LIFE SATISFACTION

 AIM: To investigate the role of gender on various dimensions of life satisfaction

among school going students.

 BASIC CONCEPT:

Nature of Health Psychology

Health psychologists study such issues and work on developing intervention strategies to
support people’s well-being and recovery from illness. For e.g. researches in health
psychology try to explore why people do not quit smoking despite knowing its fatal
consequences, and develop interventions for helping people with such poor habits to quit
smoking.

The field of health psychology works on health promotion and maintenance. This implies
focusing on issues such as how to help children develop good healthy habits, how to
encourage people to exercise regularly, and how to design a media campaign which promotes
improvements in diet.

Health psychologist also focus on the psychological aspects of prevention and treatment of
illnesses. This involves, for e.g., teaching people working in a high stress profession how to
effectively deal with stress to prevent any health risks: or helping people suffering from an
illness to abide by their treatment regime.

Another topic of interest to health psychologists is that of etiology (origin/causes of illness)

and correlates of health, illness and dysfunction. Health psychologists majorly address the
behavioural and social factors contributing to health, illness and dysfunction (e.g. alcohol
abuse, drug abuse, exercising, etc.).

Lastly, health psychologists analyse and improve healthcare systems and policies. They study
the effect of health institutions and health professionals on people’s behaviour to develop
recommendations for improving healthcare.

Definitions of Health Psychology

Health, as defined by WHO is “a complete state of physical, social, and mental well-being
and not merely the absence of a disease or infirmity”. On the contrary, when a person’s
physical, emotional, social, mental, or intellectual capabilities are impaired, the person is said
to have an illness. Health psychology is a relatively new field which involves dealing with
and understanding psychological influences on people’s heathy habits, what causes illness
and how people respond when they get ill.

According to Brennon & Feist (2000), “Health Psychology includes psychology’s

contribution to the enhancement of health, the prevention and treatment of illness, the
identification of health risk factors, the improvement of healthcare systems, and shaping of
public opinion with regard to health”.

The American Psychological Association’s official definition of health psychology comes

from Matarazzo (1982): “Health Psychology is the aggregate of the specific educational,
scientific, and professional contributions of the discipline of psychology to the promotion and
maintenance of health, the prevention and treatment of illness, the identification of etiologic
and diagnostic correlates of health, illness, and related dysfunction and to the analysis and
improvement of the health care system and health policy formation.”

Health Illness Continuum

When we talk about being healthy or ill, it is on a relativity level. We mean that we feel
comparatively ill or unhealthy than we usually are, and not totally or extremely ill. Hence the
belief that considered health and illness as an opposing binary duplet was eliminated and
replaced by what is known as the health-illness continuum. How healthy and unhealthy we
are, is best viewed as a point on this continuum. It is because of this concept that we can be
somewhat healthy and somewhat ill at the same time.

What is considered healthy for one person may not be healthy or another person. The baseline
measurement of healthy/ill is different among different individuals. For e.g. a diabetic person
may not be healthy for another person who doesn’t suffer from diabetes. However, for the
diabetic person healthy would be to be free from illnesses other than diabetes to continue
normally with their day to day life.

Another aspect to be considered is that of age. As we age, we health deteriorates. This

deterioration of health with age is quite normal. A 90-year-old can’t be as healthy as a 10
year old.

Models of Health

1. Biomedical Model
Biomedical model is a primitive model. This model believes that all illnesses can be
explained only on the basis of aberrant somatic bodily processes, such as biochemical
imbalances, or neurophysiological abnormalities. This model therefore explains illness in
terms of the pathology, biochemistry, and physiology of a disease: Diabetes is caused by an
imbalance in blood sugar, polio is caused by exposure to a virus, and cancer is caused by
genetic mutations. In turn, the biomedical model proposes that medical treatment is needed to
cure or manage the physical complaint and thereby return a person to good health. The
biomedical model therefore focuses on physical treatments for disease, such as a vaccine to
prevent measles, medication to manage high blood pressure, and chemotherapy to delay the
spread of cancer. Hence, this model assumes that psychological and social process are largely
irrelevant in the field of diseases. Some criticisms of this model are as follows:

- It reduces illness to low level biological processes, such as disordered cells, chemical
imbalances, faulty genes.
- It fails to recognize the influence of social and psychological processes over bodily
estates. Thus it is based on a single factor (biological) model and therefore its reach is
limited.
- It emphasizes way more on illness than on health rather than focusing on behaviours
that promote health.
- It fails to answer certain problems, such as if six people are exposed to a flu virus, do
only three develop the flu?

