The Human Pursuit of Well-Being

Preface: Ingrid Brdar.- Introduction: The Human Pursuit of Well-Being: A Cultural approach, Ingrid Brdar.- Part 1. Happiness and Well-being: 1. Can we get Happier than we are?: Ruut Veenhoven.-2. Self-serving Attributional Bias and Hedonic and Eudaimonic Aspects of Well-being: Pilar Sanjuán, Alejandro Magallares and Rodolfo Gordillo.-3. Affect Specificity as Indicators of National Well-Being, Representative Sample of Croatia: Ljiljana Kaliterna Lipovcan, Zvjezdana Prizmic-Larsen and Tihana Brkljacic.- 4. From Flow to Optimal Experience. (Re)searching the Quality of Subjective Experience Throughout Daily Life: Teresa Freire.-5. Gender Differences in Psychological Well-being and Distress during Adolescence: Dalila Visani Elisa Albieri, Emanuela Offidani, Fedra Ottolini, Elena Tomba, Chiara Ruini.-6. The Impact of Positive Affect: Two weekly Assessment Studies on Benefits of Positive Emotions in Patients with a Chronic Painful Disease: Elin Strand.-7. Studying Predictors of Post-traumatic Growth in Cancer Patients: Marta Scrignaro, Sandro Barni, Maria Luisa Bonetti and Maria Elena Magrin.-Part 2. Motivation and Goals: 8. It's all about me: Maladaptive self-focused attention as a mediator of the relationship between extrinsic goals and well-being: Mami Yamaguchi and Jamin Halberstadt.-9. The Relation of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Aspirations to Adolescent Life Satisfaction: Marina Merkas, Zora Raboteg-Saric and Dubravka Miljkovic.-10. Where does the motivation for the antiretroviral therapy come from?: Assessing existential meaning, personal growth and motivation towards antiretroviral therapy in people affected by HIV/AIDS: Krzysztof Szadejko and Gabriele Covotta.-Part 3. Personality: 11. The Relationships between temperament, character strengths and resilience: Ann-Marie K. Hutchinson, Anita D. Stuart and Hester G. Pretorius.-12. Character Strengths and Well-being: Are there gender differences?: Ingrid Brdar, PetraAnic and Majda Rijavec.-Part 4. Academic

Professor at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of Rijeka, Croatia. Teaching undergraduate and graduate in methodology and communication, post-graduated courses in statistics, communication and positive psychology. Editor in chief of the journal Psychological Topics (Psihologijske teme). Areas of research interest: positive psychology (intrinsic motivation and well-being, eudaimonic happiness, cross-cultural happiness), coping with stress, and social competence. Senior researcher in scientific project "Determinants of adolescents' optimal development and psychological well-being", financed by Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sport. Current research collaboration with colleagues from seven countries on the project "Cross-Cultural Investigation of Eudaimonic Happiness". Chair of the Scientific Committee in organizing 4th European Conference in Positive Psychology and member of the scientific Committee of the 5th European Conference in Positive Psychology, to be held in Denmark in 2010. Member of the Management Board Committee of the European Network of Positive Psychology. Co-author of the Croatian university textbook in positive psychology.