PERSONAL PROJECTS, HAPPINESS, AND MEANING - ON DOING WELL AND BEING YOURSELF

Personal Projects Analysis (B. R. Little, 1983) was adapted to examine relations between participants' appraisals of their goal characterist ics and orthogonal happiness and meaning factors that emerged from fac tor analyses of diverse well-being measures. In two studies with 146 a nd 179 university students, goal efficacy was associated with happines s and goal integrity was associated with meaning. A new technique for classifying participants according to emergent identity themes is intr oduced. In both studies, identity-compensatory predictors of happiness were apparent. Agentic participants were happiest if their goals were supported by others, communal participants were happiest if their goa ls were fun, and hedonistic participants were happiest if their goals were being accomplished. The distinction between happiness and meaning is emphasized, and the tension between efficacy and integrity is disc ussed. Developmental implications are discussed with reference. to res ults from archival data from a sample of senior managers.