Keywords
social representations
cross-cultural study
How to Cite
Abstract
Happiness is a symbolic polysemic construction, with multiple- philosophical roots, which brings sense to the good and desirable for human life. In social sciences and psychology it is approached from multiple concepts, and accordingly their results orient public policy. One emic approach is proposed, through a cross-cultural study of its social representation on samples of students and professionals from health and educational areas of Chile and Italy, which are socializing agents on well-being and quality of life. The research included two qualitative studies, the first using an open-ended questionnaire to 164 participants and the second conducting eight focus groups with 65 subjects. Inductive content analysis was used to generate categories and socio-semantic dimensions. A common nucleus to both countries was found, for the notion, components and three types of happiness. It was concluded that the meanings of happiness influence the experiences, interpretations, trials of life and the vital project orientation of individuals. These results were problematized in light of global studies of happiness and the treatment of the construct in the social scenario.This journal is registered under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Thus, this work may be reproduced, distributed, and publicly shared in digital format, as long as the names of the authors and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are acknowledged. Others are allowed to quote, adapt, transform, auto-archive, republish, and create based on this material, for any purpose (even commercial ones), provided the authorship is duly acknowledged, a link to the original work is provided, and it is specified if changes have been made. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana does not hold the rights of published works and the authors are solely responsible for the contents of their works; they keep the moral, intellectual, privacy, and publicity rights. Approving the intervention of the work (review, copy-editing, translation, layout) and the following outreach, are granted through an use license and not through an assignment of rights. This means the journal and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana cannot be held responsible for any ethical malpractice by the authors. As a consequence of the protection granted by the use license, the journal is not required to publish recantations or modify information already published, unless the errata stems from the editorial management process. Publishing contents in this journal does not generate royalties for contributors.