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The Subjective Assessment of Accomplishment and Positive Relationships: Initial Validation and Correlative and Experimental Evidence for Their Association with Well-Being

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Abstract

In his Authentic Happiness Theory, Seligman describes three orientations that lead to happiness: The life of pleasure, the life of engagement, and the life of meaning (in Authentic happiness, Free Press, New York, 2002). The Orientations to Happiness Questionnaire (OTH; Peterson et al. in J Happiness Stud 6:25–41, 2005) has been developed as a subjective measure for these three orientations. In 2011, Seligman revised his theory and added two new components; i.e., positive relationships and accomplishment. These five are the basic tenets of his well-being theory. The present set of studies describes the construction and initial validation of two short scales for the subjective assessment of the endorsement of positive relationships and accomplishment. Their relation with the OTH-scales is also tested. Study 1 describes the scale construction and provides evidence for the factorial, convergent and divergent validity in three samples (n = 233, n = 336, and n = 125). Study 2 showed that the new scales have high test–retest reliabilities over a period of 1, 3, and 6 months (r = .68–.78), respectively. Study 3 examines the malleability of positive relationships and accomplishment in an intervention study that shows that the scores of both new scales increase in the intervention condition. Overall, the three studies show that the new scales have satisfactory psychometric properties—also when used together with the OTH-scales—and possible applications are discussed.

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Notes

  1. One item of the OTH was excluded since it also has an other-directed component, and a strong cross-loadings on engagement in the German OTH (see Ruch et al. 2010): (a) “In choosing what to do, I always take into account whether it will benefit other people“(meaning); one item was excluded due to its strong secondary loading on pleasure (Ruch et al. 2010): (b) “In choosing what to do, I always take into account whether I can lose myself in it” (engagement); (c) Finally, we decided to leave the item (c) “For me, the good life is the pleasurable life” (pleasure) out of further analyses. While the decision on the exclusion of items was relatively clear for the other two scales, all items of the life of pleasure scale seemed appropriate and have low overlap with REL and ACC regarding the content. We decided on this item since it seemed to have the comparatively strongest overlap among the other items of the pleasure scale.

  2. When conducting separate factor analyses for REL and ACC, for both scales one strong first factor emerged (Eigenvalues were 7.25/5.65, 1.51/1.83, 1.23/1.32 for REL, and ACC, respectively), thus, suggesting one-dimensionality of the scales.

  3. Peterson et al. (2005) used an orthogonal rotation when developing the OTH scale (as did (Ruch et al. 2010) for the German version). However, we favored an oblique rotation due to theoretical considerations (overlap among the components). When comparing our findings with an orthogonally (VARIMAX) rotated solution, the findings were highly comparable though.

  4. Including these participants in the analyses would not yield large changes in the results. However, smaller effects and a less clear pattern would be obtained.

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Acknowledgments

The preparation of this paper has been facilitated by research grants of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF; 100014_132512 and 100014_149772) awarded to RTP and WR. The authors state that there are no conflicts of interest. The authors are grateful to Nicole Jehle for her help with the data collection and to Caitlin Ward for proofreading the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Binzmühlestrasse 14/7, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland

    Fabian Gander, René T. Proyer & Willibald Ruch

  2. Department of Psychology, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Emil-Abderhalden-Straße/26-27, 06108, Halle, Germany

    René T. Proyer

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  1. Fabian Gander
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Correspondence to Fabian Gander.

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Gander, F., Proyer, R.T. & Ruch, W. The Subjective Assessment of Accomplishment and Positive Relationships: Initial Validation and Correlative and Experimental Evidence for Their Association with Well-Being. J Happiness Stud 18, 743–764 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-016-9751-z

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