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Two Sides of the Same Coin or Two Different Currencies? Representations of Happiness and Unhappiness among Finnish Women
This paper presents results from a study exploring representations of “happiness” and “unhappiness.” Word associations with these concepts were produced by 16–18 and 29–34-year-old women from Finland, the country that the United Nation’s World Happiness Report has ranked the “happiest” in the world....
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Springer US
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8139927/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33063255 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12124-020-09579-4 |
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author | De Paola, Jennifer Wagner, Wolfgang Pirttilä-Backman, Anna-Maija Lehtonen, Josetta |
author_facet | De Paola, Jennifer Wagner, Wolfgang Pirttilä-Backman, Anna-Maija Lehtonen, Josetta |
author_sort | De Paola, Jennifer |
collection | PubMed |
description | This paper presents results from a study exploring representations of “happiness” and “unhappiness.” Word associations with these concepts were produced by 16–18 and 29–34-year-old women from Finland, the country that the United Nation’s World Happiness Report has ranked the “happiest” in the world. Correspondence Analysis (CA) and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis show that participants in both age groups share three clusters of words associated with “happiness”: Tangible happiness, Affective happiness and Serene happiness. We noted more differences in the associations with “unhappiness,” for which the two groups share only two clusters: Loss and Everyday problems. A distinct third cluster, Affective unhappiness, emerged for the younger women, whereas older women’s associations are further differentiated into a more complex structure, including two more clusters: Dejection and Apprehension. Additionally, CA shows that in both age groups, self-reported happiness levels do not discriminate which words are associated with happiness and unhappiness. Finally, qualitative content analysis of a questionnaire item investigating how to reach complete happiness suggested that there are three recurring answer types: happiness can be improved through external changes, internal changes, or not at all because complete/permanent happiness does not exist. The study provides a methodological design which, unlike most happiness studies, allows participants the freedom to bring up the meaning of happiness and unhappiness. Thus, the study constitutes a contribution to a more nuanced understanding of happiness. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8139927 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Springer US |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81399272021-06-03 Two Sides of the Same Coin or Two Different Currencies? Representations of Happiness and Unhappiness among Finnish Women De Paola, Jennifer Wagner, Wolfgang Pirttilä-Backman, Anna-Maija Lehtonen, Josetta Integr Psychol Behav Sci Regular Article This paper presents results from a study exploring representations of “happiness” and “unhappiness.” Word associations with these concepts were produced by 16–18 and 29–34-year-old women from Finland, the country that the United Nation’s World Happiness Report has ranked the “happiest” in the world. Correspondence Analysis (CA) and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis show that participants in both age groups share three clusters of words associated with “happiness”: Tangible happiness, Affective happiness and Serene happiness. We noted more differences in the associations with “unhappiness,” for which the two groups share only two clusters: Loss and Everyday problems. A distinct third cluster, Affective unhappiness, emerged for the younger women, whereas older women’s associations are further differentiated into a more complex structure, including two more clusters: Dejection and Apprehension. Additionally, CA shows that in both age groups, self-reported happiness levels do not discriminate which words are associated with happiness and unhappiness. Finally, qualitative content analysis of a questionnaire item investigating how to reach complete happiness suggested that there are three recurring answer types: happiness can be improved through external changes, internal changes, or not at all because complete/permanent happiness does not exist. The study provides a methodological design which, unlike most happiness studies, allows participants the freedom to bring up the meaning of happiness and unhappiness. Thus, the study constitutes a contribution to a more nuanced understanding of happiness. Springer US 2020-10-16 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8139927/ /pubmed/33063255 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12124-020-09579-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Regular Article De Paola, Jennifer Wagner, Wolfgang Pirttilä-Backman, Anna-Maija Lehtonen, Josetta Two Sides of the Same Coin or Two Different Currencies? Representations of Happiness and Unhappiness among Finnish Women |
title | Two Sides of the Same Coin or Two Different Currencies? Representations of Happiness and Unhappiness among Finnish Women |
title_full | Two Sides of the Same Coin or Two Different Currencies? Representations of Happiness and Unhappiness among Finnish Women |
title_fullStr | Two Sides of the Same Coin or Two Different Currencies? Representations of Happiness and Unhappiness among Finnish Women |
title_full_unstemmed | Two Sides of the Same Coin or Two Different Currencies? Representations of Happiness and Unhappiness among Finnish Women |
title_short | Two Sides of the Same Coin or Two Different Currencies? Representations of Happiness and Unhappiness among Finnish Women |
title_sort | two sides of the same coin or two different currencies? representations of happiness and unhappiness among finnish women |
topic | Regular Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8139927/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33063255 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12124-020-09579-4 |
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