Successfully Striving for Happiness: Socially Engaged Pursuits Predict Increases in Life Satisfaction

Using unofficial media, less trusting of Chinese polity?-An analysis based on the moderated mediation effect

Enhancing political trust is an important manifestation of China's ability to modernisation national governance in the media age. In the context where unofficial media has a crowding-out effect on official media, building political trust effectively becomes an important foundation for promoting the construction of a national governance system. This study employs the 2015 survey data on social consciousness of netizens and constructs a moderated mediation model using the bootstrap method, with subjective well-being as the intermediary variable and official media use as the moderating variable, to empirically explore the influence of unofficial media use on political trust and its underlying mechanism. The results reveal that unofficial media use significantly and steadily deconstructing political trust. In terms of the mechanism of transmission, subjective well-being is an important channel used by unofficial media use to deconstruct political trust, official media has a positive moderating role in the impact pathway of subjective well-being on political trust. Further research finds that unofficial media use has a stronger impact on trust in the central government, court, and police, compared to trust in township governments. Weibo or online communities and overseas media can deconstruct political trust, however, gossip or chatting with friends can construct political trust. In general, this study provides theoretical basis and empirical experience for how to enhance government trust and ultimately promote the construction of national governance system, given the increasing influence of unofficial media. Meanwhile, the research results also provide some reference value for countries with similar backgrounds to China.

I'm Offering You My Pain: Priming COVID-19 Salience Increases Everyday Sadism

The COVID-19 pandemic and its link to the emergence of everyday sadism is a matter of public concern worldwide. However, previous studies are nearly silent regarding the causal relationship between the two variables. We address this gap by theorizing that exposure to information about coronavirus can increase sadistic behavior by inducing state boredom. We conducted three complementary controlled experiments, which comprised multiple participants populations (N = 784, student and community samples) and measurement techniques of sadism, to test our theoretical perspective. Based on self-report measures, Study 1 found that Chinese university students who were exposed to a reminder of COVID-19 exhibited a higher level of everyday sadism than participants in the control condition. Study 2 replicated this finding in a more generalized population. Additionally, results revealed that state boredom mediated this effect. Moving beyond subjective self-report data in Studies 1 and 2, Study 3 assessed a different behavioral operationalization of sadistic tendencies, namely, shredding worms. As expected, priming COVID-19 salience has an immediate, statistically significant influence on sadistic behavior in impactful real-world contexts. Overall, these findings suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic not only has grave effects on economy and society, but has implications for the malevolent side of human nature.

Relational diversity in social portfolios predicts well-being

We document a link between the relational diversity of one's social portfolio-the richness and evenness of relationship types across one's social interactions-and well-being. Across four distinct samples, respondents from the United States who completed a preregistered survey (n = 578), respondents to the American Time Use Survey (n = 19,197), respondents to the World Health Organization's Study on Global Aging and Adult Health (n = 10,447), and users of a French mobile application (n = 21,644), specification curve analyses show that the positive relationship between social portfolio diversity and well-being is robust across different metrics of well-being, different categorizations of relationship types, and the inclusion of a wide range of covariates. Over and above people's total amount of social interaction and the diversity of activities they engage in, the relational diversity of their social portfolio is a unique predictor of well-being, both between individuals and within individuals over time.

Predictors of well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic: The importance of financial satisfaction and neuroticism

Current research suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic adversely impacts well-being. This study examined how subjective well-being (SWB) and psychological well-being (PWB) in Singapore were affected during the pandemic, and the factors that were important to SWB. A representative sample of 999 respondents completed an online survey during the pandemic in August 2020 (after a lockdown was lifted). Two hundred and thirty-two respondents completed the follow-up Wave 2 survey 4 months later. Analyses showed that SWB and PWB during the pandemic were significantly lower than the prepandemic period. However, by Wave 2, well-being levels recovered to levels similar to those observed in the prepandemic period. Regression analyses showed that previously established key determinants of SWB were still important predictors during the pandemic. Specifically, neuroticism and financial satisfaction were strongly associated with all three major SWB components. PWB, particularly in terms of meeting one's psychological needs for autonomy and mastery, was also closely related to SWB. The importance of financial satisfaction suggests that one avenue to buffer the detrimental effects of the pandemic on well-being would be to formulate economic policies that can alleviate the pandemic's negative financial impact.

Social emotional ability development (SEAD): An integrated model of practical emotion-based competencies

Social emotional abilities (i.e., specific skills), defined as the set of cognitive abilities, emotion-based knowledge, and behavioral competencies (i.e., skill levels) that facilitate adaptively employing prosocial processes and behaviors (i.e., "actions"), such as emotional regulation and sympathetic and empathetic response behaviors, is contemporarily modeled and measured as emotional intelligence. This conceptualization can be problematic, however, as the two concepts are not the same and traditional methods of measuring emotional intelligence can have limited practical utility. The social emotional ability development (SEAD) theoretical model introduced in this treatise represents a pragmatic and simplified approach to the development of social emotional ability and competency as abstracted from constructs of emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and sociocultural learning theory. Further, the SEAD model reaches beyond the individual as the unit of analysis to explore, conceptualize, differentiate, investigate, and define the hierarchal, bi-directional, and contextual nature of the dimensions of social emotional ability within close relationships. Implications for how the SEAD model can be used by researchers, practitioners, educators, individuals, families, and couples across a broad spectrum of domains and interventions are discussed.

