Thus, if students feel meaningfully connected to and accepted by teachers and classmates— that is, if they have supportive relationships with others at school—their need for relatedness will be satisfied. If students feel that they can meet the challenges at school e. Moreover, if they have freedom of choice and are free to pursue their own interests and values at school for example, by choosing between different subjects and deciding on a topic of personal interest students will experience satisfaction of their need for autonomy.
If the school provides experiences that support satisfaction of these three fundamental needs a. In line with this reasoning, numerous studies have directly or indirectly conceptualized school experiences against the background of self-determination theory cf. Reeve, ; Roeser et al. Although subjective well-being has been investigated predominantly as an outcome of various intra-individual and situational factors cf.
Thus, in contrast to negative emotions, positive emotions lead to a wider-than-usual range of percepts, thoughts, and actions and thereby promote cognitive and behavioral flexibility, creativity, and the ability to identify available opportunities. In other words, positive emotions, broadened thought— action repertoires, personal resources, and emotional well-being are reciprocally connected. Laboratory studies support the assumptions of the broaden-and-build model that positive affect can expand thought—action sequences and facilitate recovery from negative affect e.
Similarly, in a comprehensive meta-analysis of positive affect and success across life domains, Lyubomrisky, King, and Diener conclude that happiness——defined as the frequent experience of positive emotions——not only results from various successful outcomes, such as social relationships, health and well-being, or problem solving, but also precedes and enhances them.
Although a considerable amount of recent research provides evidence for the broaden- and-build theory, its application to the field of school psychology is not well established.
According to self-determination theory, school experiences that allow students to satisfy fundamental psychological needs are beneficial for their psychological growth and well- being; thus, self-determination theory proposes a unidirectional relation between positive school experiences and happiness. However, following the broaden-and-build theory, happiness itself is supposed to facilitate approach behavior and thereby lead to more positive school experiences. Thus, the broaden-and-build theory moves from the assumption of a solely unidirectional relation between positive school experiences and happiness as derived from self-determination theory to that of a reciprocal relation.
The Present Study The present longitudinal study extends previous findings on subjective well-being in school by combining two separate theoretical lines of research. Second, following the broaden-and-build theory Fredrickson, , it is argued that happiness makes it possible to experience school more positively, by broadening thought—action repertoires.
As a result, positive school experiences and happiness are reciprocally connected and should create an upward spiral over time. In contrast to previous studies that, for the largest part, examined determinants of cognitive well-being e. On the one hand, affective well-being is less stable than cognitive well-being and more sensitive to changing life circumstances for example, varying school experiences; cf.
Using five waves of data collected over a period of one academic year, two hypotheses are tested with a sample of secondary school students: Hypothesis 1.
Positive school experiences are positively related to future happiness. Hypothesis 2. Happiness is positively related to future positive school experiences. Only when both hypotheses are supported is evidence for an upward spiral of positive school experiences and happiness over time apparent. Method Participants and Procedure Procedure. The study was part of a five-wave research project on student well-being. The first wave T1 was conducted 2 months after the beginning of the new school year in November and the last wave T5 at the end of the school year in June ; the time lag between successive waves was approximately 2 months.
The panel was established in , and the panelists were recruited in accordance with national laws and ethical standards from all over the country cf. Participants were invited by email to complete online questionnaires five times during the school year. Their participation was voluntary and rewarded with tickets in a lottery with various small prizes e. Response rate. A sample of students Of the remaining students, participated only once and hence were not included in the longitudinal analyses presented here.
Table 1 provides a detailed description of the sample in terms of the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants. Attrition analysis. Neither variable showed a statistically significant effect. Hence, it is unlikely that the dropout rate could have introduced a systematic bias. Measures Positive school experiences.
Happiness was assessed using the WHO-5 Well-being Index World Health Organization, , which has been shown to be a reliable measure of positive affective well-being of adolescents e. This scale includes five positively worded items that cover positive mood, vitality, and general interest over the last 2 weeks e.
