Sources of Happiness: A Comparison of Male and Female Scholars

Happiness is a concept which mean many things to many people. Part of the challenge of a science of happiness is to identify different concepts of happiness, and where applicable, split them into their components. Happiness can be defined in terms of a mental state of satisfaction and contentment; positive feelings/emotions; a harmonious homeostasis; achievement and hope; and freedom from ill-being (Lu, Gilmour, & Kao, 2001). However, happiness is not a static state. Even the happiest of people the cheeriest 10%feel blue at times. And even the bluest has their moments of joy. That has presented a challenge to social scientists trying to measure happiness. Happiness is a mental state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.Happiness is defined (a) as a predominance of positive over negative affect and (b) as satisfaction with life as a whole (Argyle, Martin, & Crossland, 1989). Philosophers have commonly distinguished two accounts of happiness: hedonism, and the life satisfaction theory. Hedonists identify happiness with the individual's balance of pleasant over unpleasant experience whereas Life satisfaction theories identify happiness with having a favourable attitude toward one's life as a whole. A third theory, the emotional state view identifies happiness with an agent's emotional condition as a whole (Eid & Larson, 2008). In addition, happiness is conceptualized better as a trait than as a transient emotional state (Veenhoven, 1994). Thus, to understand why some people are happier than others, one must understand the cognitive and motivational processes that serve to maintain, and even enhance, enduring happiness and transient mood (Lyubomirsky, 2001). Subjective Wellbeing researchers have progressed from early survey searches for objective external indicators (Andrews & Withey, 1976) and scale development (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) to explanations of psychological mechanisms of happiness (Lu & Lin, 1998) and even to large-scale cross-cultural comparisons (Diener, Diener, & Diener, 1995).Factors that affect happiness of a person range from internal sources to external sources, right from genetic influences to social situation, personality, momentary events and so on. Chance events like personal tragedies or illness might affect ones happiness but the effect does not remain long (Diener, 2000). Proximal environment like the social class, community, family and economic situation has their effect on well being of a person. At the same time, factors like hope and optimism can be learned to moderate one's level of happiness (Seligman, 2002). There are three components of happiness: pleasure smiley-face piece), engagement (the depth of involvement with one's family, work, romance and hobbies) and meaning (using personal strengths to serve some larger end). Of those three roads to a happy, satisfied life, pleasure is the least consequential and engagement and meaning are much more important (Davis, 2014).People vary in their perception of happiness at different stages of their life and education also plays a role in it. So in order to understand the phenomena from the perspective of research scholars and to compare their level of happiness across gender, the present study was carried out.MethodParticipantsA sample of 60 research scholars equally divided into male (n=30) and female (n=30) groups, were taken from Jamia Millia Islamia. They were enrolled in Ph.D programme in different departments of both science and social science streams. The age of the scholars ranged from 24 to 28 years.InstrumentsThe Subjective Happiness Scale: The scale was developed by Lyubomirsky and Lepper in 1999 and measures the extent to which an individual sees himself or herself as a happy or unhappy person. It comprises four questions and measures response on 7 point rating scale.Open ended questions on sources of happiness: Few questions were made asking about various sources of happiness. …