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Sarracino, F. (2013) (ed). The Happiness Compass: Theories, Actions and Perspectives for Well-Being. Hauppauge NY: Nova Publishers

How happy are you? This naive question proved to be so powerful as to shake up social sciences and attract the attention of media and policy makers around the globe. Everybody wants to be happy. Thanks to the recent progress in measuring subjective well-being, social sciences have asserted that people's own evaluation about their well-being must be taken seriously. The opportunity of measuring happiness in a consistent and reliable way provides new impulse to a joint effort from a variety of disciplines to improve people's quality of life and potentially change the way modern societies are organized.

This book provides a reference tool to understand current developments. It provides an overview of the evolving body of happiness research and draws some of its future trajectories. This book collects the contributions of scientists from psychology, sociology, economics, political science and other scientific domains sharing the quest for improving people's quality of life. Building on this expertise, the book provides a compass to orient the reader in a burgeoning literature to document, inform and suggest ideas for future research. 

Editor

Francesco Sarracino (STATEC, National Statistical Office of Luxembourg, Gesis Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany and Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, Higher School of Economics, Russia). 
 

Table of Contents

Preface About the Editor and Contributors

Part I. Psychology of Well-Being

Chapter 1. Individual Conceptions of Well-Being Predict Psychological and Subjective Well-Being: Beyond the Big Five (Ethan A. McMahan, Maggie D. Renken, Andre Kehn and Martina Nitkova, Western Oregon University, OR, USA, and others)

Chapter 2. Psychological Type and Happiness: A Study among Female Undergraduates in Israel (Leslie J. Francis, Yaacov Yablon and Mandy Robbins, University of Warwick, UK, and others)

Chapter 3. Happiness is a Thing Called Stable Extraversion: Testing Eysenck's Thesis among Three Samples in Australia (John W. Fisher and Leslie J. Francis, University of Ballarat, Australia, and others)

Chapter 4. Love as the Source of Happiness (Satu Uusiautti and Kaarina Määttä, University of Lapland, Finland)

Chapter 5. Love of Life and its Association with Personality Dimensions in College Students (Ahmed M. Abdel-Khalek, University of Kuwait, Kuwait, University of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt)

Chapter 6. Same-Sex Friendship, Cross-Sex Friendship, Personality and Happiness: A Cross-Cultural Comparison (Melikşah Demir and Aysun Doğan, Department of Psychology, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA, and others)

Part II. Actions for Well-Being

Chapter 7. Happiness Decreases in Secondary School: A Longitudinal Study on Early Adolescents (Lotta Uusitalo-Malmivaara, University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education, Special Education, Finland)

Chapter 8. Childhood Correlates of Protracted Life Dissatisfaction: Not All Adversity Hurts the Same (Jacob M. Vigil, Shaun Brophy, Tammie Johnson, Patricia Pendleton, Lauren N. Rowell, University of New Mexico, NM, USA, and others)

Chapter 9. Are Stressful Jobs the Price to Pay for Economic Prosperity? (Stefano Bartolini and Francesco Sarracino, University of Siena, Italy, and others)

Chapter 10. Job Resources Enhance Work Engagement through Positive Affect and Meaningful Work among Japanese Employees (Shizuka Nakamura and Yasumasa Otsuka, Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Education, Hiroshima University, Japan)

Chapter 11. Daily Hassles and Uplifts at Work: Perceived Effects on Well-Being (Ana Junça Silva and António Caetano, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisboa, Portugal)

Chapter 12. Promoting Happiness through Urban Planning (Maxine R. Crawford and Mark D. Holder, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, Canada)

Chapter 13. Happiness Interventions and the Efficacy of Affective Priming (Linden R. Timoney and Mark D. Holder, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, Canada)

Part III. New Insights and Future Perspectives for Well-Being

Chapter 14. Measurement and Public Policy Uses of Subjective Well-Being (André van Hoorn, University of Groningen, the Netherlands)

Chapter 15. The Well-Being Lessons on Employment (Małgorzata Mikucka, CONSIRT, Polish Academy of Sciences and Ohio State University, LCSR, Higher School of Economics, Russia)

Chapter 16. How Politicians Exploit and Manipulate People's Perceived Well-Being to Win in the Political Arena and to be Elected (Nadezhda Shilova, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia, and others)

Chapter 17. Determinants of Subjective Well-Being of Chronically Ill Patients: Theoretical Considerations and Some Empirical Results (Alexis Belianin, Lev Brylev, Olga Isupova, Elena Kashina, Ekaterina Lishchenko, Maria Radionova, ICEF, Higher School of Economics, and IMEMO RAS, Moscow, Russia, and others)

Chapter 18. Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy and the Effect of Income on Happiness Levels (Stavros A. Drakopoulos and Katerina Grimani, University of Athens, Athens, Greece)

Chapter 19. Happiness of Economic Man (Katalin Martinás, Zsolt Gilányi, Veronika Poór and Ágoston Reguly, ELTE, Atomic Physics Department, Budapest, Hungary, and others)

Authors

Sarracino, Francesco

I am an economist collaborating with the national institute of statistics of Luxembourg, the GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and an associate member of the scientific network of the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research – Higher School of Economics, Russia. My thesis...

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