A Study Of Undergraduates’ Happiness From Perspectives Of Embodied Cognition

Happiness is the eternal theme of human beings. Multiculturalism in the contemporary context of internationalization and globalization is bringing college students unprecedented challenges for their values and world outlook. The pursuit of happiness makes living worthwhile, and each college student who has a high sense of social responsibility and mission is in the pursuit of life’s happiness as the case it could be. It will help them gain a success and realize the value of life through establishment of the scientific concept of happiness, which is one of the important preconditions of both the harmonious society and mentally healthy individuals.As shown in the self-made analysis of the nearly500copies of questionnaire, in spite of a positive and upward attitude toward happiness as the main stream, some negative problems in a way do exist among undergraduate. The tokens, as summarized in the paper, are weak sense of happiness, more for personals, forceless for action-taking, roughly a tendency of personal utilitarianism and hedonism. The author’s view for one of the reasons is neglecting the body participation in the cognitive style and perception of happiness among the students and educators.The emerging embodied cognition appears as a new theory of cognition with the advancement of cognitive science, scientific and effective, radiating to the research on almost all cognitive domains. The author attempts to apply the embodied cognition into the discussion of the concept of happiness, namely, embodiment for happiness, including embodied perception, environmental effect, and systematical construction from the angel of higher education, to survey the present factors which influence the value orientation of the happiness concept of the undergraduate focusing on three aspects of happiness education:body absence, environmental ineffectiveness, and mal-functional systems, and finally to suggest ways to improve the undergraduate’qualities in emotion, knowledge, views and performance by giving all play to the subjectivity, to the environment, and to system coordination.The main innovation of this paper lies in the two aspects:embodied cognition is introduced as a theoretical perspective into discussion of college students’ view of happiness and happiness education for one thing, and practical applicability is suggested for another, both with significance in response to the global trend of body transition.