Motivation and emotion/Book/2024/Life satisfaction and personality

Life satisfaction and personality:
What is the relationship between personality and life satisfaction?

Overview

Case study: Mark and John Mark and John have been best friends and colleagues at their job for 15 years, both men are married, have two children, see their friends and family regularly, and exercise multiple times a week. When described by others, Mark and John are both friendly, agreeable men, although John is often the quieter of the two. Recently, however, Mark has never been happier with how his life is progressing, yet John feels dissatisfied and stuck in a never-ending cycle.

Welcome to the complex world of life satisfaction! Where two individuals living seemingly identical lives can have vastly different levels of life satisfaction.

According to the American Psychological Association (2018) life satisfaction is the extent to which a person finds life rich, meaningful, full, or of high quality. Life satisfaction is often measured subjectively through self-report questionnaires ranging in length from single-item to multiple-item measures (Jovanović & Lazić, 2018).

This book chapter explores whether there is a relationship between an individual's personality, and whether this can predict or explain how satisfied they will be with their life. The chapter will also address the following key questions:

• What is life satisfaction?
• What factors influence life satisfaction?
• What are some prominent theories of personality?
• Is there a relationship between personality and life satisfaction?

Introduction to life satisfaction

What is life satisfaction?

Figure 1. A happy child, appearing satisfied with their life.

Life satisfaction can having differing definitions, in positive psychology research it is often intertwined with the concepts of happiness and well-being (Figure 1) (Klement, 2022). For a deeper understanding, see the book chapter on positive psychology. A common definition of life satisfaction adopted in research is, the overall appreciation of one's life as a whole. (Sameer et al. 2023).

Add information around the development of the concept of life satisfaction

How can life satisfaction be measured?

The most widely used measure of life satisfaction is the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) which was primarily developed to assess the subjective well-being of adults in the USA, an individualistic culture (Areepattamannil & Bano, 2020). While the majority of research utilising the SWLS has focused on individualistic cultures demonstrating strong reliability, more recent research in India has demonstrated this scale can be appropriately applied to collectivist cultures too (Areepattamannil & Bano, 2020).

If we are able to reliably measure well-being indicators, such as life satisfaction, it can allow governments and intergovernmental organisations (i.e., World Health Organisation and the United Nations) to make more appropriate policy decisions that may enhance psychosocial well-being, health behaviours, and physical health outcomes, contributing to greater life satisfaction levels (Kim et al. 2021).

Contributors to life satisfaction

The following contributors to life satisfaction will be considered and discussed (order may change, each point will be expanded upon later) -

Theories of personality

Like many psychological concepts personality does not have one standard definition, however, for this chapter we will adopt the following definition. An individual's personality is the ensuring set of traits and styles that they exhibit, which characteristics represent dispositions and the ways in which this person differs from the 'standard normal person' in their society (Bergner 2020).

The majority of research investigating the relationship between personality and life satisfaction has focused on the Big Five personality traits, specifically, the traits of extraversion and neuroticism (Müller, 2014; Schimmack, 2002)

Big-Five Personality Dimensions

The following questions will be expanded upon and linked to the next section

• What are the Big-Five personality dimensions?

• What is the history of this theory?

Relationship between personality and life satisfaction

• How can Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism explain and or predict life satisfaction
• How can scales that measure the Big Five helped to explain and or predict life satisfaction (i.e., NEO-PI-R)

Review Questions

Test yourself! 1. Which of the following is not a recognised contributor to life satisfaction? Family Career Donut consumption Personality

Conclusion

Wrap up chapter, conclude that personality can be used to predict life satisfaction especially the traits of extraversion and neuroticism among with other key points

See also

• Positive Psychology (Book Chapter, 2023)
• Big Five personality traits (Wikipedia)

References

American Psychological Association. (2018, April 19). Life satisfaction.  https://dictionary.apa.org/life-satisfaction

Areepattamannil, S., & Bano, S. (2020). Psychometric properties of the satisfaction with life scale (SWLS) among middle adolescents in a collectivist cultural setting. Psychological Studies, 65, 497-503. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-020-00578-4

Bergner, R. M. (2020). What is personality? Two myths and a definition. New Ideas in Psychology, 57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2019.100759

Jovanović, V., & Lazić, M. (2020). Is longer always better? A comparison of the validity of single-item versus multiple-item measures of life satisfaction. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 15(3), 675–692. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-018-9680-6

Kim, E. S., Delaney, S. W., Tay, L., Chen, Y., Diener, E., & Vanderweele, T. J. (2021). Life satisfaction and subsequent physical, behavioural, and psychosocial health in older adults. The Milbank Quarterly, 99(1), 209-239. doi: 10.1111/1468-0009.12497

Klement, J. (2022). Life satisfaction and economic growth in the context of societal and ecological transformation processes [Dissertation, Schumpeter School of Business and Economics]. https://d-nb.info/1297789598/34

Krys, K., Haas, B. W., Igou, E. R., Kosiarczyk, A., Kocimska-Bortnowska, A., Kwiatkowska, A., Lun, V. M.-C., Maricchiolo, F., Park, J., Šolcová, I. P., Sirlopú, D., Uchida, Y., Vauclair, C.-M., Vignoles, V. L., Zelenski, J. M., Adamovic, M., Akotia, C. S., Albert, I., Appoh, L., . . . Bond, M. H. (2023). Introduction to a culturally sensitive measure of well-being: Combining life satisfaction and interdependent happiness across 49 different cultures. Journal of Happiness Studies: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Subjective Well-Being, 24(2), 607–627. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-022-00588-1

Müller, M-L. (2014). The development of life satisfaction: Does personality matter? A five year longitudinal study [Master thesis, University of Twente]. https://essay.utwente.nl/64907/

Sameer, Y., Eid, Y., & Veenhoven, R. (2023). Perceived meaning of life and satisfaction with life: A research synthesis using an online finding archive. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.957235

Schimmack, U., Radhakrishnan, P., Oishi, S., & Dzokoto, V. A. (2002). Culture, personality, and subjective well-being: Integrating process models of life satisfaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(4), 582-593. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.82.4.582

Yin, R., Lepinteur, A., Clark, A. E., & D’Ambrosio, C. (2021). Life satisfaction and the human development index across the world. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 54(2), 269-282. https://doi.org/10.1177/00220221211044784

External Links

• Personality and life satisfaction across adulthood (American Psychological Association)
• How a sense of oneness can lead to greater life satisfaction (American Psychological Association)