PetraAnić and Majda Rijavec.-Part 4. Academic performance and coping: 13. Optimistic attributional style as a predictor of well-being and performance in different academic settings: A new look at the problem: Tamara O. Gordeeva and Evgeny N. Osin.-14. To flourish, arm or fade away?: Proactive, defensive and depressive patterns of self-regulated learning: Darko Loncaric.-15. Moderator effect of burnout in secondary school context: Charles Martin-Krumm, Marie Oger, Philippe Sarrazin and Patrick Pelayo.-Part 5. Measurement: 16. Factor Structure of the French Ryff’s Psychological Well-Being Scales for Active Older Adults: Mareï Salama-Younes, Amany Ismaïl, Ali Montazeri and Charles Roncin.-17. Further Evaluation of the Test-retest Reliability of the Children Hope Scale and Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale: Susana C. Marques, Jose L. Pais Ribeiro and Shane J. Lopez.-18.  Validation of the Mental Health Continuum Short Form and Subjective Vitality Scale with Egyptian Adolescent Athletes: Mareï Salama-Younes.-Part 6. Interventions:19. School interventions for promoting psychological well-being in adolescence: Chiara Ruini, Fedra Ottolini, Elena Tomba, Carlotta Belaise, Elisa Albieri, Dalila Visani, Ernesto Caffo and Giovanni A. Fava.-20. Applying Self-Determination Theory to Help Obese Portuguese Individuals: Sónia Mestre and Jose L. Pais Ribeiro.-21. A School-based Intervention Involving Massage and Yoga for Male Disadvantaged Adolescents: An Exploratory Study on a Self Discovery Programme: Lesley Powell.