Beyond affect, examining amor fati as a distinct and useful positive existential variable in accounting for happiness in US and India: further evidence for the pan-cultural value of loving one’s fate

The present study examined the importance of amor fati, controlling for positive and negative affectivity, in accounting for stable and unstable happiness in a sample of 225 US adults and 244 Indian adults. Results of conducting hierarchical regression analyses indicated that even after accounting for affectivity, amor fati was a significant predictor of both stable and unstable happiness in both US and Indian adults. Using dominance analysis, amor fati was identified as a robust predictor (contributed to > 33.3% of the variance) stable happiness in both US and Indian adults. However, for unstable happiness, amor fati was identified as a robust predictor in US adults, but not in Indian adults (yet, still contributed to 15.6% of the variance). Overall, these findings provide promising support for the distinctiveness and pan-cultural importance of amor fati in accounting for stable and unstable happiness across adults from different cultural backgrounds.