Are the kiasu students okay? Exploring the association between kiasuism and student subjective well-being

• Main Author: Tan, Amanda Wanting
• Other Authors: Darren Yeo
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Social sciences::Psychology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/166074
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Kiasuism, which refers to the fear of losing out, has been found to manifest in many aspects of Singaporeans’ lives. Despite this, there is a lack of research regarding kiasuism and well-being. A past study by Ho et al. (1998) attempted to investigate the relationship between kiasuism and well-being, but no relationship was found. However, this could be due to kiasuism measure being only partially representative of kiasuism as a construct, and well-being being measured in a general context. Hence, the present study focused on a specific domain – in an academic context, to explore the effects of kiasuism on students’ subjective well-being. Kiasuism was separated into two dimensions (i.e., positive and negative kiasuism), and each dimension was correlated against social, psychological, and physical subjective well-being scores. Results found that positive kiasuism was significantly positively correlated with social and psychological well-being, while negative kiasuism had a significant negative association with social and psychological well-being. Conversely, both positive and negative kiasuism were unrelated to physical well-being. The significant findings, key implications, and limitations of this study are discussed in this paper. Keywords: Positive kiasuism, negative kiasuism, social well-being, psychological well-being, physical well-being