Bienestar subjetivo y satisfacciones de dominios en estudiantes universitarios colombianos

Abstract

The concept of subjective well-being refers to the overall positive or negative way in which people evaluate their lives and experiences. It is generally accepted that subjective well-being is made up of a cognitive component usually called satisfaction with life or life satisfaction and an emotional component usually referred to as happiness. The search for factors that explain subjective well-being is currently one of the most interesting topics in psychology and led to the concept of domain satisfactions, which are understood as the judgments that people make when evaluating the major domains of life. It refers to the perceived degree of satisfaction that we obtain from the way in which each of these main domains or areas of our lives are developed. This correlational study with predictive intent aimed at establishing the relationship of satisfaction in the economic, couple, family, friends, health, university life, and academic performance domains, with the cognitive and emotional components of subjective well-being (life satisfaction and happiness, respectively), identifying which of these domains predict well-being. The non-probabilistic sample, for convenience, was made up of 344 women and men (50.9 % and 49.1 % respectively) between 18 and 29 years of age (M = 20.89); SD = 2.52), students from an important Colombian public university based in the city of Palmira. The instruments, which include the Diener’s life satisfaction and Lyubomirsky and Lepper’s happiness scales, and simple items for each domain satisfaction studied (economic, couple, family, friends, health, university life, and academic performance) were answered in a format printed by 64 % of the participants and in virtual format by 36 %, according to their own choice. The results showed that all domain satisfactions were significantly related to both the cognitive and the emotional components of subjective well-being. The results also showed that except for satisfaction with health and academic performance, all other domain satisfactions predicted at least one of the components of subjective well-being. In general, domain satisfactions explained the variance of satisfaction and happiness much better than sociodemographic variables. Thus, it was confirmed that the psychological significance of events that occur in the main areas of people's lives have much more relevance to well-being than situational factors such as sociodemographic ones. In a different sense, and order of impact, satisfaction with the economic domain, satisfaction with university life, and satisfaction with the couple emerged as the domains that had the greatest influence on life satisfaction, and satisfaction with friends and satisfaction with university life emerged as the strongest predictors of happiness. The results suggest that well-being is especially affected by the satisfaction of needs associated with the closest domains and more important to the individual. These would include the economic domain and relationships that involve affections, but also other domains that, for specific reasons, occupy a relevant place in the individual’s internal hierarchy of importance, which may vary among cultures and even among people of the same culture. The above conclusion could explain, among other findings, the significant impact of satisfaction with university life on subjective well-being. The results also suggest that, in general, domain satisfactions have a greater impact on the cognitive component of well-being than on the emotional component, and that, in particular, domains such as economics fundamentally satisfy cognitive needs, friendship fundamentally satisfy emotional needs, and other domains such as couple, family and university life, satisfy both cognitive and emotional needs. This would demonstrate the importance of applying differentiated instruments to study the cognitive and emotional components of well-being.