Cultural Specifics of Life Values and Subjective Well – Being

Abstract

The objectives of the study were to reveal cultural specifics of modern life values and subjective well-being, individual and cultural values interrelations, life values and subjective well-being correlations at Russian residents, belonging to different religions. The main methods were Scales of: Value Orientations Actual Structure (Bubnova), Psychological well-being (Ryff), Life Satisfaction (Neugarten, Havighurst, & Tobin), Subjective Happiness (Lyubomirsky & Lepper), Student’s T-test, Spearman's rank correlation. The sample consisted of 330 persons (18-55 years old) of 10 different nations and 5 religions. By the time of the survey all the participants had lived in Russia for some (not less than 3) years. For each studied religious groups their dominant life values were revealed. It was discovered, that people of different cultures associate their well-being and lives satisfaction with different life values. However, in general, life satisfaction correlates with those values, which are less important for certain culture. Perhaps, persons, oriented on traditional and culturally important values are less happy than those, who are oriented for their individual ones. May be in assessing realization of individual values people use their own criteria, which are not as strict as criteria of common cultural values’ realization. The results of this study allow us to draw the following conclusions. Significant cross-cultural differences in life-values and subjective well-being have their sources in religious attitudes and settings. People of different cultures associate their well-being and lives satisfaction with different values. Generally, well-being and life satisfaction are directly related to the values, less important in certain culture.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s5p301