engleski

What to do (and what not to do) to be happy and satisfied? - Affect regulation strategies and subjective well-being in a representative sample of Croatia

The literature on affect regulation suggests several strategies may be important in adapting to the challenges of everyday life. Most researchers believe that people regulate their affective states to achieve or maintain their subjective well-being. The purpose of our study is to investigate whether or not affect regulation is related to different components of subjective well-being and satisfaction with life in general. More specifically, our main aim was to investigate the relationship of seven affect regulation strategies to subjective well-being variables (life satisfaction, percentage of time being happy, and percentage of time being unhappy). Our predictions were that specific strategies would predict positive outcomes (e.g., percentage of time happy) and that other specific strategies would predict negative outcomes (e.g., percent of time unhappy). Also, we predicted different relationships between regulation strategies and well-being measures within females and males. Subjects were a representative sample of Croatian citizens recruited as a part of a public opinion research (2005). There were 541 females and 466 males (M=41 years). The affect regulation strategies were described by seven behavioral and cognitive strategies that people use to regulate their negative feelings in everyday life. These are based on the 7-factors assessed by the Measure of Affect Regulation Styles (MARS ; Larsen & Prizmic 2004), and are defined as Active distraction, Cognitive engagement, Behavioral engagement, Venting/expressing, Passive distraction/acceptance, Rumination/withdraw and Waiting/reframing strategies. Subjects also reported their life satisfaction using Satisfaction with the Life Scale (Diener et al, 1985) and percentage of time being happy and being unhappy using Fordyce scale (Fordyce, 1988). Hierarchical regression analyses were used to examine the effects of affect regulation strategies on measures of life satisfaction and happiness, separately for males and females. Age and family income were used as covariates in the regression analysis. Among the females Cognitive engagement and Active distraction strategies were positively related to life satisfaction, while among the males only Active distraction strategies had a positive relationships with life satisfaction. For both genders, the best predictors of time being happy were Cognitive engagement and Active distraction. Besides those two strategies positively related to being happy, using Waiting/reframing was negatively related to percent of time happy just in males. Cognitive engagement was negatively related to being unhappy among females, while Active distraction was negatively related to being unhappy among males. Different strategies were predictors of life satisfaction for males and females. Cognitive strategies related to positive thinking and engaging in pleasant behaviors to distract attention from negative feelings were related to better life satisfaction in females. Among men, only engaging in pleasant behaviors to distract attention from negative feelings was found to be related to life satisfaction. Strategies used in prediction of time being happy and time being unhappy were different between each other and differed between the genders as well. Strategies with active or behavioral components showed stronger relationship with well-being variables in males, while strategies involving cognitive components showed stronger relationships with well-being variables in females. The results are discussed within findings in the emotion literature.

affect regulation; happiness; well-being

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