A positive psychology intervention program in a culturally-diverse university : boosting happiness and reducing fear

Date

2019-04-15

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Springer Netherlands

Abstract

While developing excellence in knowledge and skills, academic institutions have often overlooked their obligation to instill wellbeing. To address this, we introduced a 14-week positive psychology intervention (PPI) program (Happiness 101) to university students from 39 different nations studying in the United Arab Emirates (N = 159). Students were exposed to 18 different PPIs. Pre, post, and 3-month-post measures were taken assessing hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, and beliefs regarding the fear and fragility of happiness. At the end of the semester, relative to a control group (N = 108), participants exposed to the Happiness 101 program reported higher levels of both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, and lower levels of fear of happiness and the belief that happiness is fragile. Boosts in life satisfaction and net-positive affect, and reduction of fear of happiness and the belief that happiness is fragile were maintained in the Happiness 101 group 3 months post-intervention. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature.

Description

Full text of this article is available in CUD LRC electronic resources at: https://search-proquest-com.ezp.cud.ac.ae/docview/2037260244?pq-origsite=summon

Keywords

Culture, Fear of happiness, Fragility of happiness, Positive psychology, Positive psychology interventions, United Arab Emirates, Wellbeing, Adult, Article, Controlled study, Fear, Female, Happiness, Human, Human experiment, Life satisfaction, Major clinical study, Male, Psychology, University student

Citation

Lambert, L., Passmore, H.-A., & Joshanloo, M. (2019). A positive psychology intervention program in a culturally-diverse university: Boosting happiness and reducing fear. Journal of Happiness Studies, 20(4), 1141–1162. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-9993-z

DOI