The subjective representation of happiness and unhappiness

While most happiness scholars are devoting their efforts to develop empirical indicators of how citizens from various countries feel satisfied with their lives, in the past decade several researchers have started to investigate the folk psychology of happiness, namely how common people represent the concept of happiness and its semantic space (e.g., Lu & Gilmour, 2004; Pflug, 2009). The present study extends previous research in this field by jointly investigating the naive conceptions of both happiness and unhappiness in a sample of Italian undergraduates. One hundred and seventy-eight psychology students (29 males, 149 females) participated in a questionnaire study. The questionnaire had two sections, which were administered in a counterbalanced order across respondents. More specifically, in one section, participants were asked to write down at least five things that made them feel happy (“happiness components”); by contrast, in the other section, they were asked to write down at least five things that made them feel unhappy (“unhappiness components”). Importantly, in both sections, participants were asked to evaluate to what extent each component of happiness/unhappiness was present in their life at the time of the investigation. Two single items measuring the participants’ levels of overall happiness/unhappiness were also administered. The qualitative analysis of free responses given by participants yielded to the identification of 26 categories of happiness components and 25 categories of unhappiness components. When looking at the semantic content of these categories, it emerges that the participants’ representation of happiness and unhappiness was organized around similar themes (e.g., family, love, health). However, the perceived salience of some of these themes − assessed in terms of frequency of citation and average ranking of happiness and unhappiness components − significantly varied between the two investigated concepts. With regard to the measurement of participants’ levels of happiness and unhappiness, on average, respondents considered themselves as moderately happy and only scarcely unhappy. Notably, participants assessed their life as less unhappy when providing a global evaluation about it as opposed to when they rated a list of specific self-reported unhappiness components. Theoretical and empirical implications of the study are discussed.