Research on the SWB of children and teenagers lags far behind similar research on adults. Park (2004) explains this curious discrepancy by once again citing the disease model of human functioning. Until the present day many researchers follow this model. They still define health as “the absence of disease or disorders” and still believe that identifying and treating mental problems in young people is enough. Thus, most psychological research on this age bracket is in the realm of treatment strategies and risk-based prevention programs. However, as underlined earlier, this is a woefully inadequate response.
The proponents of positive psychology acknowledge that the lack of disease is a prerequisite for mental health, but they also stress that the lack of disease cannot be equated with mental health. This misguided mentality limits the effectiveness of treatment and inhibits doctors from gaining a full understanding of a person’s psychological state of being. One of positive psychology’s main tenets is that the examination of the positive aspects of an individual’s behavior will be able to fill this gap. Counseling aims to help patients improve their mental health, and thus improve their overall well-being.
This goal can be said to be counseling’s ultimate aim. However, as has already been demonstrated, this goal cannot be achieved without a thorough understanding of the patient’s personality. This paper aims to provide researchers with an in-depth exploration of adolescent Americans. More specifically, it aims to discover the implicit theories and predictors of subjective well-being of these young people. This paper will also investigate the characteristics of American adolescents who are considered as “happy” children, as well as the links of happiness to emotional intelligence.
This study is intended to disseminate valuable information that will better education counselors as to what exactly makes up a contented, well-adjusted, functioning member of society. Through the analysis of a relatively new trend in psychology known as positive psychology, the researcher expects to gain a deeper understanding of the motivations and activities of young Americans, and acquire an insider’s perspective on the cultural context that so profoundly affects their lives.
It is hoped that the conclusions of this study will contribute to the growing body of culture-specific scientific literature—that is to say, the body of scientific research that takes into account the different worldviews and constructs that influence human beings. This study’s support of culture sensitivity is in line with the so-called “fourth force” in counseling. This fourth force is a multicultural approach to treatment that respects clients’ specific cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds.
At this juncture it is perhaps now appropriate to cite some very interesting statistics about the “demographics” of psychological studies. Myers’ (2000) tally of all psychological abstracts since the year 1887 reveals that 8,072 articles have been written on anger, while 57,800 have been created about anxiety, and 70,856 focus on depression. Meanwhile, only 851 abstracts contain the keyword “joy,” while 2,958 focus on happiness, and 5,701 are about the study of life satisfaction.
In other words, “negative” psychology research outnumbers positive psychology research by about 14 to 1, a staggering imbalance. In addition, studies on treatment outnumber studies on prevention by a ratio of 7 to 1. This situation is a cause for great concern, as so much time and effort is wasted on cures, when that energy could have been spent on researching methods of prevention. This study aims to help correct this imbalance by adding to the relatively new and insubstantial number of works on positive psychology.
This paper seeks to gain a greater familiarity with American adolescents’ happiness and emotional intelligence through the use of selected psychosocial variables. These variables will become the correlates of subjective well-being in the population segment being studied. As part of the positive psychology movement, this paper does not set out to discover the roots of disfunctionality. Rather, it has set out to discover the roots of contentment and satisfaction, which are in themselves rooted in American culture.