What are the first qualities that come to mind when you consider what makes you happy in life? Is it being able to look back on your successes and be proud of them, even if they aren't particularly noteworthy? Do you believe that obtaining a high level of self-actualization should take precedence over all other life goals?
This form of self-evaluation is central to the concept of "eudaimonic well-being," as defined by psychologists. This type of happiness also has a hedonistic component, in which you get pleasure from perceiving yourself as fulfilling your own particular goals. This positive mood is expressed as happiness or even elation. In contrast to this individualistic definition, Erik Erikson's personality development theory says that fulfilment eventually comes from being able to feel like you've contributed to the larger good, rather than from accomplishing your own selfish aims. Erikson believed that a sense of generativity, or the belief that caring for others is vital, is a key component of adult "psychosocial" development. The traditional view of generativity is that it necessitates becoming a parent, however parenthood is not a must. There are parents who aren't especially generative, and there are parents who aren't particularly generative. People who have a high degree of generativity have put themselves second and, according to Erikson's philosophy, should be far more fulfilled as they grow older. Testing the Role of Generativity in Well-beingAs important as generativity should be in adulthood, there are few research on the association between this trait and happiness, and even fewer that look at generativity through time. The Rochester Adult Longitudinal Study (RALS), which I have worked on throughout my research career, is one of these projects. The RALS participants were followed up on from their college years through their 60s, and will be followed up on again in their 70s with the addition of new investigators to the project. We collected data from further samples of college students on each of the study's four testing occasions, allowing us to evaluate whether trends in the oldest group were reflected in data from the younger generations of participants as they grew older. Our research team just finished a study that looked at how generativity links to happiness during a 12-year period from 2000 to 2012. (Mitchell, Lodi-Smith, Baranski, & Whitbourne, 2021). The oldest participants were in their 60s, the next-oldest in their 50s, and the youngest in their 40s throughout this time. This group of 271 adults was a subset (29%) of the 937 adults who were theoretically eligible for inclusion, illustrating the difficulty of following up with people over long periods of time in adulthood. These items, as you can see, are not like typical personality tests that ask participants to score their specific attributes. Instead, they appeal to the attributes that you would consider when assessing your potential to develop and evolve through time, including the ability to encourage others by sharing your experiences.
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September 2021
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