Michael Kaufman
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226550015
- eISBN:
- 9780226550299
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226550299.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
A foundational belief in America—that competitive success in education and career is a ticket to a good life—is not supported by research on happiness, but that research omits crucial considerations. ...
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A foundational belief in America—that competitive success in education and career is a ticket to a good life—is not supported by research on happiness, but that research omits crucial considerations. This book investigates the relationship between success and happiness by leveraging a 46-year mixed-methods follow-up of a study of Harvard undergraduates from the 1960s (called the Harvard Student Study and unrelated to the Grant Study). It pioneers a qualitative and longitudinal approach to the study of happiness, drawing on unparalleled clinical life history interviews and survey data. The book reaches a similar finding to prior happiness research that success beyond meeting basic needs does not deliver happiness, but it goes much further by providing a developmental explanation of what does shapes happiness. Part 1 illustrates a spectrum of well-being visible in participant life histories and trajectories of stability and change over time. Part 2 presents the study’s key innovations in happiness research: a qualitative method for capturing well-being, two models explaining well-being, and a new paradigm linking worldview, well-being, and development. Part 3 significantly alters conventional accounts of adult life offered in human development, personality psychology, and happiness scholarship. The book generates a host of new tools for investigating happiness: an interview method, a procedure for assessing well-being in narrative, a method for displaying well-being in psychobiographical sketches, and constructs useful resources for further study. This book’s findings are supported by research on general samples and apply to varied demographic groups. Psychobiographical sketches illustrate each major concept and finding.Less
A foundational belief in America—that competitive success in education and career is a ticket to a good life—is not supported by research on happiness, but that research omits crucial considerations. This book investigates the relationship between success and happiness by leveraging a 46-year mixed-methods follow-up of a study of Harvard undergraduates from the 1960s (called the Harvard Student Study and unrelated to the Grant Study). It pioneers a qualitative and longitudinal approach to the study of happiness, drawing on unparalleled clinical life history interviews and survey data. The book reaches a similar finding to prior happiness research that success beyond meeting basic needs does not deliver happiness, but it goes much further by providing a developmental explanation of what does shapes happiness. Part 1 illustrates a spectrum of well-being visible in participant life histories and trajectories of stability and change over time. Part 2 presents the study’s key innovations in happiness research: a qualitative method for capturing well-being, two models explaining well-being, and a new paradigm linking worldview, well-being, and development. Part 3 significantly alters conventional accounts of adult life offered in human development, personality psychology, and happiness scholarship. The book generates a host of new tools for investigating happiness: an interview method, a procedure for assessing well-being in narrative, a method for displaying well-being in psychobiographical sketches, and constructs useful resources for further study. This book’s findings are supported by research on general samples and apply to varied demographic groups. Psychobiographical sketches illustrate each major concept and finding.
Kirby Deater-Deckard
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300103939
- eISBN:
- 9780300133936
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300103939.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter discusses the link between parenting stress, parenting behavior, and children's developmental outcomes. It examines tests of potential causal influences based on longitudinal studies, ...
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This chapter discusses the link between parenting stress, parenting behavior, and children's developmental outcomes. It examines tests of potential causal influences based on longitudinal studies, experiments, and quasi-experimental designs.Less
This chapter discusses the link between parenting stress, parenting behavior, and children's developmental outcomes. It examines tests of potential causal influences based on longitudinal studies, experiments, and quasi-experimental designs.
Michael B. Kaufman
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226550015
- eISBN:
- 9780226550299
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226550299.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 1 reviews prior research about the relationship between competitive success and long-term happiness, particularly three main lines of investigation in the field known as the scientific study ...
More
Chapter 1 reviews prior research about the relationship between competitive success and long-term happiness, particularly three main lines of investigation in the field known as the scientific study of happiness. This field’s heavy reliance on cross-sectional self-report designs precludes a sound answer to the question of whether competitive success delivers a good life. The chapter introduces the Harvard Student Study (not to be confused with the Grant Study of Harvard students) and a new design of research for studying happiness, namely, a 46-year, mixed-methods longitudinal study of human development, which is centrally featured in the book. The chapter describes the history of the study, the study of lives research tradition in which it is conducted, and the study’s unique focus on the competitive journey and unparalleled data in the field of human development. Clinical life history interviews combined with survey self-reports lead to a fundamental rethinking of the success-happiness relationship and expose formative influences on happiness in the context of human development.Less
Chapter 1 reviews prior research about the relationship between competitive success and long-term happiness, particularly three main lines of investigation in the field known as the scientific study of happiness. This field’s heavy reliance on cross-sectional self-report designs precludes a sound answer to the question of whether competitive success delivers a good life. The chapter introduces the Harvard Student Study (not to be confused with the Grant Study of Harvard students) and a new design of research for studying happiness, namely, a 46-year, mixed-methods longitudinal study of human development, which is centrally featured in the book. The chapter describes the history of the study, the study of lives research tradition in which it is conducted, and the study’s unique focus on the competitive journey and unparalleled data in the field of human development. Clinical life history interviews combined with survey self-reports lead to a fundamental rethinking of the success-happiness relationship and expose formative influences on happiness in the context of human development.
Michael B. Kaufman
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226550015
- eISBN:
- 9780226550299
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226550299.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 3 describes the positions along the spectrum of intrapsychic brightness and darkness and variation in longitudinal trajectories in the studied sample. Brief psychobiographies illustrate ...
