Happiness of University Employees: Past, Present & Future.

Introduction

Happiness has remained the life goal for human beings since time immemorial. Happiness touches every heart of mankind as one coins the term "Happy" to wish someone on any occasion. Alongside, pursuit of happiness has remained the longest journey to some, while some seem to be born with happiness. Some believe happiness can be bought with money and expect to attain happiness once they are amply wealthy. Easterlin (2001) studied the impact of income on happiness and concluded that people are happier when their income is higher as compared to people with lower income. However, this relationship follows the principle of diminishing returns. Some people need true affection or spiritual attainment to feel happy. Quite a few others think happiness is a myth--it is very often elusive (Alcorn, 2015). One thing is common among all the people --most of them know that they are happy or that they are not.

The concept of well-being and happiness is inherent in ancient Indian philosophy like Yoga and in scriptures like Upanishads. According to Indian rationalities, happiness and unhappiness of an individual in this materialistic world rotate around four central ideas--honesty (dharma), wealth (artha), wants (kama), and liberation (mokca), that represent the significant life objectives as mentioned in C'araka Samhita, Su traSthana: 11 (Antonovsky, 1987). It is additionally imperative that in the Indian theory, both happiness and unhappiness ('sukha' and 'dukha') run connected and are an integral part of a typical life. Hitopaderea (Verse 172 of the "Companion Acquisition" book) mentions that happiness and unhappiness rotate as a wheel.

In the past several decades, research on happiness saw an exponentially increasing trend. A majority of researchers, philosophers and thinkers believe that happiness is a state of mind. Numerous theories have evolved to identify the causes of this extremely important possession of life. Today, more people are talking about happiness around the world cutting across religious faiths, human races and cultures, as 'absolute' happiness eludes them.

Happiness has been defined in many ways by researchers. Veenhoven (1984) defined happiness as the degree to which a person favorably evaluates his overall quality of life. It is also referred to as subjective well-being (SWB) or life satisfaction (Kalmijn & Veenhoven, 2005). Happiness or subjective well-being has also been defined as more frequent positive affect, less frequent negative affect and a high level of satisfaction with life as a whole (Diener & Myers, 1995). As per David (2013), happiness is identified by three different pathways. Hedonia or Pleasant Life stands for positive experiences in life which include contentment, hope and sensory enjoyment. Eudaimonia or Engaged Life stands for a person's ability to use his talent or strengths so that it makes the person feel engaged. Meaningful Life is the third pathway for happiness, which essentially means being part of something which is larger than life viz., being a part of building an institution.

In today's dynamic and fast changing world, human life is facing unprecedented stress to cope up with the vagaries of the social, political and economic environment, resulting in psychological upheaval. It is believed that the researchers from social science and behavioral science can play a tremendous impactful role to articulate what is good life. These scientists have an important role to play in this situation to lead humanity to wellbeing, positive individuals, and thriving communities. The importance of positive psychology has been articulated by Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi (2000) through three different levels of experience.

In the subjective level, it is--

1. In the past: well-being, contentment and satisfaction,

2. In the present: flow and happiness, and

3. For the future: hope and optimism

In the individual level, it is about the various positive individual traits viz., the capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent, and wisdom.

At the group level, positive psychology is all about the civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship, which typically consists of responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, moderation, tolerance, and work ethics.

As in the case of definition of happiness, there have been several approaches for measuring happiness. Many scales have been developed in the countries across globe to measure SWB (subjective well-being) of individuals. Lyubomirsky & Lepper (1999) attempted to incorporate a measure of overall subjective happiness into the previous measures of affective and cognitive well being, calling the scale as subjective happiness scale. The subjective happiness scale was tested for sex or age differences and found to have no differentiation there of.

The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) is a widely known 20-item scale used to measure the intensity of positive affect vis-a-vis negative affect in individuals (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). The "Satisfaction with Life Scale" developed by Diener et. al. (1985) is a global cognitive assessment of life satisfaction requiring a person to rate five statements about his/ her life. The authors tested this scale on different subjects from undergraduates to elderlies and established that the scale has favorable psychometric properties. Quite a few instruments are also available to track life satisfaction of people across the world. According to Frey & Stutzer (2002), the World Values Survey is a global research project that explores people's values and beliefs, how they change over time and what social and political impact they have. For European Union member countries, there is Euro Barometer, which serves similar purpose (Kahneman, Diener, & Schwarz, 1999).

Literature reports several studies on...