Body Image and Subjective Well-Being in Portuguese Adolescents

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
António Borges ◽  
Margarida Gaspar de Matos ◽  
José Alves Diniz

AbstractThe study examines the impact of body image in adolescents’ well-being. Well-being was assessed with the scale Kidscreen10, with the Cantril ladder for satisfaction with life and with an ad hoc happiness scale. The study presents data on adolescent health from the Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC)/World Health Organization study in Portugal (2006), with a sample of 4,877 adolescents, average age of 14 years old and gender distribution at 49,6% males. Portuguese adolescents showed differences between gender and age group regarding their body image-related satisfaction/dissatisfaction and self-perceived body image, being that both components have a direct impact on the levels of well-being. The male gender has better results in the perception of body image and, consequently, well-being. The largest inter-gender differences for well-being is at 15 years of age. The main predictors of well-being are the look and body satisfaction/dissatisfaction, with greater importance on the affective component. This research highlights the importance of body image for adolescents’ well-being, as well as to prepare educational strategies adapted to adolescents’ age and gender, by helping them to develop skills concerning self-knowledge and caring for their look.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Sciara ◽  
Daniela Villani ◽  
Anna Flavia Di Natale ◽  
Camillo Regalia

Facebook and other social networking sites allow observation of others’ interactions that in normal, offline life would simply be undetectable (e.g., a two-voice conversation viewable on the Facebook wall, from the perspective of a real, silent witness). Drawing on this specific property, the theory of social learning, and the most direct implications of emotional contagion, our pilot experiment (N = 49) aimed to test whether the exposure to others’ grateful interactions on Facebook enhances (a) users’ felt gratitude, (b) expressed gratitude, and (c) their subjective well-being. For the threefold purpose, we created ad hoc Facebook groups in which the exposure to some accomplices’ exchange of grateful messages for 2 weeks was experimentally manipulated and users’ felt/expressed gratitude and well-being were consequently assessed. Results partially supported both hypotheses. Observing others’ exchange of grateful posts/comments on Facebook appeared to enhance participants’ in-person expression of gratitude (i.e., self-reported gratitude expression within face-to-face interactions), but not their direct and subjective experiences of gratitude. Similarly, exposure to others’ grateful messages improved some components of subjective well-being, such as satisfaction with life, but not negative and positive affect. Taken together, however, our preliminary findings suggest for the first time that social networking sites may actually amplify the spreading of gratitude and its benefits. Implications of our results for professionals and future research in the field of health, education, and social media communication are discussed.


Author(s):  
Illia Yahiiaiev ◽  
Alina Novoselska ◽  
Vladyslava Keller ◽  
Marta Savych

The relevance of the topic is related to the psychosocial consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is to study the subjective well-being during the beginning of the pandemic and introduction of the quarantine measures and their connection to social media activity. The methods employed in the present study include various types of questionnaires, namely the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) (Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988), the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) (Diener, Emmnos, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985), the General Self-Efficacy Scale (Schwarzer & Jerusalem, 1995), and an original questionnaire developed to study the impact of the pandemic and the respondents' understanding and perceptions of it. The findings of the quantitative analysis show that the subjective well-being during the pandemic is connected to the use of social media, life satisfaction, health risks assessments and economic consequences, leisure time and the level of self-efficacy. A qualitative analysis indicates that at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine the negative predictions of the consequences of both the pandemic and the implemented quarantine measures prevail among the subjects. A longitudinal study during one month has found a reduction in health concerns, and respondents began to assess the threat to their health and economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic as less serious than at the beginning. Thus, it can be concluded that from a short-term perspective the negative affect, especially the levels of fear and anxiety, decreased, whereas the level of the positive affect did not change.


2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (10) ◽  
pp. 785-790 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shimon Shiri ◽  
Isaiah Wexler ◽  
Anat Marmor ◽  
Zeev Meiner ◽  
Isabella Schwartz ◽  
...  

