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The Emotional Rewards of Valuing Happiness: A Longitudinal Study Among Filipino Adolescents

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Abstract

The intense desire to achieve happiness is linked to increased well-being in collectivist societies. However, research showed that the emotional payback of valuing happiness only applies to older adults but not to younger undergraduate students. Existing studies on how valuing happiness predicts well-being in different populations use cross-sectional designs, offering limited evidence on the temporal precedence between valuing happiness and wellbeing outcomes. Hence, this study examined the association between valuing happiness and positive affect among Filipino adolescents via a three-wave cross-lagged panel design. Results of cross-lagged panel structural equation modeling demonstrated that valuing happiness was positively associated with subsequent positive affect even after controlling for auto-regressor effects. The results are discussed in terms of the implications of valuing happiness among adolescents.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Special Education and Counselling, Integrated Centre for Well-Being (I-WELL), The Education University of Hong Kong, Rm. D2-2F-28, 10 Lo Ping Rd., Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong, SAR, China

    Jesus Alfonso Daep Datu

  2. Department of Psychology, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines

    Allan B. I. Bernardo

  3. Department of Management, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China

    Jana Patricia M. Valdez

Authors
  1. Jesus Alfonso Daep Datu
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  2. Allan B. I. Bernardo
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  3. Jana Patricia M. Valdez
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Correspondence to Jesus Alfonso Daep Datu.

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Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Before submitting this manuscript, the first and corresponding author secured ethical clearance from the Human Research Ethics Committee of his university.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Preliminary results of this manuscript were disseminated by the first and third authors via a poster presentation in the 3rd Biennial International Conventions of Psychological Science in Paris, France.

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Datu, J.A.D., Bernardo, A.B.I. & Valdez, J.P.M. The Emotional Rewards of Valuing Happiness: A Longitudinal Study Among Filipino Adolescents. Child Ind Res 14, 1769–1779 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-021-09820-5

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