Aug 2026· Small Business Economics· 0 citations· 33 references
Abstract
Individuals not only seek a happy and meaningful life, but an interesting rather than a boring one. In this paper, we analyze data from 19,000 individuals across 25 European countries to demonstrate that self-employment is associated with modestly lower boredom on average—a relationship that is not captured by traditional measures of hedonic or eudaimonic well-being. The negative association between self-employment and boredom is small but robust across broad sectors, significantly stronger among those with ten or more employees, and similar in size to the associations between self-employment and life satisfaction or meaning in life. While this association is not restricted to low-income individuals, the data do not allow strong conclusions about whether this association generalizes to high-income employees. We replicate our main findings in a separate sample of 1000 US participants. Using this sample, we also show that our main results are not driven by individuals with lower boredom proneness self-selecting into self-employment. Taken together, our results suggest that prior research has overlooked an important dimension of the relationship between self-employment and well-being.
Music is a source of pleasure for many people, but also can serve as a source of meaning in life. The present study examined whether music reward experiences (MREs; e.g., flow experiences, social experiences, relaxation) are associated with general hedonic and eudaimonic motives for general activities (HEMAs; e.g., see...
Bernhard Leipold· Music Perception: An Interdi...· 0 citations
Using one's signature strengths is a robust predictor of well-being, yet the psychological mechanisms underlying this association remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on self-determination theory's dual-process model, the present study examined whether basic psychological need satisfaction and need frustration ser...
Wang Zheng, Yin-Qiu Zhao, Xiao-Yu Li et al.· Applied Psychology: Health a...· 0 citations
Work-life balance and occupational burnout are now seen as crucial psychological factors that affect employee well-being, productivity, and mental health. Salaried employees often deal with organizational pressures, deadlines, and role expectations, while self-employed individuals face unique stressors like income inst...
A. Shakil, Rao Muhammad Zain Ul Abideen, Rao Akmal Ali et al.· Integration of Mankind and S...· 1 citation
Romantic partners are among the most influential figures in a person’s adult life – they can provide invaluable support, closeness, and intimacy, but they can also be a source of interpersonal conflict, rejection, and neglect. It comes as no surprise, then, that people can experience a wide variety of feelings and eval...
Numerous reviews have indicated that happiness and performance do not necessarily align in the educational field. Building upon the happy-productive worker thesis (HPWT), but extending its scope, we argue that a person-centered approach may help to explain conflicting results and null findings reported in this literatu...
A. Pérez-Nebra, F. Queiroga, Núria Tordera et al.· Journal for Person-Oriented...· 0 citations
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