2. Biopsychosocial Model

Proposed by George Engel, this is a more advanced model as compared to biomedical model.
It believes that mind and body together determine health and illness. Its fundamental
assumption is that health and illness are the consequences of the interplay of biological,
psychological and social factors. As per this, the mere absence of a disease doesn’t imply that
the person is healthy. The biological explanations include genes, biochemical imbalances,
pathogen infections, etc. The psychological explanations include some traits/characteristics
(e.g. impulsivity etc.) that make people more vulnerable to diseases. The social aspect
includes the culture, society, technology, etc.

Advantages:
 - It believed that biological, social and psychological factors are all important
determinants of health and illness. Hence it is a multifactorial model. This model
provides with multifactorial treatment and diagnosis with a wider reach as compared
to the biomedical model.
- It incorporates the analysis at both micro and macro levels. Macro level processes
(such as the presence of social support or the presence of depression) and micro level
processes (such as cellular disorders or chemical imbalances) continually interact to
influence health and illness and their course.
- Treatment is individualistic in nature. One treatment doesn’t apply to all individuals,
i.e. a patient centric treatment is provided.
- It equally emphasizes on health and on illness. From this perspective, health becomes
something that one achieves through paying attention to biological, psychological,
and social needs, rather than taking it for granted.
- It makes the significance of the patient-practitioner relation explicit. An effective
patient-practitioner relationship can improve a patient’s use of services, the efficacy
of treatment and the rapidity with which illness is resolved.

Positive Psychology

Positive psychology is the scientific and applied approach to uncovering people’s strengths
and promoting their positive functioning. Positive psychology offers a balance to the previous
weakness-oriented approach by suggesting that we also must explore people’s strengths along
with their weaknesses. In advocating this focus on strengths, however, in no way it is meant
to lessen the importance and pain associated with human suffering. Positive psychology
offers a look at the other side—that which is good and strong within a cultural context, along
with normative ways to nurture and sustain these assets and resources.

Optimism: It refers to the expectation that in the future good things will happen to you and
bad things will not. While we all may be optimistic in some areas of our lives and pessimistic
in others, optimism taps the extent to which an individual is optimistic in general across a
range of domains and across time. People who have a generally optimistic view about
themselves and the world also experience better physical well-being (Kivimaki et al., 2005;
Scheier & Carver, 1993). People who are optimistic report having fewer infectious illnesses
(e.g., colds, sore throats, flu), and fewer physical symptoms. Optimism is even positively
associated with life expectancy for those with very serious illnesses, including AIDS and
cancer. Optimism has also been assessed using indices of an individual’s sense of hope. A
measure developed by Snyder et al (1996) focuses on the extent to which individuals pursue
their goals and their beliefs that their goals can be realized. Optimists have better
physiological stress profiles on indicators such as cortisol, blood pressure and inflammation.
Optimism also promotes active and persistent coping efforts, which improve long term
prospects for physiological and psychological health.

While optimism in general is good for health, too much optimism can be bad for health.
Unrealistically optimistic people tend to be careless. This is a case in which optimists’ views
that ‘‘it won’t happen to me’’ can lead to risky health-related behavior, which can have
serious consequences. Relatedly, although optimism is generally beneficial for health, it can
be associated with worse health in particularly difficult situations. Specifically, optimism is
generally associated with stronger immunity, but under particularly demanding circumstances
—such as when the stress continues over time—greater optimism is associated with lower
levels of immune response (Segerstrom, 2006, 2007).

Resilience: The most parsimonious definition of resilience is “bouncing back.” Specifically,

resilience refers to a class of phenomena characterized by patterns of positive adaptation in
the context of significant adversity or risk (Masten, Cutuli, Herbers, and Reed, 2009). It not
only enables people to confront and cope with stressors, but they also help people to bounce
back from bad experiences and adapt flexibly to the changing demands of stressful situations.
A sense of coherence about one’s life, a sense of purpose or meaning in one’s life, a sense of
humour, trust in others, a sense that life is worth living, and religious beliefs are also
resources that promote resilience, effective coping and health.

Health and Life Satisfaction

What is Life Satisfaction?

Life satisfaction is attainment of a desired end and fulfilment of essential conditions

(Wolman, 1973).

