Cechy osobowości a doświadczanie szczęścia i poczucie sensu życia

Abstract

Both defining what happiness is and what gives sense to human existence is not an easy task. It is so as the very notions are ambiguous and impossible to define clear-cut since each of us may understand the nature of happiness and sense of life in a bit different way. The literature offers many conceptions and ways of defining happiness that is why speaking of happiness one should bear in mind the multiplicity of this term, and differentiate between different types of happiness. However, in spite of the existing differences, there is one thing they have in common, namely, all of them mean something positive and valuable. For the purposes of the studies in question, the leading conception of happiness was that of M. Csikszentmihalyi who conceived of it as the „flow experience conception” (in Polish translation, the very term is called „koncepcja przepływu”, „koncepcja zaangażowania” or „teoria optymalnego doświadczenia”). The theory by M. Csikezentmihalyi was based on the flow conception, that is, the state in which a person is so much engaged in his/her task that nothing else matters. The very experience is satisfactory to such an extent that people aim at repeating it, even at great cost, only because of their willingness to experience this pure satisfaction. The studies conducted and presented in the publication constitute an attempt to define the subject determiners of individual differences within the scope of the frequency of happiness experienced, defining a mental well-being of an individual, and their relationship with the sense of existence as felt by the subject. The studies under investigation aimed at recognizing the relationship between the level of happiness experienced (as understood by the flow conception) and the sense of one’s own existence. The research included 208 subjects of different sex. They completed a battery of self-describing questionnaires. The data collected allowed for including such variables into the analysis as the sense of life, locus of control (LOC), tendency for reactions according to the A behavior model, taking risky actions, and personality traits taken from the so called big 5 model, notably, extroversion, neuroticism, openness for experience, conscientiousness, and tendency to compromise whose influence on the experience of happiness was measured statistically in the form of correlation and prediction. The results seem to prove the correctness of the assumption that each person is characterized by a certain level of the sense of their own life that conditions the level of their mental well-being understood as happiness. It was claimed that the sense of life may be treated as the main factor determining individual differences in terms of a mental well-being expressed by the frequency of happiness experienced, and that a high level of the sense of life most strongly correlates in a positive way with extroversion and conscientiousness. The experience of happiness, on the other hand, depends not only on the sense of life, but also directly on certain subject traits, namely on the tendency to take risky actions, extroversion, openness for new situations and conscientiousness. Besides, it was stated that the subject trait, that is a tendency to take risky actions, is directly connected to the frequency of happiness experienced by an individual. The very findings proved the existence of individual differences in terms of the level of the sense of life experienced, and, subsequently, the frequency of happiness experienced manifested in the form of experiences of the flow experience type.