Content area
Abstract
According to sociological diagnoses of present time, in many western countries a postmodern consumer, entertainment, and event culture has emerged. This paper draws especially on Schulze's volume on the event society ("Erlebnisgesellschaft", 1992). On a theoretical level, it is argued that people living in a consumer and event society would act more and more inward oriented: They increasingly strive for pleasing experiences, a high level of well-being, and seek positive affects. Furthermore, they ever more regard their emotions as a criterion for the assessment of their own life. By using data from the European Social Survey 2006, this latter assumption is examined in a comparative perspective for 23 European countries. The findings show that in all countries considered previously experienced positive (negative) emotions lead to an increase (decrease) in people's life satisfaction. Emotions influence a persons' life satisfaction substantially. However, multilevel analyses demonstrate that this effect varies between countries: The more a society resembles the ideal type of a consumer and event society, the larger is the impact of a person's previously experienced emotions on the assessment of his or her own life. Hence, in a consumer and event society life satisfaction catches a strong hedonistic shade.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]