Personal Goals, Happiness, And Meaning: On The Essence And Source Of Well-Being

The question on well-being is a one of the most important research field in contemporary western psychological society, the starting of which could be traced back to late 1960s. Well-being study should consist of two fundamental theoretical questions, the first of which was what well-being was, and the second of which was how to attain well-being. Psychological researches defined what well-being was by analyzing the psychological structure of well-being, and determined the antecedents of well-being. Till now, lots of empirical results concerned with well-being have been accumulated in western psychology. First, on the question what well-being was, a new viewpoint had been developed in recent researches, which suggested that the structure of well-being should consist of two separate but related theoretical constructs, which were happiness and meaning. Second, on the question what the causes of well-being were, personal goals had been connected to well-being in recent researches, and several characteristics of personal goals were regarded as internal causes affecting well-being.The research here was based on the pervious research progress on well-being in the western psychology and it contained two primary parts: First, investigating the structure of well-being. A set of self-rated scales were used to collect data, and the result of confirmatory factor analysis(CFA) suggested that well-being should consist two related but distinct constructs, i.e. happiness and meaning. Next, investigating the relationship of personal goals and well-being. It was found that two characteristics of personal goals, which were goal commitment and goal efficacy, could be considered as significant antecedents affecting well-being, and the result of multiple linear regression suggested that among this effect the interaction of goal commitment and goal efficacy played essential role.This research gave a relatively deep psychological exploration on the essence and source of well-being. The empirical results of this research could be served as a valuable material in this field for further studies.