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Chapter 3 describes the positions along the spectrum of intrapsychic brightness and darkness and variation in longitudinal trajectories in the studied sample. Brief psychobiographies illustrate college and adult spectrums of this construct of well-being observed in clinical life history interviews; shifts in the sample’s presentation of affect from college to late midlife; and how significant change, a longitudinal trajectory exhibited by roughly one-third of the sample, differs from two other, closely related, trajectories—insignificant change and stability—which together account for roughly two-thirds of the sample. The importance of an individual’s relationship to his or her central strivings (to be defined later as life goals) is explained, helping to delineate the spectrum of intrapsychic brightness and darkness.Less
Chapter 3 describes the positions along the spectrum of intrapsychic brightness and darkness and variation in longitudinal trajectories in the studied sample. Brief psychobiographies illustrate college and adult spectrums of this construct of well-being observed in clinical life history interviews; shifts in the sample’s presentation of affect from college to late midlife; and how significant change, a longitudinal trajectory exhibited by roughly one-third of the sample, differs from two other, closely related, trajectories—insignificant change and stability—which together account for roughly two-thirds of the sample. The importance of an individual’s relationship to his or her central strivings (to be defined later as life goals) is explained, helping to delineate the spectrum of intrapsychic brightness and darkness.
Michael B. Kaufman
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226550015
- eISBN:
- 9780226550299
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226550299.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 5 presents a model of human development that accounts for long-term stability in intrapsychic brightness and darkness, the dominant longitudinal pattern of well-being observed by the study. ...
More
Chapter 5 presents a model of human development that accounts for long-term stability in intrapsychic brightness and darkness, the dominant longitudinal pattern of well-being observed by the study. Participants show the interaction of their psychologies with the environment through decades-long self-reinforcing patterns of behavior in their education and career trajectories as well as relational lives. The chapter identifies a new concept derived from clinical life history interviews, namely the identity story—the story told by the person about important situations and events, important others, the world, and him or herself, which reveals values and long-term goals. The identity story serves as a lens, a narrative identity, for locating oneself in the world and reveals the central tendency of affect in the person’s experience, that is, one’s intrapsychic brightness or darkness. The model shows the influence of the identity story held about one’s early years, the Remembered Early Life (REL), which is relatively stable longitudinally. It shapes later identity stories and intrapsychic brightness and darkness both directly and through self-reinforcing patterns of behavior. The chapter illustrates these concepts and patterns with psychobiographical sketches of participants from earlier chapters.Less
Chapter 5 presents a model of human development that accounts for long-term stability in intrapsychic brightness and darkness, the dominant longitudinal pattern of well-being observed by the study. Participants show the interaction of their psychologies with the environment through decades-long self-reinforcing patterns of behavior in their education and career trajectories as well as relational lives. The chapter identifies a new concept derived from clinical life history interviews, namely the identity story—the story told by the person about important situations and events, important others, the world, and him or herself, which reveals values and long-term goals. The identity story serves as a lens, a narrative identity, for locating oneself in the world and reveals the central tendency of affect in the person’s experience, that is, one’s intrapsychic brightness or darkness. The model shows the influence of the identity story held about one’s early years, the Remembered Early Life (REL), which is relatively stable longitudinally. It shapes later identity stories and intrapsychic brightness and darkness both directly and through self-reinforcing patterns of behavior. The chapter illustrates these concepts and patterns with psychobiographical sketches of participants from earlier chapters.
Michael B. Kaufman
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226550015
- eISBN:
- 9780226550299
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226550299.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter 6 uses quantitative analyses to retest the qualitative model explaining longitudinal stability in intrapsychic brightness and darkness, the book’s construct of well-being, presented in ...
More
Chapter 6 uses quantitative analyses to retest the qualitative model explaining longitudinal stability in intrapsychic brightness and darkness, the book’s construct of well-being, presented in chapter 5. It statistically retests and finds support for key relationships in that model, refines the model, and tests competing explanations for adult brightness and darkness. In the model, Remembered Early Life (REL) Affect predicts adult brightness and darkness with normative adult life course behaviors in work and family as a mediator. REL Affect is the common factor that explains the association between college and adult measures of brightness and darkness. The model explains adult brightness and darkness better than intelligence and academic performance, psychiatric intervention and mental illness, and objectively measured career success; objectively measured career success, in fact, does not associate with adult brightness and darkness. Finally, the chapter shows that REL Affect explains adult brightness and darkness better than five-factor model personality trait measures of neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness.Less
Chapter 6 uses quantitative analyses to retest the qualitative model explaining longitudinal stability in intrapsychic brightness and darkness, the book’s construct of well-being, presented in chapter 5. It statistically retests and finds support for key relationships in that model, refines the model, and tests competing explanations for adult brightness and darkness. In the model, Remembered Early Life (REL) Affect predicts adult brightness and darkness with normative adult life course behaviors in work and family as a mediator. REL Affect is the common factor that explains the association between college and adult measures of brightness and darkness. The model explains adult brightness and darkness better than intelligence and academic performance, psychiatric intervention and mental illness, and objectively measured career success; objectively measured career success, in fact, does not associate with adult brightness and darkness. Finally, the chapter shows that REL Affect explains adult brightness and darkness better than five-factor model personality trait measures of neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness.
