Mechanism For Well-being Research Articles

Creating a Holistic Model of Heterosexual Marriage Wellbeing Mechanisms

The links between marital relationship well-being and multiple life outcomes, including health, finances, career, living conditions, and happiness, are repetitively endorsed in academic studies. These outcomes are far-reaching and broadly representative, so it is perhaps surprising that there are limited publicly available, evidence-based models of marital wellbeing mechanisms to aid couples in trouble or to educate families, professional helpers, or policy makers in their decision-making processes. The goal of this study was to isolate the generic properties of marital health and understand their operation - investigating the precedents, antecedents and maintenance of adult romantic relationship happiness, stability and general marital well-being, including how these constructs self-organise and co-relate, how outcomes emerge, and how we might therefore potentially alter these outcomes. Over the last 40 years thousands of studies have been carried out to determine the factors that contribute to marital satisfaction and endurance. Nonetheless, to this point in history little has been done to synthesise these multiple factors into an overarching model of marital wellbeing. For this study, pre-existing theories and research findings pertinent to marriage and relationships were sought out using a scoping review, collating more than 24,000 research articles. The multi-grounding process extricated categories from the scoping review for the model development. Prominent pertinent theories were discovered, and their premises were explored, compared, and inter-relationships were considered in the model development process. Given the prevalence and primacy of marriage partnerships across most societies and given the individual importance and the societal impact that these partnerships have, this model has significance for individuals, therapists, family therapy lecturers and researchers, policy makers and even societal and business leaders.

The Influence of Masculinity and the Moderating Role of Religion on the Workplace Well-Being of Factory Workers in China.

This paper explores how the intersection of masculinity and religion shapes workplace well-being by focusing on Christianity and the social construction of masculinity among factory workers in a city in China. While existing work on public and occupational health has respectively acknowledged masculinity’s influences on health and the religious and spiritual dimensions of well-being, there have been limited efforts to examine how variegated, and especially religious, masculinities influence people’s well-being in the workplace. Drawing on ethnography and in-depth interviews with 52 factory workers and 8 church leaders and factory managers, we found that: (1) Variegated masculinities were integrated into the factory labor regime to produce docile and productive bodies of workers. In particular, the militarized and masculine cultures in China’s factories largely deprived workers of their dignity and undermined their well-being. These toxic masculinities were associated with workers’ depression and suicidal behavior. (2) Christianity not only provided social and spiritual support for vulnerable factory workers, but also enabled them to construct a morally superior Christian manhood that phytologically empowered them and enhanced their resilience to exploitation. This paper highlights not only the gender mechanism of well-being, but also the ways religion mediates the social-psychological construction of masculinity.

Mental well-being in the religious and the non-religious: evidence for a curvilinear relationship

Previous studies demonstrating a positive relationship between religiosity and mental health have sampled from a highly religious general population with little differentiation between weak religiosity and non-religiosity. Church members are typically compared with non-religious unaffiliated individuals, thus confounding belief with group effects (e.g. social support). The present study examined mental well-being, utilising the full range of certainty of belief or non-belief in God. In the first study, we compared church and secular group members on measures of life satisfaction and emotional stability. The second study used a large survey of the non-religious. A curvilinear relationship was found such that those with higher belief certainty (both confidently religious and atheists) have greater well-being relative to those with low certainty (unsure and agnostics). Multiple regressions controlling for social and demographic variables reduced, but did not eliminate this curvilinear relationship. Mechanisms of well-being may involve a confident worldview rather than religious beliefs themselves.