Happiness and satisfaction with life among adults

Pages:84-87
Jaisri M. (Department of Psychology, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, Kerala)

Happiness is a pleasant, transient, and blissful experience that everyone can feel but cannot define. Whereas, life satisfaction is the way a person evaluates his or her life and how he or she feels about where it is going in the future. Both happiness and life satisfaction are firm basis for the development of psychological as well as subjective well-being throughout the life span of an individual. In view of the above, the present study was an attempt to understand the level of happiness and life satisfaction among adults. The participants were 1513 adults belonging to the age range of 20 to 60 years, selected from Trichur and Ernakulam districts, Kerala. The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (Hills & Argyle, 2002), and The Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) were administered to the adults and the obtained data was analyzed using one way ANOVA, Duncan’s post hoc test , and Pearson’s correlation coefficient. The results revealed no significant difference among the different groups of adults in their level of happiness. However, the late young adults had highest satisfaction with life while the early young adults had the least life satisfaction when compared to the other groups of adults. The results revealed significant relationship between happiness and life satisfaction.