Abstract:

Subjective well-being refers to the refers to the judgement individuals make about their own well-being (Diener et al, 2000). Interest in the topic has increased exponentially in recent years (see Diener et al., 2018, for a review), given its important implications in health, education or organizational fields. Thus, a high level of subjective well-being has been associated with better health and longevity (Diener et al., 2017), enhanced productivity in work and organizational contexts (Tenney et al., 2016), as well as higher achievement in education (Cardenas et al., 2022). Therefore, it is crucial to know which factors are related to subjective well-being in order to design appropriate interventions. Among the different constructs associated with subjective well-being, life satisfaction stands out, which can be defined as “People’s explicit and conscious evaluations of their lives, often based on factors that the individual deems relevant” (Diener et al., 2018). Recent studies from our laboratory show that life satisfaction is predicted by happiness valuation, with psychological inflexibility (PI) having a mediating role; that is, happiness valuation with high cognitive fusion –a dimension of PI- leads to lower life satisfaction (Valdivia-Salas et al., 2022). The present study aims to extend these results to the school field. Specifically, the purpose of the study is to determine if the school environment and PI are related to life satisfaction. For this purpose, a total of 2358 secondary school students from different Spanish cities were recruited. To assess school climate, participants were given the Classroom Environment Scale (CES; Moos & Trickett ,1973; adapted to Spanish by Fernández-Ballesteros & Sierra, 1989); to asses PI, the Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth (ARQ; Greco et al., 2008; adapted to Spanish by Valdivia-Salas et al., 2017) was used, and lastly, to assess life satisfaction, the Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985; adapted to Spanish by Atienza el al., 2000) was applied. As IP is a key construct in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and ACT is considered a promising school-based intervention (Knight and Samuel, 2022), the results are discussed in terms of their implications for intervention.

Keywords:

Subjective well-being, life satisfaction, psychological inflexibility, school environment.