Satisfaction in life does not lie in the length of days, but in the use we make of them. A man
may live long yet may get little from life. Thus satisfaction in life does not depend on number
of years, but on will (Bartlett, 1977). It is a degree of contentment with one’s own life style.
Goldenson (1984) psychologically speaking satisfaction may occur on a conscious,
preconscious and unconscious level and brings an organism to a balanced state. Satisfaction
with one’s life implies a contentment with ‘or’ acceptance of one’s life circumstances, or the
fulfilment of one’s wants and needs for one’s life as a whole.

Life satisfaction is the conscious and cognitive judgement of one’s life in which the criteria
of judgement are upto the person (Pavot & Diener, 1993).

Life satisfaction gives meaning to one’s life and it can be source of a feeling or self-worth. In
the Indian context, most of the elderly review their part life in terms of self-fulfilment (Butler
1976).

According to Hamilton (1995) in the Dictionary of Developmental Psychology, life

satisfaction is the degree of contentment with one’s own life style.Life satisfaction is referred
as an assessment of the overall conditions of existence as derived from a comparison of one’s
aspiration to one’s actual achievement (Cribb, 2000).

Subjective Well-being

Subjective well-being consists of a person's cognitive and affective evaluations of his or her
life. A person who has a high level of satisfaction with their life, and who experiences a
greater positive affect and little or less negative affect, would be deemed to have a high level
of SWB [or in simpler terms, be very happy]. When psychologists measure SWB, they are
measuring how people think and feel about their lives. The three components of SWB are:

1. life satisfaction

2. positive affect

3. negative affect

These are independent factors that should be measured and studied separately (Andrews &
Withey, 1976, Lucas et al., 1996). Thus, the presence of positive affect does not mean the
absence of negative affect and vice versa.

Theories of subjective well-being (also referred to as emotional well-being and happiness),

such as the emotional model posited by Diener and others (Diener, 1984; Diener, Suh, Lucas,
& Smith, 1999), suggest that individuals’ appraisals of their own lives capture the essence of
well-being. Objective approaches to understanding psychological well-being and social well-
being have been proposed by Ryff (1989) and Keyes (1998), respectively. Emotional well-
being consists of perceptions of avowed happiness and satisfaction with life, along with the
balance of positive and negative affects. This threefold structure of emotional well-being
consists of life satisfaction, positive affect, and the absence of negative affect.

Factors Affecting Life Satisfaction

The main contributing factors to life satisfaction are not completely understood yet, and the
weight they are given by each individual varies; but, research has found that they likely fall
into one of four sequential categories:

1. Life chances

2. Course of events

3. Flow of experience

4. Evaluation of life (Veenhoven, 1996)

In the life chances category, you will find societal resources like economic welfare, social
equality, political freedom, culture, and moral order; personal resources like social position,
material property, political influence, social prestige, and family bonds; and individual
abilities like physical fitness, psychic fortitude, social capability, and intellectual skill.

In the course of events category, the events can involve factors like need or affluence, attack
or protection, solitude or company, humiliation or honor, routine or challenge, and ugliness
or beauty. These are the things that can confront us as we go through our daily life, causing
us to lean more in one direction or the other: towards greater satisfaction or greater
dissatisfaction.

The flow of experience category includes experiences like yearning or satiation, anxiety or

safety, loneliness or love, rejection or respect, dullness or excitement, and repulsion or
rapture. These are the feelings and responses that we have to the things that happen to us;
they are determined by both our personal and societal resources, our individual abilities, and
the course of events.

Finally, the evaluation of life is an appraisal of the average effect of all of these interactions.
It involves comparing our own life with our idea of the “good life,” and how the good and the
bad in our life balances out.

Theories of Life Satisfaction

In an influential article, Diener (1984) proposed a distinction between bottom-up models
and top-down models of subjective well-being. Although the terms top-down and bottom-up
are used to distinguish a variety of models, the terms have been used to compare two
alternative models of the relationship between life-satisfaction and domain satisfaction
judgments.

The top-down model assumes that life-satisfaction has a global halo effect on satisfaction
with specific life domains. In contrast, bottom-up model consider life-satisfaction judgments
to be summary judgments of satisfaction with important life domains. The ‘top-down’
perspective is a dispositional explanation, which contends that differences in personality and
other stable traits of the person predispose people to be differentially satisfied with their lives.
Defendants of the ‘top-down’ perspective rather than denying the influence of situational
factors (Diener 1996), claim that both dispositional and situational factors interact in relation
to life satisfaction.

