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Orientations to Happiness and Subjective Well-Being in Chinese Adolescents

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Abstract

The present study investigated Chinese adolescents’ use of orientations to happiness (i.e., meaning and pleasure), and examined the relationships between orientations to happiness and subjective well-being. A total of 2082 Chinese adolescents in 7th, 8th, 10th, and 11th grades (43 % boys; M age = 15.32, SD = 1.96) participated in the study. The results showed that Chinese adolescents used pleasure and meaning to a similar extent, and no gender differences were found in either orientation. Adolescents’ use of both orientations increased from 7th to 8th grade and did not change from 8th to 11th grade. Both orientations to happiness contributed to adolescents’ subjective well-being, but meaning was a stronger contributor than pleasure. Adolescents with a full life (using both orientations) enjoyed the greatest subjective well-being; adolescents with a meaningful life (using only the meaning orientation) enjoyed the second highest level of subjective well-being; adolescents with a pleasurable life (using only the pleasure orientation) reported the third highest level of subjective well-being; adolescents with an empty life (using neither meaning nor pleasure) reported the lowest well-being. Additionally, we revealed the distribution of the four life types in Chinese adolescents. The proportion of empty life in Chinese adolescents was larger than that in adults.

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Notes

  1. There is another orientation named engagement in the orientations to happiness framework (Peterson et al. 2005). Due to our research interest and related inconsistent argument about the engagement orientation (Henderson et al. 2014), only the meaning and the pleasure orientations were discussed in the present study.

  2. In China, 9th and 12th grade students are usually not included in investigations because they are under extremely high pressure towards upcoming entrance examinations.

  3. In China, primary school comprises grades one to six; middle school comprises grades seven to twelve.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Ministry of Education (MOE) Project of Key Research Institutes of Humanities and Social Science at Universities (10JJDXLX002), the Project of Bei**g Municipal Commission of Education (PXM2014_014202_07_000067), the Bei**g Well-Being Foundation (No. 00203442015-01-005), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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  1. Bei**g Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, Institute of Developmental Psychology, Bei**g Normal University, 19 **njiekouwai Street, Haidian District, Bei**g, People’s Republic of China, 100875

    Ying Yang, Peipei Li & Yu Kou

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Yang, Y., Li, P. & Kou, Y. Orientations to Happiness and Subjective Well-Being in Chinese Adolescents. Child Ind Res 10, 881–897 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-016-9410-2

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