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The essential ingredient for one's living is being happy, which is found in different forms and differs among individuals. It can be associated with purchase of inanimate objects or with someone else the person is associated with. On the whole, consistent feelings of happiness may be determined by individual factors as well as environmental factors. The importance of happiness is apparent in numerous life domains. Research with adolescents has revealed the importance of happiness in school as well as at home and in the community. Therefore, the present study aimed to identify the influence of certain factors namely optimism, parental expectations and peer attachment on the subjective happiness among female college students. 107 female college students were tested on Life-Orientation Test-Revised, Perception of Parental Expectations Inventory, Peer Attachment and The Oxford Happiness Scale. The results showed that the important factors that determine happiness result in better physical and psychological health among women in the later stages of life.
Keywords: Optimism, Parental Expectations, Peer Attachment, Happiness of Female Students
Through the past century, psychologists have mainly focused on human unhappiness (such as anxiety and depression) and neglected the positive aspect of human potential. Argyle, Martin and Crossland (1989) defined happiness as having three partly independent components: (1) the average level of satisfaction over a specific time period; (2) the frequency and degree of positive affect; and (3) the relative absence of negative affect. "Happiness" denotes a measure of an individual's evaluation of one's overall quality of life (Veenhoven, 1997). The term is usually used interchangeably with "life satisfaction". People reporting to be happy tend to smile more and show lower levels of stress responses (heart rate, blood pressure), and they are less likely to commit suicide (Diener, Suh, Lucas & Smith, 1999). Research on happiness has identified a number of personal, demographic and socio-economic covariates of happiness that explain observed happiness patterns. Important personal and demographic characteristics, which affect happiness, are health, age, sex, marital status, the size and structure of the household, the education level, and the degree of urbanization (Clark, Frijters & Shields, 2008; Frey & Stutzer, 2002; Welsch, 2007). The present study made an attempt to identify the relationship of optimism, parental expectation and peer attachment with happiness of female college students.