Objectives: Subjective well-being has been associated with decreased work burnout and elevated work engagement. We investigated the impact of hope and meaning in life on subjective well-being among workers in a hospice care setting. Comparison was made to health-care workers in a rehabilitation unit. Methods: Thirty-five hospice care workers were surveyed and their responses compared with those of 36 rehabilitation workers. Survey instruments measuring hope, meaning in life, work engagement, and satisfaction with life were utilized. Results: Individuals working in a hospice care center have significantly higher levels of work engagement than their counterparts in rehabilitation. For both groups, hope was significantly related to subjective well-being. For hospice care but not rehabilitation workers, meaning in life was also related to subjective well-being. Multivariate analysis showed that hope and meaning in life were independent factors predicting subjective well-being in hospice care workers. Significance of Results: Hospice care workers are highly engaged in their work despite the challenging nature of their work. What characterizes these workers is a level of subjective well-being that is related to both meaning in life and hope. Maintaining a high level of subjective well-being may be an important factor in preventing burnout among those working in hospice care settings.


Author(s):  
André Hajek ◽  
Hans-Helmut König

Previous studies have mainly focused on interindividual income comparisons (e.g., comparisons with colleagues or neighbors), whereas intraindividual income comparisons (i.e., difference between factual income and expectations) have rarely been investigated in well-being research. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of intraindividual income comparisons on subjective well-being (negative/positive emotions and life satisfaction) longitudinally. Data from 2005 to 2013 (biannually) were used from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), a nationally representative, longitudinal study. Affective well-being (negative and positive emotions) were quantified by using the affective well-being scale-SOEP. Life satisfaction was quantified using the widely used one-item form. Intraindividual income comparisons were analyzed by using the distance between the own individual income and fair income (“how high would your net income have to be in order to be just”). We tested whether negative (i.e., factual income was lower than their self-rated just income) and positive income comparisons (otherwise) affect the outcome measures differently. Fixed effects regressions showed that positive emotions increased with positive income comparisons in the total sample (β = 0.16, p < 0.05). In contrast, negative income comparisons neither affect negative emotions nor satisfaction with life. Strategies to shift income expectations might be beneficial for increasing positive emotions.


2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jungsik Kim ◽  
Elaine Hatfield

This cross-cultural research explored the relationship between Hatfield & Rapson's (1993) love types and subjective well-being. College students from an individualistic culture (USA) and a collectivist culture (Korea) completed the Passionate Love Scale (PLS; Hatfield & Rapson), the Companionate Love Scale (CLS; Sternberg, 1986), the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Pivot & Diener, 1993), and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS; Watson, Clarke, & Tellegen, 1988). It was found that two love types are related to subjective well-being in a different way: life satisfaction was more strongly predicted by companionate love than by passionate love, whereas positive and negative emotions were more accounted for by passionate love than by companionate love. No culture and gender difference was found in this overall relationship, but gender difference was found in the extent of the association between companionate love and satisfaction with life, and between passionate love and emotional experiences, respectively.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar Nils Erik Kjell ◽  
Edward Francis Diener

The cognitive components of subjective well-being can be measured with the Satisfaction with life scale (SWLS) and the Harmony in life scale (HILS), which both comprise five items each. The aim of this article is to abbreviate these scales and examine the psychometric properties. Three datasets including test-retest data are used (N = 787; N = 860; N = 343). The two first datasets were already collected, whereas the third dataset included delivering the three-item scales (SWLS-3; HILS-3) together (in random order) with one shared instruction. The last study was pre-registered and includes open data and code. The SWLS-3 and the HILS-3 demonstrate good psychometric properties, including very high internal consistency and item total correlations, strong test-retest reliability, where two-factor models of cognitive well-being tend to yield very good fit indices. Further, the scales demonstrate measurement invariance across time and gender. In fact, the three-item scales demonstrate improved psychometric properties as compared with the five-item scales. The SWLS-3 and the HILS-3 can efficiently be used together with one shared instruction, without compromising (and in most aspects even improving) the psychometric soundness of the scales.


