The Influence Of Character Strength On Affective Well-being

The pursuit of happiness is human instinct and rights that belong to each of us as individuals.Since the 1990s,great progress has been made in research on well-being,especially with the improvement of people's material living,satisfaction with sensual entertainment,people began to pursue the inner flow experience,a meaningful life,positive emotion,harmonious relationship,a sense of accomplishment and a series of experience that can bring well-being.When discussing well-being,the first question is the structure of well-being.Life satisfaction belongs to cognitive component,which is the overall cognitive judgment of life;positive affection and negative affection is the emotional response to the life events.People always want to get a pleasant emotional experience,they are more likely to percept that their life is happiness when they have more positive emotional experiences and less negative emotional experiences.The second core question is whether well-being on earth can be changed.The positive psychologists advocated "continued well-being" theory which can be divided into three parts,genes account for 50%of happiness,adaption account for 10%,the remaining 40%is we can change positively-independent intentional activities-identification and application of character strengths.As the Confucian "virtue happiness" and realization theory advocated by western-happiness comes from the expression of virtue,virtue is the path to true happiness.Everyone with more appreciative,positive eyes to see the potential,motivation and ability of themselves and others,that is the methord of happiness realization advocated by positive psychology.Thus,what we can be sure is that well-being can be changed and continued ascension,identification and application of character strengths is the most effective way to achieve happiness,character strengths and well-being inevitably has some connection.Whether character strengths directly affect the positive affection or different character strengths effect on different affective experience?Do life events determine people's affective experience?Compared with the basic personality traits,such as the big-five personality,the big-three personality,optimistic,pessimistic,internal control,external control,research of character strengths on affective well-being is still relatively weak,and a lot of results are under the background of western culture,the cultural applicability is worth further discussion.Furthermore,discussion on this issue for us to get happiness by identifying and applicating strength is of great significance.In view of this,this study recruited college students as participants,taking an approach of combining theoretical and empirical analysis,including literature analysis and empirical research,using questionnaire survey method,experimental method,the experimental study includes behavior and intervention study.From the perspective of cultural and personality,namely the collectivist culture and positive personality,is not only beneficial to enrich and develop theoretical achievements in the field of positive psychology,but also of great significance for realizing the Chinese dream of the whole nation.The five studies are as follows:1.Using questionnaires to investigate the present status and features of character strengths and well-being for Chinese college students,the results showed college students'positive emotion in medium level,negative emotion in a lower level,relationship and vitality strengths were positively related with positive emotion,conscientiousness strength was negatively related with negative emotion.Females' scores of relationship strengths were higher than males,relationship strength scores of students major in literature were higher than science,relationship strength scores of sophomore were higher than freshmen and junior,relationship strength scores of the students from cities were higher than rural and towns;vitality strength of males were higher than females,vitality strength scores of the students major in science were higher than literature,vitality strength scores of freshman were higher than sophomore and junior,vitality strength scores of students from cities were higher than rural and towns,vitality strength scores of the only one-child were higher than not only one-child.Conscientiousness strength scores of females were higher than males,students in towns were higher than rural and cities.Negative emotion scores of students major in science were higher than literature,sophomore higher than freshman and junior,rural students higher than towns and cities,not only one-child higher than only one-child.Secondly,the related pattern between character strengths and affective well-being was investigated.The results of correlation analysis showed that vitality strength was positive related to positive emotion significantly,relationship strength was positive related to positive emotion,and negative related to negative emotion significantly,conscientiousness strength was negative related to negative emotions significantly.Using structural equation model to verify again,the results found that when controlling the error of measurement,relationship strength and vitality strength associated with positive emotion,conscientiousness strength associated with negative emotion.2.Using single factor experiment design between subjects,by means of positive or negative emotions induction,relationship strength and vitality strength were related to positive emotion and the increment,conscientiousness strength was related to negative emotion and the decrement to investigate the temperamental influence of character strength on affective well-being.Results showed that the baseline of positive emotional experience of relationship strength and vitality strength were higher than conscientiousness strength,relationship and vitality strengths were not only positive related to positive emotion before induced,but also positive related to positive emotion and the increment after induced.The baseline of negative emotional experience of conscientiousness strength was lower than relationship strength and vitality strength,conscientiousness strength was not only negative related to negative emotion before induced,but also negative related to negative emotion and the decrement after induced.3.Using single factor experiment design between subjects,by means of positive or negative emotions induced,using news headlines emotional valence evaluation task to examine the influence of character strength and emotional state on the interpretation and judgment of emotional information.The results showed that relationship and vitality strengths showed positive information processing bias in natural emotion induced,and this processing bias was more obvious in positive emotion induced.Conscientiousness strength showed negative information processing bias in natural emotion induced,and this processing bias was more obvious in negative emotion induced.4.The researches above highlight character strength is the main factor to affect affective well-being,but cannot therefore ignore the influence of situational factors.To explore the comparative advantage of life events and character strengths for the predictive power ofemotional experience,using regression analysis,the results showed that the predictive power of life events on affective well-being was higher than character strengths.Using structural equation model for the relationship of character strengths,life events,and affective well-being,results showed that after two latent variables were set to related,fitting is improved.5.On the basis of the studies above,by means of intervention experiment to examine the promotion effect of character strengths using on affective well-being,as well as which strength using has the largest contribution.It was found that both instant happiness and long-term happiness,affective well-being of strengths using group were improved significantly.As time went by,although the promotion effect was a little back,the decline rate of the control group was higher than strengths using group.The results of regression analysis showed that affective well-being criterion variables have significant predictive power,according to amount of the variation,they were conscientiousness strength using,relationship strength using,vitality strength using in order.Thus,conclusions are as follows:1.The differences of emotional experience baseline and emotional reactions are the reasons of relationship and vitality strengths associated with positive emotion,conscientious strength associated with negative emotion.2.Not only exists trait consistency effect in the cognitive processing of emotional information,but also the interaction effect of trait and emotion.3.Both the personality factors and situational factors have a direct influence on affective well-being,and character strengths also indirectly affect affective well-being by life events.4.The promotion effect of character strengths using on affective well-being is significant,and conscientiousness strength using has the largest effect.