The ‘bottom-up’ perspective assumes that a person’s overall life satisfaction depends on his
or her satisfaction in many concrete areas of life, which can be classified into broad life
domains such as family, friendship, work, leisure, and the like (Pavot and Diener 2008;
Heller et al. 2004; Veenhoven 1996). Multiple discrepancy theory (Michalos 1985), need
hierarchy theory (Maslow 1970), and the self-concordance model (Sheldon and Elliot 1999)
are all good examples of ‘bottom-up’ theories that conceive domain satisfactions as needs.
According to these theories the more needs are satisfied, the greater the satisfaction with life
as a whole. From the ‘bottom-up’ perspective, domain satisfactions mediate the effects of
situational factors on life satisfaction.

To compare top-down and bottom-up models, Heller (2004) included personality measures of
the Big Five. The bottom-up model assumes that personality traits influence specific life
domains (e.g., neuroticism influences health satisfaction, extraversion influences leisure
satisfaction), and that domain satisfaction mediates the influence of personality on life-
satisfaction. The alternative top-down model assumes that personality traits influence life-
satisfaction and that life-satisfaction mediates effects of personality on life domains.

 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

A study conducted by Maykel Verkuyten and Jochem Thijs (2002) examined school
satisfaction among 1,090 Dutch and ethnic minority children aged between ten and twelve in
relation to their school context. Data were gathered in 51 classes from 26 schools. Individual
and classroom variables were examined simultaneously, using multilevel analysis.
Controlling statistically for general life satisfaction and teacher likeability, the results show
that the effects of educational performance and peer victimization on school satisfaction were
mediated by perceived scholastic competence and social self-esteem, respectively. In
addition, ethnic minority groups were more satisfied with school than the Dutch pupils, and
girls were more satisfied than boys. Multilevel analysis showed that school satisfaction was
dependent on the classroom context. The academic and social climate in the class had
positive effects on the level of satisfaction with school. The percentage of Dutch pupils, the
percentage of girls and the number of pupils had no significant independent effects on school
satisfaction.

An attempt was made by Dr. Sangeeta Rath & Mrs. Madhusmita Patra (2018) to examine the
effect of parental attachment and gender on the life satisfaction of high school students. The
study adopted a 2 (students with high parental attachment versus students with low parental
attachment) x 2 (boys versus girls) factorial design. Two hundred and forty students (one
hundred twenty boys and one hundred twenty girls) of 9th and 10th grade are purposively
sampled from six different urban schools of the khurdha district of Odisha, India. They were
administered the Inventory of Parent attachment. These two groups of 120 boys and 120 girls
are further divided into two subgroups on the basis of the median split of their scores on the
Parent attachment scale. The participants of all the four groups (boys with high parental
attachment, boys with low parental attachment, girls with high parental attachment and girls
with low parental attachment) are compared with respect to their life satisfaction. The result
indicated that students with high parental attachment have higher score in different
dimensions of life satisfaction like family, friend, living environment, school and overall life
satisfaction than students with low parental attachment. Only in the dimension of self, there is
no difference in life satisfaction. Further it is found that family satisfaction and school
satisfaction scores in case of girls are higher than those of the boys.

A study conducted by Mohsen Joshanloo & Veljko Jovanović (2019) sought to examine

gender differences in life satisfaction globally and across demographic groups. The grouping
variables included age, global region, marital status, employment status, education, and
income. A sample of 1,801,417 participants across 166 countries was drawn from the Gallup
World Poll. Given the hierarchical nature of the data, multi-level modeling was used for data
analysis. Gender differences in life satisfaction were found to be significant yet small.
Women reported higher levels of life satisfaction than men across all income, education, and
employment groups. The direction of gender differences in life satisfaction was inconsistent
across age and regional groups. Men scored higher than women only over the age of about
63, and in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the less favorable objective conditions for women
globally, women were found to be more satisfied with their lives than men across most of the
groups we studied.

 METHODOLOGY

Preliminaries: For the present study, 16 male and 16 female participants of 14-18 years were
selected. They are residents of Delhi- NCR who are fluent in English speaking and also have
access to the internet to fill the Google forms.

Participants: The sample of the research comprised of four school going adolescents (2 boys
and 2 girls) within the age group 14-18 years.

Tools: In the present study, the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale was used

to obtain the required data from the participants. The Multidimensional Students Life
Satisfaction Scale (MSLSS) is a 40-item Likert-type scale which may be administered in
groups or individually.  Its four responses are: never = 1; sometimes = 2; often = 3; and
almost always = 4. A 6-point agreement format has been used with middle and high school
students (Huebner et al., 1998). The Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale
(MSLSS) is designed to provide a profile of children’s life satisfaction across key domains.

