Statement of the Problem

Our research aims to determine the factors that affect the Happy Aging of the older

people that are part of Generation X.

Specifically, this research seeks to answer the questions like

1. How Does Generation X Define Happiness?

2. What are the Factors that Contribute to the Happiness of Generation X?

3. Are people who are socially active and are in healthy relationships happier?

4. And What are the Long-term and Short-term Effects on the Happiness of Generation X?,

in terms of the factors that we will find along with the making of this research

RRL

This chapter aims to explain and present the different research findings that are related to

our study. It focuses on the different variables of our study to gain a deeper meaning behind it,

giving knowledge on what the study is about and to gain understanding from different studies

and literature that we have found that are all related to our current research proposal.

So here in chapter 2, we first define the meaning of happiness and why is this important

to our study. As we have read studies and literature we have found out that there are different

meanings of happiness and how is it related to our study. According to scientific literature,

happiness can be separated into two main concepts: a life that goes well for the person leading it,

and a state of mind which can be considered psychological. Meanwhile, positive psychologists

have produced a new idea of happiness that unites these two concepts and for them, It is possible
to describe happiness as a subjective and individualized conception focused on the well-being of

the individual.

We have found three different topics that we need to consider in our study that is all

related to the happiness of older people. So in the first topic, we defined the psychological

understanding of happiness and we have found out that in order to have a psychological

understanding of happiness, one must move away from a meta understanding of concepts and

instead gain a deeper grasp of distinct mental states. When discussing these mental states, it is

common to refer to them as "life satisfaction," "pleasure," or "a pleasant emotion." The issue at

hand is thus given some monetary worth, and happiness is reduced to a question of well-being or

flourishing in the present moment. Putting it another way, happiness is a mental state of

well-being that is characterized by the presence of pleasant emotions. Using this definition, it is

possible to see clearly the evolutionary philosophical foundations of the present concept of

happiness. Furthermore, we can say that Happiness, according to many psychologists, is

“knowable only intuitively, at the level of feeling,” in the same way that love is. As a result of

this thinking, there has been a scarcity of happiness research in the field of clinical psychology.

The ability to measure happiness is problematic if happiness can only be understood by the

individual who is experiencing it at the time. As a result, happiness is considered an elusive

emotion, state, or affective reaction to a neurological sensation that is difficult to achieve.

In the second topic, we define Objective well-being and its relation to happiness.

According to a research from Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness (2017), levels

of objective well-being are measured through "educational attainment, physical environment, as

well as economic sufficiency and stability", all of which are mundane and tangible indicators that
influence the happiness of individuals as opposed to subject well-being which deals with

emotions and the overall quality of life.

Meanwhile, In an article from Daily Philosophy (2017), it mentioned Kahneman's

Objective Happiness as a basis that not all happiness is subjective and can be somewhat

measurable. The human brain can identify objectively happy impressions as brought up in the

aforementioned article similar to how it can objectively react to negative emotions. In this sense,

happiness can be identified at a surface level by stimuli that represent happiness. It asks the

question: Are you happy or do you imagine yourself to be happy? Ultimately, there is a desire for

happiness to be known not just by the self but by others as well, or at least to make it appear

genuine than it is.

Lastly, the third topic that we consider is the idea of subjective well-being and its relation

to happiness. So, Diener created a theory of subjective being known as the tripartite model of

subjective being in 1984. This applied psychology theory investigated the relationship between

an individual’s perception of their quality of life, their emotional reactions, and their judgments

about their lives, among other things. According to Diener, subjective well-being is highly

connected with a high frequency of pleasant affective experiences, a low frequency negative

affective experiences and an overall sense of fulfillment in one’s life. They are expected to be

reasonably stable over time and represent a “general area of scientific interest rather than a single

specific construct” in their combination. In a nutshell, subjective well-being is concerned with an

individual's judgment of their own life, as well as their experience of emotion.

The term "hedonic balance," which refers to an equilibrium of positive and negative

affect, describes happiness in Diener's theory. Hedonic balance is measured in conjunction with a
person's overall life satisfaction, determined by global evaluations about their life. This is known

as the hedonic balance equation and It is the second component that distinguishes well-being as

"subjective." and According to Diener, happiness is a "preponderance of positive over negative

impact."

After we gather different perceptions about the meaning of happiness we now look into

the background of Generation X kasi we will later connect the two.

Synthesis

In summary, many researchers found different factors that affect the happiness of older people

that are part of Generation X. They found different factors depending on their age, work, social

status, and the country where they are residing. In fact, an increasing number of studies have

discovered a U-shaped relationship between age and life satisfaction, which means that young

and older people are more satisfied with their lives than people in the middle of their life span.

There are two main interpretations of this type of relationship that are widely accepted. In the

first instance, the nature of one's relationship reflects the impact of significant life events that

occur at various stages of one's life for example marriage, the birth of children and

grandchildren, loss of employment, retirement, and so on), which are closely associated with the

age at which they occur. In the second instance, a U-shaped relationship between age and life

satisfaction reflects the so-called cohort effect, which implies that people born between 1930 and

1960 will always give a lower assessment of life satisfaction than other generations, resulting in

a U-shaped relationship between age and life satisfaction on the "cut" in a specific survey year.
 This research proposal draws on a large number of studies to reach the conclusion that the

relationship between age and life satisfaction is still U-shaped, with higher levels of life

satisfaction in both the young and old ages of life. However, when the effect of the cohort is

taken into consideration, the shape of the graph is smoother than the earlier studies obtained in

cross-data models - satisfaction with life remains virtually unchanged between the ages of 20 and

55 years.