Abstract
In this chapter, we shall compare a group of high school students from the US and from Italy, when answering the following questions bearing on the issue of happiness. First, does happiness have the same phenomenological meaning in the two cultures? Second, are external conditions—the kind of activities pursued, the type of companions present—related in the same way to moment-by-moment fluctuations of happiness in the two groups? Third, does the perception of the ratio of challenges and skills have the same effect on happiness in the two groups? Fourth, are there differences between happy and less happy individuals in the choice of situations (i.e. types of activities and companions) and in subjective interpretations of experience (i.e. degree of perceived choice, and perception of the challenges and personal skills in daily activities)?
Reference: In F. Strack, M. Argyle & N. Schwartz (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Subjective Well-Being. London: Pergamon Press, Imprint of Elsevier. Rights have been reverted to the author(s) © 1991.
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Csikszentmihalyi, M., Wong, M.MH. (2014). The Situational and Personal Correlates of Happiness: A Cross-National Comparison. In: Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9088-8_5
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