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  • Essay / The effects of self-affirmation on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being

    A study was carried out to test the effects of self-affirmation on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Participants were 540 undergraduate students (141 men and 399 women) from the University of Western Sydney, aged 17 to 71 years. Participants were randomly assigned to either a control or experimental condition. The study used electronic surveys to measure hedonic and eudaimonic well-being and the results were used as baseline measures for continued study. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayThe modified Differential Emotions Scale, consisting of 20 items with five-point Likert scales, was used for the hedonic well-being. Eudaimonic well-being was measured using an 18-item scale, with a 7-point Likert scale for each item. The results indicated that there was no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group for hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Introduction Current research largely supports the idea that affirmations boost adaptive functioning and well-being. Regardless of this fact, there is little to no recognition of the effect of affirmations, in the fields of well-being studies and positive psychology (Howell, A. 2017). There are two main conceptions of well-being, hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being. The hedonic concept of well-being associates well-being with pleasure and happiness (McMahan, E. and Estes, A. 2011). However, the eudaimonic view of well-being conceptualizes well-being in terms of “the cultivation of personal strengths and contributions to the common good” (McMahan, E. and Estes, A. 2011). This perspective focuses heavily on the meaning of life and self-actualization. A person labeled as having high levels of life satisfaction and who experiences more positive affect (PA) than negative affect (NA) is considered to have a high level of affect. hedonic well-being. While a person considered to have “eudaimonic” well-being maintains high levels of engagement in life, lives in accordance with their “true self,” and aims to achieve a true sense of self, Cohen and Sherman 2014 define self-affirmation as “an act”. which manifests its adequacy and thus affirms its feeling of overall integrity” (p. 337). Basically, it is the behavior of expressing a positive attitude towards oneself by saying positive statements, repeated every day. The current article examines the effect of self-affirmation and positive statements on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. People want to be healthy, they want to grow, learn, and have positive relationships, but “psychological threat can hinder their ability to do so” (Cohen and Sherman 2014. p. 354). Hence the theory that affirmations can combat the inner alarm of psychological threat. Epton and Harris (2008) demonstrated the effectiveness of self-affirmation in increasing eudaimonic and hedonic well-being through experiments with college students. They found that students who engaged in a self-affirmation intervention (e.g., writing about past acts of kindness) had extremely high scores on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being compared to students assigned to the control group. MethodParticipantsA total of 540 undergraduate students (141 men and 399 women) from Western Sydney University were recruited through convenience sampling and participated in a study examining the effects of affirmation. = 0. 72.