The 40-item MSLSS is completed by children and young people and captures information on
five domains:

 Family (7 items)

 Friends (9 items)

 School (8 items)

 Living Environment (9 items)

 Self (7 items)

Reliability: Internal consistency has been found to be strong, ranging from 0.70 to low 0.90s
(Huebner, 2001). Test-retest coefficients have been found to be mostly in the range of 0.70-
0.90 over intervals of 2-4 weeks (Huebner, 2001).
  ADMINISTRATION

The first stage of data collection was a consent form. An online consent form was attached
along with the demographic form and the online questionnaire. For the administration of the
research, Google forms were created and sent to the participants on the time when we were
sure that they were available. All the doubts of the participant were catered to during the
administration. Asked to complete all the forms together and they were also requested to try
to submit the form within 30 to 45 minutes after the link for the form was shared. It was also
ensured that they had a secure internet connection. When the participant’s responses were
received they were debriefed over a phone call and thanked for their participation in the
survey.

 RESULTS

Table 1: Mean scores on the measure of multidimensional students’ life satisfaction as a

function of Gender.

Male (n=16) Female (n=16) df t-value Sig

Mean (S.D.) Mean (S.D.)

Life 168.81 (29.95) 180.81 (27.95) 1.25 .25

Satisfaction

Family 32 (8.79) 33.25 (8.08) .03 .68

Friends 40.31 (10.51) 44.69 (9.60) 1.24 .23

30
School 30.19 (6.94) 33 (6.47) .64 .24

Living 34 (10.92) 35.56 (10.26) 1.21 .68

Environment

Self 32.31 (6.60) 34.31 (6.35) 1.03 .39

 DISCUSSION

The results obtained from the present study elucidate that female participants demonstrated a
better sense of life satisfaction (mean=180.81) than the male participants (168.81). Further, in
the dimensions of family, friends, school, living environment and self, female participants
again portrayed higher satisfaction by scoring 33.25, 44.69, 33, 35.56, and 34.31 respectively
in the mentioned dimensions; than male participants who scored 32, 40.31, 30.19, 34, and
32.31 respectively. In a similar study, Mallory Montgomery (2008) found that even though
women generally have lower incomes, less education, and difficulty in self-acceptance, they
show a higher sense of life satisfaction. As per Montgomery, this is because of the idea that,
on average, women have had less to aspire to, so it’s easier to reach goals.

Asma Al-Attiyah & Ramzi Nasser (2016) also obtained similar results in their study on
adolescents in Qatar, wherein females reported higher life satisfaction than men. Following
their explanations, because of sex segregation, women are limited in their opportunities to
fully participate because Middle Eastern societies, such as India and Qatar, are patriarchal. As
positive life satisfaction is significantly correlated to personal control over one’s daily life
(Huebner, Suldo, Smith, & McKnight, 2004), females may be hindered in their ability to take
control of life events, which may, in turn, reflect a lower level of life satisfaction. On the
other hand, sex segregation may overcome some of the limitations of control, as females in
sex-segregated societies are generally sheltered within a gender-defined social unit.
Accordingly, females may see themselves as being empowered by the collective gender-
defined role, which mediates control, thus leading to the feelings of considerable satisfaction
with life.

Dr. Sangeeta Rath & Mrs. Madhusmita Patra (2018) in their study on adolescents found
analogous results with girls showing better life satisfaction than boys in the dimensions of
family, friend, school, living environment and self. Since the findings of this study are
convincingly comparable to the findings of our study, it also circumcises our explanations for
the results obtained. Life satisfaction in girls is positively explained by perceived social
support. Perceived availability of emotional support, reassurance, instrumental assistance,
and companionship provided by social network partners such as family have consistently
been reported to be related to better life satisfaction. In general, girls are more sensitive to
their social networks than boys. A meta-analysis conducted by Pinquart and Sórensen (2000)
analysing 286 studies indicated that integration in social networks was more closely related to
life satisfaction of girls than boys. Girls showed more satisfaction in the domain of school
may be because school satisfaction reflects a domain of communion. Moreover, if girls are
more sensitive regarding relationships, as suggested by Helgeson (1994), the effects of school
related social support on school satisfaction and scholastic competence may be stronger for
girls than for boys. However, gender roles are changing across the world, and this change
reduces the likelihood of the traditional socialization of gender roles.

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Taylor, S.E. (2018). Healthy Psychology. 10th edition. Mc Graw Hill.

Snyder, C.R., Lopez, S.J., & Pedrotti, J.T. (2011). Positive Psychology: The Scientific and
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