Happy Times: an Exploration of How Australian Young Adults Define Happiness

Abstract

Happiness is an inescapable notion within everyday life and central to the human experience. With evidence that happiness decreases significantly between adolescence and adulthood, this article aims to inform further exploration of why this is so, by first understanding how young people define happiness. In this article, we present data from 29 in-depth interviews with Australian young adults (aged 26–27) in which we asked what they understand happiness to be. From their responses, we found support for a previously proposed typology of happiness. Notably, distinct temporal paradigms emerged in our sample’s definitions of happiness not yet considered within previous typologies. These temporal orientations are not only made up of three-time perspectives, past, present and future; furthermore, nuance was identified in temporal outlooks characterised as adaptable, controllable, predictable and uncertain. With early indications that these temporal orientations play a significant role in shaping happiness, this study argues that temporalities are key to understanding the decline of happiness from adolescence to adulthood.