Confluence of Triguna and PERMA Model: An Empirical Validation

Abstract

Indigenous Vedic perspective of Triguna delineates the tri-dimensional classification of personality (sattvika, rajasika, and tamasika), whereas Seligman’s PERMA model describes that flourishing emerges from five components of wellbeing: positive emotion (P), engagement (E), relationships (R), meaning (M) and accomplishment (A). The present study aims to examine the relationship between Triguna (i.e. sattvika, rajasika, and tamasika) and five components of PERMA model. Vedic Personality Inventory and the PERMA Profiler were administrated on 60 participants (males=30, females=30) aged 18-45 years. The findings indicated that sattvika was positively correlated with all the five components of PERMA, whereas rajasika was negatively correlated with positive emotion, relationships, meaning and accomplishment components and tamasika was negatively correlated with all five PERMA components. The stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that sattvika positively explained 45% variance in positive emotion, 20% in relationships, 11% in meaning and 26% in accomplishment. The tamasika negatively accounted for 6% variance in positive emotion and 31% in meaning.