Psychology Of Happiness

Although these are extreme examples, everybody has a better or worse self-esteem. Depending on that, we relate in one way or another with other people, weather it is at work or in our personal life.

Even though self-esteem conforms to experience, it can change over time. We can have a positive or defeatist attitude toward the same event, feeling that we have a “winning streak” or a “bad streak”. But, is self-esteem directly related to happiness?

This is what a research made from the Office for the Student with Disability and the Center for Student Counseling in the University of Nagoya tried to find out. The research was done together with the Center of Experimental Investigation in Social Sciences, the Department of Behavioral Sciences and the School of Literature Graduates of the University of Hokkaido (Japan). The results were published by a scientific journal named Frontiers in Psychology.

Five hundred thirty-seven youngsters participated in the study. One hundred and seventy-six were young women.

64% were freshmen students while the rest belonged to the universities’ sophomore year.

All of them were given a series of standardized questionnaires, Life Scale and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, to assess both happiness and self-esteem and to verify whether there are correlations between the two.

The results indicate that the relationship between happiness and self-esteem varies depending on the circumstances that the person has to go through, thus, when facing a situation of uncertainty and change, such as entering in an education center where everything is new: subjects, teachers, classmates, the center itself… Happiness has a very strong relationship with self-esteem, that is, people who have high self-esteem feel happier than those who have low self-esteem.

But that relationship weakens when people find themselves in a stable environment, for example sophomore-year students, who already know the environment in which they perform. Despite small changes such as changes in subjects or in some teachers, the remaining conditions stay the same, causing other variables to acquire greater prominence in happiness. That is, now, in a stable environment, a person with high self-esteem does not necessarily have to be the happiest.

Although the results are clear regarding the relationship between happiness and self-esteem, the research was developed in a very specific area, in the academic world, and in a particular stage of the self-esteem formation such as the student period. Therefore, in order to establish the mentioned relationship, new analysis must be carried out in other environments, and at different ages, as it may be something characteristic only of young people.

As one can observe in this analysis, research on happiness can be done in a specific environment with a specific population, such as that of young people or students. But happiness can also be analyzed at a more global level.