Let's Talk: Conversation as a Defining Moment for the Communication Discipline

In this essay, the author makes the case that a defining moment for the communication discipline is to encourage increased uptake of embodied conversation. The essay shares illustrative examples and reviews research on issues such as loneliness, anxiety, social comparison, empathy, compassion, social media, electronic medical records, facial mimicry and more. It then describes various strategies that the communication discipline might employ in their research and pedagogy that motivate the practice of embodied conversation. The essay concludes with an invitation to communication scholars from a wide range of focus areas and generations to join in (re)creating "conversation as cool."

What Types of Happiness do Korean Adults Pursue?-Comparison of Seven Happiness Types

Although Korea has achieved successful economic, social, cultural, and technological development over the past decades, Korean people do not seem to be particularly happy. To enhance an individual’s happiness, we need to be aware of what situations and environmental conditions are conducive for happiness and explore the values of happiness we pursue. This study investigated the types of happiness expressed by Korean people using a mixed-method approach. Personal in-depth (n = 15) and focus group (n = 16) interviews were conducted with people who reported feeling a high level of happiness. Happiness categorization was conducted using Q methodology (n = 63). Subsequently, we surveyed 999 nationally representative samples of Korean adults to generalize the results of the Q analysis. The findings revealed seven types of adult happiness in Korea: (1) Self-actualization, (2) Belongingness, (3) Mission, (4) Social recognition, (5) Enjoyment, (6) Material success, and (7) Parenting. The combined results of the qualitative and quantitative analyses showed that in Korea, people pursuing money or social success feel the unhappiest, whereas people pursuing a mission or sense of belonging feel the happiest. In conclusion, we discussed the need for happiness literacy education, to provide each adult an opportunity to understand the type of happiness they pursue.

Valuing happiness predicts higher well-being: The moderating role of acceptance

Recent research has found that individual tendencies to pursue positive hedonic states, defined as Valuing Happiness (VH), might bring about negative well-being outcomes. However, there lacked consistent evidence to support VH's paradoxical effects beyond European American contexts. The current study aimed to investigate how VH influences individual well-being within a highly interdependent culture, and additionally, the moderating role of acceptance in their relationship. We surveyed 266 participants online to assess their levels of VH, acceptance (a facet of dispositional mindfulness), well-being (indicated by life satisfaction, hedonic balance, and psychological well-being), and depression symptoms. Results showed that VH positively predicted life satisfaction and positive affect in a Chinese sample, even controlling for age. Moreover, the interaction between VH and acceptance was significant for psychological well-being. VH had a stronger effect on well-being for people who were low in acceptance than for those who were high in acceptance. These findings suggest that being motivated by happiness values might enhance well-being in an interdependent context, particularly for those who were less likely to accept their internal experiences. Implications were discussed in light of the motivational processes involved in individual happiness pursuits.

Interdependent Self-Construal Moderates Relationships Between Positive Emotion and Quality in Social Interactions: A Case of Person to Culture Fit

How emotion is experienced and expressed in social encounters can very much depend on a person's cultural orientation and the two can affect the quality of social relationships. The present research examined how an interaction between cultural orientation (person) and emotion in social encounters (situation) can influence social interaction outcomes and by extent, cultural fit. For a period of seven days, participants (N = 164) reported eight positive and eight negative emotions they experienced in naturally occurring social encounters together with indicators of quality of social interaction (satisfaction, attending to the other, perceiving others as emotionally more positive). Results from multilevel random coefficient analyses found that self-construal, interdependence in particular, moderated relationships between positive emotion and social interaction quality. At high levels of positive emotion, higher, compared to lower, interdependence was associated with lower attention to other and lower satisfaction with the encounter. At low levels of positive emotion, higher interdependence was associated with higher social interaction quality than persons lower in interdependence. These effects were more robust when social anxiety was controlled, and social anxiety was highly correlated with participants' interdependent orientation. The results support socially situated accounts to emotion and cultural constructions of the self, and depict emotion in social interaction as an important indicator of cultural fit.

You are my happiness: Socially enriched happiness belief predicts life satisfaction, especially among the poor

What three words come to your mind in response to "happiness"? Using a free-association task [cf. Nelson, D. L., McEvoy, C. L., & Dennis, S. (2000). What is free association and what does it measure? Memory and Cognition, 28, 887-899], this research finds that the number of social words (e.g. family, love) provided in link to happiness predicts people's actual life satisfaction level. However, this association was significantly moderated by the person's self-perceived financial state. The contingency between holding a socially-oriented belief about happiness and experienced life satisfaction was significant among members of low socioeconomic status (SES), but not among the high SES group. This pattern was replicated across two divergent samples (Asian college students, Study 1; American adults, Study 2), regardless of one's extraversion level (Studies 1, 2) and availability of social support (number of friends, Study 2). Given the overlapping function of money and social relationships (instrumental in promoting survival), believing in the social nature of happiness seems to be more central in the life satisfaction of those with less financial resource.