Reponses were averaged across the five items; thus, high scores indicate greater happiness. Statistical Analyses The hypothesized longitudinal effects of positive school experiences and happiness were analyzed by structural equation modeling SEM using AMOS Furthermore, with a sufficiently large sample size of more than , the present data meet standard requirements for latent variable modeling see Barrett, All variables were modeled as latent constructs with three indicators each see Figure 1.
In light of the rather complex model to be tested particularly, relative to the comparatively small sample size , we created item parcels for each construct. Item parceling has the important advantage of producing more parsimonious models as compared to models using item-level data.
Thus, one parcel reflects the mean of the four items measuring the need for relatedness, another parcel is composed of the four items measuring the need for competence, and the last parcel is composed of the five items measuring the need for autonomy see Figure 1a. Two parcels are composed of two items each, and one parcel includes a single item see Figure 1b. Longitudinal effects were analyzed in two steps: First, longitudinal confirmatory factor analyses CFA were used to determine the measurement invariance of the constructs over time; then, five cross-lagged models see Figure 2 were specified to test the hypothesized longitudinal effects.
Longitudinal confirmatory factor analysis CFA. If the factor structure remains stable and does not change, the latent constructs can be compared across measurement waves.
Longitudinal factorial invariance was tested separately for positive school experiences and happiness by comparing a model with factor loadings for a given parcel constrained to be equal over time to a model without equality constraints cf.
Little et al. Following current recommendations Little et al. The measurement models are shown in Figure 1. Cross-lagged model testing. In the cross-lagged analyses, positive school experiences and happiness were modeled as latent constructs with factor loadings for each indicator constrained to be equal across the five time points cf.
Five competing models were tested to investigate the proposed cross-lagged effects see Figure 2. Model 1 stability model included only synchronous correlations between the constructs and their temporal stabilities but no cross-lagged paths. Models 2 and 3 were used to test Hypotheses 1 and 2 jointly and thus the upward-spiral of positive school experiences and happiness.
Model 2 reciprocal model extended Model 1 by including reciprocal cross-lagged paths between positive school experiences and happiness, and Model 3 additionally constrained these cross-lagged paths to be invariant over time, thus testing the stability of direction and strength of the cross-lagged effects over time. To demonstrate the relevance of both cross-lagged paths, Models 4 and 5 included the cross-lagged paths in one direction only: Model 4 causality model included only the cross-lagged paths from positive school experiences to happiness Hypothesis 1 , whereas Model 5 was used to test the reverse causality reverse causality model with only cross-lagged effects from happiness to positive school experiences Hypothesis 2.
Initially, several socio-demographic variables as reported in Table 1 had also been included as covariates; however, because these variables did not affect the results, they were excluded from the final analyses. Model evaluation. Results Table 2 summarizes the means, standard deviations, and zero-order correlations of positive school experiences and happiness for the five waves.
Thus, longitudinal factorial invariance was supported for both measures; the meanings of the latent constructs did not change significantly over time. Cross-Lagged Effects Given longitudinal factorial invariance, five competing models with time-invariant factor loadings were used to test the proposed cross-lagged effects see Figure 2. Table 3 summarizes the goodness of fit of the five models and the results of the nested model comparisons. This result indicates that the cross-lagged paths did not differ significantly in direction and strength over the five measurement waves.
In other words, in line with the hypothesis of an upward spiral of positive school experiences and happiness, models that constrained one of the cross-lagged paths to zero resulted in significantly worse fits to the data.
Thus, the reciprocal model Model 3 with both cross- lagged paths was the best-fitting model. Please note that the standardized path coefficients are not exactly equal over time, because the unstandardized path coefficients were constrained to be invariant over time whereas the factor variances and thus, the standardized coefficients were not cf.
Discussion The present longitudinal study adopted a positive perspective on school experiences and the general psychological functioning of students and described an upward spiral of positive school experiences and happiness.
However, the present results extend these cross-sectional findings in two important ways. First, the longitudinal design allows for conclusions regarding the temporal sequence of the constructs, which was not possible in most previous studies. The results demonstrated that positive school experiences have a positive effect on happiness over time. Second, the results demonstrate that investigating subjective well-being or, in this case, happiness exclusively as an outcome falls short in many applied settings.
