6533b7d7fe1ef96bd126830a

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Latin-American Studies on Well-Being

Alejandro Castro Solano

subject

Latin AmericansLatin American studiesmedia_common.quotation_subjectLife satisfactionlanguage.human_languageWell-beingHappinesslanguageEmic and eticPositive psychologyPortuguesePsychologySocial psychologymedia_common

description

This chapter aims to describe Latin-American studies on well-being from two different perspectives: the hedonic (life satisfaction, positive and negative emotions) and the eudaimonic (psychological well-being) traditions. An analysis of research articles published between 1998 and 2012 was conducted. The introduced key words were: happiness, life satisfaction and well-being and the search was limited by language of publication restricted to Spanish and Portuguese. Results were analyzed by country of origin, type of well-being study and the inclusion of cultural variables. Those studies focused on what people understood about psychological well-being and the meaning assigned to it are described. Additionally, research studies conducted in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Peru from an emic perspective are reviewed. In general terms, Latin American people perceived themselves as happy or very happy. However, as cross-cultural research is rarely conducted in the region and most studies on this topic have used an etic imposed approach, findings cannot be generalized.

yearjournalcountryeditionlanguage
2014-01-01
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9035-2_2