Podium Presentation - 10 minutes International Positive Psychology Association 7th IPPA World Congress 2021

Needs and wellbeing across Europe – Basic psychological needs predict both wellbeing and ill-being better than socio-economic position (#19)

Frank Martela 1 , Annika Lehmus-Sun 2 , Philip D. Parker 3 , Anne B. Pessi 4 , Richard M. Ryan 3
  1. Aalto University, Aalto, UUSIMAA, Finland
  2. Department of Political And Social Sciences, European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy
  3. Australian Catholic University, North Sydney, Australia
  4. Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Background

In the quest to identify the key sources of subjective wellbeing, many researchers have emphasized the role of basic needs. Self-determination theory in particular has identified three basic psychological needs – autonomy, competence, and relatedness – as fundamental to wellbeing across cultures. The present study will examine these needs as predictors of wellbeing across 27 European countries using a broader set of wellbeing and ill-being indicators than any previous study.

Hypotheses/Research Questions

We hypothesize that in each European country, the needs will be important positive predictors of a) happiness, b) life satisfaction, c) meaning in life, and d) lack of depression. Moreover, we hypothesize that these relationships will remain when controlling for the well-known influence of socio-economic position, and in fact be stronger than its influence.

Sample Characteristics

The European Social Survey [ESS] is a European representative cross-sectional survey. The sixth round was gathered in 2012 and 2013 and covered 29 European countries, with 800+ participants from each country for a total sample size of 48,550 respondents.

Design

To get comparable indicators and latent factors across the various countries, we utilized the alignment method, and tested models that examined simultaneously the influence of demographic factors, socio-economic position, and psychological needs on the four indicators of wellbeing in each European country.

Results

The results demonstrate that across all 27 countries the three needs are strongly related to three key indicators of wellbeing (happiness, life satisfaction, and meaning in life) and a key indicator of ill-being (depression), explaining significantly more variance than socio-economic position and demographic factors.

Scientific Contribution

These results underscore the status of basic psychological needs as crucial to human wellbeing, providing the first cross-cultural test of their importance for meaning in life and depression, and demonstrating their importance in each of the 27 European countries studied.
 

  • Keywords: Culture, Meaning and Purpose, Motivation, Positive emotions