Role of value - oriented personality and meaning in Life in predicting happiness among students and Academicians

Abstract

India’s consistently low position in global happiness indices highlights the imperative for context-specific research that integrates multifaceted perspectives and diverse samples. The present research is a part of this endeavour. This study examined the role of Spranger’s value-oriented personality types and meaning in life in predicting happiness among students and academicians. Using a quantitative, cross-sectional, comparative-correlational design, data were collected from 87 participants through purposive sampling: 53 postgraduate students (male -24, female-29) from Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla and 34 Fellows and Associate Fellows (male -18, female-16) from the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Participants completed standardized measures of Study of Values Test (Ojha & Bhargava, 1992), the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (Steger, 2005), and the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (Hills & Argyle, 2002). The results revealed that religious value, the presence of meaning in life, and level of happiness are higher in academicians compared to students; whereas economic value and the search for meaning in life were found to be higher in students. However, no differences were observed between the two groups in terms of theoretical, aesthetic, social, and political values. Furthermore, happiness was found to be positively correlated with the 'presence of meaning' and negatively correlated with the 'search for meaning'; however, no significant correlation was found with Spranger's value types. Moreover, stepwise multiple regression showed that meaning in life dimensions significantly predicted happiness, accounting for 22.5% of the variance. Presence of meaning was a significant positive predictor, whereas search for meaning was a significant negative predictor of happiness.