Author(s):  
Christian Schemer ◽  
Philipp K Masur ◽  
Stefan Geiß ◽  
Philipp Müller ◽  
Svenja Schäfer

Abstract The present research examines the longitudinal average impact of frequency of use of Internet and social networking sites (SNS) on subjective well-being of adolescents in Germany. Based on five-wave panel data that cover a period of nine years, we disentangle between-person and within-person effects of media use on depressive symptomatology and life satisfaction as indicators of subjective well-being. Additionally, we control for confounders such as TV use, self-esteem, and satisfaction with friends. We found that frequency of Internet use in general and use of SNS in particular is not substantially related subjective well-being. The explanatory power of general Internet use or SNS use to predict between-person differences or within-person change in subjective well-being is close to zero. TV use, a potentially confounding variable, is negatively related to satisfaction with life, but it does not affect depressive symptomatology. However, this effect is too small to be of practical relevance.


2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peng Wen ◽  
Cheng Chen ◽  
Longzhu Dong ◽  
Xiaobing Shu

Although the benefits of mentoring for protégés’ career-related outcomes have been largely confirmed, little research has examined whether this benefit can extend to the protégés’ life domains outside of work. In this study, we investigate the impact of the extent of workplace mentoring support on protégés’ subjective well-being (SWB). Based on data that were collected from a two-wave survey of 253 protégés in ongoing mentoring programs in China, the results showed that the extent of the mentoring support was significantly related to the protégés’ SWB (i.e., satisfaction with life, positive affect, and negative affect) through their psychological safety. Furthermore, the perceived mentor status of protégés moderated the relationship between the extent of mentoring support and the protégés’ psychological safety, such that the relationship was stronger when the perceived mentor status was higher rather than lower. The theoretical and managerial implications of our findings are also discussed.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Illya YAGIYAYEV ◽  
◽  
Alina NOVOSELSKA ◽  

The relevance of the topic is related to the psychosocial consequences of the COVID19 pandemic. The aim is to study the subjective well-being during the beginning of the pandemic and introduction of the quarantine measures and their connection to social media activity. The methods employed in the present study include various types of questionnaires, namely the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) (Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988), the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) (Diener, Emmnos, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985), the General Self-Efficacy Scale (Schwarzer & Jerusalem, 1995), and an original questionnaire developed to study the impact of the pandemic and the respondents’ understanding and perceptions of it. The findings of the quantitative analysis show that the subjective well-being during the pandemic is connected to the use of social media, life satisfaction, health risks assessments and economic consequences, leisure time and the level of self-efficacy. A qualitative analysis indicates that at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine the negative predictions of the consequences of both the pandemic and the implemented quarantine measures prevail among the subjects. A longitudinal study during one month has found a reduction in health concerns, and respondents began to assess the threat to their health and economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic as less serious than at the beginning. Thus, it can be concluded that from a short-term perspective the negative affect, especially the levels of fear and anxiety, decreased, whereas the level of the positive affect did not change. Keywords: psychological well-being, subjective well-being, pandemic, life satisfaction, social media, conspiracy theories, COVID-19.


Author(s):  
Anna V. Nemirovskaya

This study analyses how subjective well-being indicators and territorial social identities vary in the Russian frontier and core regions. It is assumed that the frontier history of settlement and border location of the regions has an impact on various socio-cultural and socio-political features of its communities, thus shaping the specific territorial social identities of people living on the front lines of Russia. These identities might be in conflicting relations, especially when taken as a factor for shaping specific public attitudes and moods, in particular, satisfaction with life. Based on the surveys in four border, or frontier and two central, or core, regions, conducted in 2016 (total n of respondent = 5000), the paper presents an explanatory model for life satisfaction in a comparative aspect, where different factors of socio-economic, socio-demographic, psychological, attitudinal, and cultural nature are considered. The impact of different territorial social identities on life satisfaction in the frontier and central regions was revealed. For both groups of the regional samples, the assessment of the state of affairs in the region, and the country as well, demonstrated a stable positive effect on life satisfaction, as well as the factors of locus of control, income group, and economic optimism. The predictor of social cohesion appeared to be significant only for frontier regions of Russia, in line with the classical concepts of the frontier. At the same time, age and religiosity factors predicted life satisfaction in the core regions only. This study contributes to the research on the border and frontier areas, as well as regional specifics of Russian regions, representing it as a vast and heterogeneous in terms of socio-cultural and socio-economic division country


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