Life events and personal causation: some relationships with satisfaction and distress

The factors that generate happiness or distress in people are not well understood, nor are factors that change such states. This study attempted to show that accounting for people's sense of personal causation could provide a clear understanding of the relationship between live events, personal activity, and measures of psychological well-being. After pretesting, three randomly selected groups of college students were given instructions either to (a) engage in 12 activities from a self-selected list of pleasurable activities, (b) engage in 2 activities from that list, or (c) return after 1 month for retesting only. Covariance analyses revealed that subjects instructed to engage in either 2 or 12 pleasurable activities reported greater pleasantness and a higher quality of life than controls; there were no differences between groups on reports of psychiatric distress. Prior negative life change was treated as a factor in the design and was found to interact with the activity instructions: Subjects reporting many prior negative changes exhibited less psychiatric distress along with greater pleasantness when instructed to engage in 12 activities rather than 2 or none. The results suggested that engaging in pleasant activities increases positive aspects of well-being in general, but may reduce distress only for subjects who are experiencing considerable life stress.