Circles of Happiness: Students’ Perceptions of Bidirectional Crossovers of Subjective Well-Being

Abstract

The mental well-being of the world's adolescents has decreased in the last 20-30 years. Such a trend is visible also in Sweden, a country otherwise considered a positive example in terms of child well-being. In Sweden, students in lower secondary school are especially exposed. From a salutogenic orientation, this study qualitatively explored 200 Swedish students' (grades 5-9) perceptions of the role of happiness in school. Students perceived happiness as both promoting and being promoted by five aspects: learning, school engagement, appreciation of subjects or lesson content, others' happiness, and prosocial behavior. Hence, five perceived bidirectional crossovers of subjective wellbeing were found. These were compared to the findings of previous research about the determinants and effects of happiness. The students' perceptions both add new direction for future research and align in several respects with decades of earlier research.

Influence of urban residents' life satisfaction on prosocial behavioral intentions in the community: A multiple mediation model

“…Holopainen et al (2012) suggested that adolescents' psychological well-being can positively predict their cooperation skills. Other studies found the phenomenon of "Circles of Happiness," pointing out that individual happiness and prosocial behaviors can mutually promote each other (Aknin et al, 2012;Backman, 2016). Happiness will promote individuals to make more prosocial behaviors, and prosocial behaviors will enhance individuals' happiness experience.…”

Can I Sustain My Happiness? A Review, Critique and Research Agenda for Economics of Happiness

“…The search was conducted in 2018 using the Boolean criteria wherein the term "happiness" is used synonymously with subjective well-being (SWB), life satisfaction, well-being, and welfare as evident in the previous works [28][29][30][31][32]. The search query resulted in an initial list of 411 papers out of which 218 were finally selected, as depicted in Figure 2.…”

What counts as happiness for young people: A qualitative study

“…(2010) study of 12‐ to 13‐year olds that family and friends were integral to their happiness. Chaplin's (2009) investigation into what makes children and adolescents happy revealed five themes: people and pets, achievements, material things, hobbies and sports, and Backman's (2016) study showed that young people associated happiness with relationships, positive behaviours and school learning.…”

“…Measuring young people's well‐being in this way does not allow young people's own points of view on their subjective well‐being to be heard or considered (Backman, 2016; Garcia & Sikström, 2013; Vujčić et al., 2019). Within Psychology, the tendency to adopt adult constructed measurements to investigate the meanings children attribute to thinking about themselves (e.g.…”

“…Strong social relations with family and friends were integral to the young people's happiness, making their friends happy was also important to them. Backman's (2016) study of Swedish adolescents' happiness in school illustrated that young people perceived that there were relationships between happiness and pro‐social behaviour, between their own happiness and others' happiness, and between happiness and school learning and engagement. These studies indicate that young people's conceptualisation of happiness may be much richer than a single emotion of feeling good.…”