Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives Toward University Studies: How They Relate to Each Other and to Well-Being Derived from School

Abstract

Eudaimonic motives (seeking growth, authenticity, excellence, meaning), hedonic enjoymentmotives (seeking pleasure, fun), and hedonic comfort motives (seeking relaxation, ease) are majorways people pursue well-being. These motives have been primarily studied at the global level andhedonic enjoyment and hedonic comfort motives are often combined. To date, no studies haveexamined these well-being motives for the academic context. The aim of this research was toexamine the factor structure of the Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives for Activities scale (HEMA;Huta & Ryan, 2010) in the academic context, the intercorrelations between these motives in thiscontext, and the relationship between these motives and well-being derived from academicstudies. In a sample of undergraduate students (n = 405) principal components analysis andconfirmatory factor analysis of the HEMA showed that a three-factor model was a better fit thana two-factor model in the academic context. The correlations between hedonic enjoyment motivesand hedonic comfort motives were also not too large, suggesting that they are different conceptsin the academic context. Consistently, both eudaimonic and hedonic enjoyment motivespositively related to well-being experiences measured, whereas hedonic comfort motives did not.Eudaimonic motives also had significantly stronger relationships with experiences of schoolsatisfaction, meaning, elevation, self-connectedness, and interest at school compared to hedonicenjoyment motives. These studies indicate that it is important to distinguish between eudaimonic,hedonic enjoyment, and hedonic comfort motives in the academic context and that they havedifferent relationships to well-being derived from school.