In fact, happiness itself has further important implications. For example, in the present study, happiness had a significant, albeit weaker, lagged effect on positive school experiences. The reciprocal relation between positive school experiences and happiness is in line with assumptions derived from the broaden-and-build theory Fredrickson, : If individuals experience positive emotions, their thought—action repertoire will expand, which can be manifest in approach behavior, openness to and integration of information, and resource building Estrada et al.
In other words, in such a positive state as indicated by high levels of happiness , students are likely to engage in approach behavior, grasp opportunities as they arise, and, consequently, experience school more positively. In turn, these positive experiences contribute to future happiness, leading to an upward spiral of positive school experiences and happiness over time.
The temporal stability of the two constructs and their cross-lagged effects were both rather stable throughout the academic year. The fact that the temporal stability of positive school experiences was even higher is less surprising, as the school environment was not expected to change significantly within one academic year. Despite the high stability of both constructs, positive school experiences and happiness are not insensitive to change, which is also indicated by the presence of significant cross-lagged effects.
The lagged effects between positive school experiences and happiness did not change considerably throughout the academic year. However, it should be noted that the effect of happiness on positive school experiences was weaker than the reverse effect.
Thus, it might be speculated that the contributions of positive school experiences and happiness to the upward spiral are not equally significant. Limitations and Future Research Three aspects that could limit the generalizability of the presented results should be noted.
First, the results are limited to the specific operationalizations of general psychological functioning and school experiences adopted in this study. Happiness represents the positive dimension of affective well-being and, as such, is only one indicator of general psychological functioning. Furthermore, although this study allows for the conclusion that school experiences and happiness influence each other throughout an academic year, the findings do not answer the question of what specific aspects of positive school experiences are more or less important in this process.
Future research should extend the findings of this study by examining concrete features of positive school experiences, such as teacher—student relationships Baker, and social support at school Patrick et al.
Second, the sample in this study was not representative of the student population. It included more females than males, predominantly between the ages of 16 and 18, with the majority attending vocational schools. Due to important cognitive changes during adolescence cf. Bandura, , these results should not be readily generalized to younger students. Future studies should address this line of research in a larger context and also include younger age groups.
As not all students in the sample participated at all five measurement occasions, one might be concerned that the results were confounded by systematic attrition.
Some are as simple as relaxing certain muscles to reduce feelings of anxiety, while others involve making small efforts toward more positive social interactions. Small steps in the right direction can have profound effects giving you the power to literally "reshape" your brain.
Like most people, you probably didn't wake up one day and find yourself completely depressed. Instead, it probably happened over time, as a series of reactions to difficult situations and negative thinking. Based in the latest research in neuroscience, this audiobook offers dozens of little things you can do every day to rewire your brain and create an upward spiral towards a happier, healthier life. It starts gradually and builds momentum over time. If you go through a difficult experience, you may stop taking care of yourself.
You may stop exercising and eating healthy, which will end up making you feel even worse as time goes on. You are caught in a downward spiral, but you may feel too tired, too overwhelmed, and too scared to try and pull yourself back up. Parcourir les. Chapter one - positive emotions broaden and build This contribution offers a review, comprehensive to date, of a year research program on the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.
Although centered. Universal values - world news What are Positive Universal Values? Lad sis of brain gray matter Grant, Courtemanche, Davidson, ; Gross, ; Hayes, understood as an upward spiral process cf. Garland et al. The upward spiral: amazon. Alle Kategorien. The son of a Math teacher and an Army Captain, he was raised by his mother and grandfather after his parent s divorce.
Check out pictures, bibliography, biography and community discussions about Davidson Gray. Mindfulness training promotes upward spirals of Feb 01, Recent theory suggests that positive psychological processes integral to health may be energized through the self-reinforcing dynamics of an upward spiral. Headspace science behind meditation Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter 13 Davidson, R.
Books tagged: upward spiral - pdfs of book List of book tagged with Upward Spiral. Why are some people happier than others? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Jim prentice says 'tough choices' needed to face Jan 12, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice said the province will need to make "tough choices" and build a stable economy if it is to weather the latest budget crisis.
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