Orientations to Happiness and Subjective Well Being in Chinese Adolescents: The Roles of Prosocial Behavior and Internet Addictive Behavior
Researchers have studied individual's pursuit of well being through two perspectives: the eudaimonic perspective and the hedonic perspective. Peterson and his colleagues (2005) introduced their Orientations to Happiness scale, a self report measure assessing individual's pursuit of well being that corresponds to these two perspectives. Specifically, the Life of Meaning subscale is the index of the eudaimonic pursuit; the Life of Pleasure subscale is the index of the hedonic pursuit. Previous research has demonstrated that orientations to happiness are positively associated with individual's subjective well being, whereas little research has addressed the mechanisms underlying the associations. Based on goal theory of happiness, the present study investigated how orientations to happiness were associated with subjective well being by examining the indirect effects of the prosocial behavior and Internet addictive behavior in a sample of Chinese adolescents aged between 13 and 18 (N 2082) The results showed that: (1) both life of meaning and life of pleasure were positively associated with adolescents' subjective well being; (2) prosocial behavior partially mediated the positive association between life of meaning and subjective well being; and (3) prosocial behavior also partially mediated the positive association between life of pleasure and subjective well being, whereas Internet addictive behavior undermined the positive association here. The findings shed light on the underlying mechanisms between orientations to happiness and subjective well being.