INFAD (May 2018)
Subjective wellness, cognitive-affective strategies and family
Abstract
Psychological wellness is a broad concept that includes social, subjective and psychological dimensions, as well as behaviors related to health in general, that lead people to function in a positive way. Subjective wellness measures the degree of happiness or satisfaction that, in general terms, predominates in each person according to their own point of view. In relation to this, it is known that the mind has a relevant role in the construction of reality. To interpret reality, our thinking uses certain cognitive-affective structures. Events by themselves do not produce behavioral, emotional and cognitive consequences, but rather through a process of personal evaluation of events, these consequences occur. Lazarus (2000) argued that before the emotion takes place, people make an automatic and unconscious evaluation of what is happening and what is going to be assumed. In addition, Hernández-Guanir (2002,2010) raised the existence of habitual and peculiar strategies that each person shows in the way of focusing, of reacting or of interpreting reality in situations of ego-involvement, that is, where people face a reality that engages them in their interests and emotions. It is well-known the relationship between cohesion and family adaptability (called Family System) with the level of satisfaction of the members of the family system, as stated by Olson (2000) in his circumplex model. In order to ascertain the influences of the cognitive-affective strategies and the family with the subjective wellness, a research was proposed with 225 students of the Faculty of Legal Sciences of the University of Las Palmas of Gran Canaria, through an external design post facto. The results offer, among others, a relationship between the elements of the family system, family satisfaction, cognitive-affective strategies and subjective well-being. It also informs us that it is possible to predict subjective well-being more by the aspects of the world’s evaluation and life in general and of family satisfaction, than by the variables of the family system. It concludes with a broad reflection of the role played by these variables in subjective wellness or more commonly called happiness.
Keywords
