The term orientations to well-being was coined by Peterson et al. According to the hedonic viewpoint, the key to well-being is the pursuit of physical and emotional pleasure, enjoyment and comfort, whereas the eudaimonic view suggests that well-being can be fulfilled by seeking to use and develop the best in oneself, consistently with one’s own values (Huta and Ryan 2010).Īssuming that individuals can be mainly hedonically and/or eudaimonically oriented, an important research question that we want to address is if individuals can manifest different types of psychological outcomes depending on their orientations to well-being. There have historically been two main perspectives on the definition of well-being, namely Hedonia and Eudaimonia. Overall, this study supports the importance of distinguishing between Eudaimonia, and the pleasure and relaxation components of Hedonia to predict individual differences in subjective experiences and functioning.Īn essential question investigated by philosophers, psychologists and researchers of human sciences concerns how well-being can be achieved. Our findings also suggest that pleasure orientation may reflect the “pursuit of pleasure” component of Hedonia, while relaxation orientation may reflect its “pain avoidance” component. The results reflect that pleasure orientation is aimed at achieving pleasant feelings, while Eudaimonic orientation is aimed at living well.

Furthermore, eudaimonic orientation showed a positive relation with several adaptive coping strategies, whereas relaxation was associated with avoidant coping strategies. Eudaimonic orientation was associated with positive experiences. Pleasure orientation was positively related to positive experiences of well-being and negatively related to negative experiences. The Italian version of the HEMA-R showed a three-factor structure, namely eudaimonic, pleasure, and relaxation orientations. The main objective was to study the distinctive patterns of correlates between different types of orientations to well-being and several outcome measures of positive experiences (flourishing, life satisfaction, positive affect), negative experiences (negative affect, depression, anxiety, stress) and functioning (dispositional coping strategies) by means of a multivariate linear model. A preliminary objective of the study was to establish the factorial validity of the Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives for Activities–Revised (HEMA-R) on an Italian sample (N = 461) through a confirmatory factor analysis. Very little is known about their associations with functioning. Research on hedonic and eudaimonic orientations has previously focused on their effects on well-being experiences.

Hedonic motivation