Hedonic vs. Eudaimonic Ways of Living on the Path to Well-Being and Psychological Distress: Turkish Validation of HEMA-R

Abstract

The Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives for Activities-Revised (HEMA-R) measures eudaimonic, hedonic, hedonic pleasure, and hedonic comfort motivations. We tested the psychometric properties of the HEMA-R among Turkish-speaking university students (N = 255) and adults (N = 460). Confirmatory factor analyses among university students demonstrated both two-factor and three-factor solutions of the HEMA-R, while confirmatory factor analyses among adults identified a three-factor solution. Internal consistencies of the HEMA-R were largely good. In both samples, eudaimonic motivation always had at least slightly more positive associations with well-being indicators compared to hedonic motivation, hedonic pleasure motivation, and hedonic comfort motivation, while having negative weak relationships in half of the analyses with ill-being indicators. Hedonic motivation mostly had weak positive associations with the majority of well-being outcomes, while having weak positive associations with several indices of ill-being. Hedonic pleasure motivation had weak positive associations with the majority of well-being indicators, and hedonic comfort motivation did not have any association with some of the well-being indicators. They predominantly had no associations with ill-being indicators. Eudaimonic and hedonic indicators of motivation both related to need satisfaction and meaning in life indicators. Implications are discussed for future research.

Keywords

• eudaimonia
• hedonia
• motivation
• orientation
• psychometric properties
• psychological distress
• well-being

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