THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE OF HAPPINESS: ESSENTIAL RESOURCES FOR A HAPPY FAMILY
Abstract
It is normal for people to feel positive about the quality of their lives, despite the presence of challenges. Of special interest here are the challenges of caring for a child or a disabled family member. How do the adults living within such families maintain a positive self-view? Answering this question requires an understanding of subjective well-being as it applies to each individual family member and of the management system that strives to keep each person feeling positive. This paper describes various psychological components of this homeostatic management system, together with a consideration of the most useful resources to support homeostasis. Key resources have been identified by using the Personal Wellbeing Index, a seven-item scale measuring subjective well-being (mood happiness). Over many studies, researchers have found considerable agreement that three kinds of resources — “the Golden Triangle” — are consistently more relevant to subjective well-being than the others. These are feelings of satisfaction with income, relationships, and life purpose. The implications for interventions that offer support to families in need are discussed.Downloads
Metrics
Copyright (c) 2018 Robert A. Cummins
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors contributing to the International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies agree to release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 Unported license. This licence allows anyone to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given, and that in the event of reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made clear.
Authors retain copyright of their work and grant the journal right of first publication.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Rights Granted After Publication
After publication, authors may reuse portions or the full article without obtaining formal permission for inclusion within their thesis or dissertation.
Permission for these reuses is granted on the following conditions:
- that full acknowledgement is made of the original publication stating the specific material reused [pages, figure numbers, etc.], [Title] by/edited by [Author/editor], [year of publication], reproduced by permission of International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies [link to IJCYFS website];
- In the case of joint-authored works, it is the responsibility of the author to obtain permission from co-authors for the work to be reuse/republished;
- that reuse on personal websites and institutional or subject-based repositories includes a link to the work as published in the International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies; and that the material is not distributed under any kind of Open Access style licences (e.g. Creative Commons) which may affect the Licence between the author and IJCYFS.
