Well-being and personality: Facet-level analyses
Introduction
During recent decades, special interest has developed in the positive rather than the negative aspects of mental health (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005). Subjective well-being (SWB) is a general area of research rather than a single construct that includes subjective positive elements in evaluating life (Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999). SWB comprises two components: one cognitive, regarding life satisfaction, or the global cognitive appraisal of one’s life as a whole (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985), and the other affective, including positive and negative affect. Feelings such as fear, anger, or despair are considered as negative affect, whereas positive affect refers to feelings such as enthusiasm, hope, or joy; they are considered as two independent factors (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). Other terms have been used for SWB, such as happiness, a more global construct, meaning an optimum state (Averill & More, 1993). In this study, happiness, life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect were selected as the main indicators of well-being, in accordance with previous studies (Diener, 1984). Research on SWB has often used these indicators synonymously. These constructs reflect different processes of well-being so this study analyzed which factors influenced each indicator.
Previous research has mainly focused on the link between SWB and personality. Costa and McCrae (1980) proposed that positive affect is most strongly correlated to Extraversion, whereas negative affect is most powerfully associated to Neuroticism. In a later study, these authors found that Openness to Experience is related to both positive and negative affect whereas Agreeableness and Conscientiousness are more strongly associated to life satisfaction and happiness (McCrae & Costa, 1991). In the meta-analyses by DeNeve and Cooper (1998) and by Steel, Schmidt, and Shultz (2008), Neuroticism was most closely related with happiness, life satisfaction and negative affect, and Extraversion with positive affect. In Spain, Chico (2006) also found that Neuroticism was a major predictor of SWB, explaining about 44% of variance. Thus, personality has different patterns of association with SWB depending on the SWB indicator used. Happiness and even life satisfaction might be closely related to personality due to their enduring character. On the other hand, if positive and negative affect are measured as a transient state, their relationship with SWB should be less pronounced (Steel et al., 2008).
Most studies on personality and SWB have used broad personality factors rather than specific factors. Facets have enough discriminant validity to predict different behaviors, independently of the general factor (Costa and McCrae, 1998, Paunonen and Ashton, 2001). Herringer (1998) found that only assertiveness and positive emotions, both facets of Extraversion, were predictors of life satisfaction. Schimmack, Oishi, Furr, and Funder (2004) found the facets depression and positive emotions, from Neuroticism and Extraversion, were the main predictors of life satisfaction. Stephan (2009) also suggested that openness to feelings and openness to ideas predicted older adults’ life satisfaction. Facet-level analysis accounts for a higher amount of variance than trait level analysis (Steel et al., 2008).
In addition, there are a large number of traits or other attitudinal measures not included into the Big Five which may influence SWB. DeNeve and Cooper (1998) in their meta-analytic review reported that self-esteem and optimism were not included because they can be used as synonyms for SWB. However, in our opinion, both can be conceptually differentiated from SWB, and each has shown less than 25% shared variance with SWB (Marrero & Carballeira, 2010).
Dispositional optimism is defined as a stable tendency to expect favorable future outcomes (Scheier & Carver, 1985) and is a significant predictor of physical and mental health (Marrero & Carballeira, 2010), partly determining coping strategies (Brissette et al., 2002, Segerstrom et al., 1998).
The contribution of self-esteem to SWB has been documented in several studies, being positively related to life satisfaction (Diener & Diener, 1995), or even a strong predictor of SWB (Schimmack & Diener, 2003). Individuals with feelings of self-worth based on personal attributes, and competencies or recognition in a social group, are more likely to be more satisfied with themselves and with their general life (Karatzias, Chouliara, Power, & Swanson, 2006).
Research suggests that social support, acting as a stress buffer, allows coping with stressful life events (Cohen & McKay, 1984), sharing fears, worries and uncertainties with others because it provides emotional expression and increases feelings of success and adjustment to stress (Sarason, Pierce, & Sarason, 1990). Some studies have analyzed the importance of social relationships in predicting SWB. Hotard, McFatter, McWhirter, and Stegall (1989) concluded that Extraversion and social relationships accounted for 33.6% of variance in SWB.
Although there is empirical evidence for the relationship between broad personality traits and SWB, the influence of the Big Five facets is not well known. We therefore investigated whether Big Five personality traits and facets, as well as optimism, self-esteem and social support, were differentially related with the four main indicators of SWB (happiness, life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect). Previous research examined the influence of facets of certain Big Five dimensions on the cognitive component or on the affective component of SWB, separately (Herringer, 1998, Schimmack et al., 2004). However, we believe it is necessary to analyze the contribution of the 30 Big Five facets on each indicator of SWB. The objectives of this study were, firstly, to determine whether the global indicators of SWB have a closer relationship with Big Five traits than the specific indicators. Given the findings of Steel et al. (2008), the second objective was to investigate whether Big Five facets explain the relationships between personality and SWB better than Big Five traits. Finally, a third objective was to determine whether other personality measures (optimism, self-esteem and social support) and Big Five facets differentially predict SWB indicators. Although these personality characteristics have shown associations with SWB (Diener and Diener, 1995, Marrero and Carballeira, 2010), their contribution to SWB together with the Big Five facets has not been examined.
Section snippets
Participants
The sample consisted of students at the University of La Laguna, Canary Islands, Spain (54.2%) and individuals recruited from their families and social environment. A total of 554 adults participated (35.6% men, 64.4% women), aged 17–66 years (M = 27.70; SD = 10.04). The majority (69%) had a partner.
Measures
The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al., 1985) was used as a cognitive measure of whole life satisfaction. A total of 5 items were answered using a 7-point scale, ranging from 1: not
Results
Correlational analysis showed that demographic variables and SWB measures were weakly related. Having a partner was related to happiness and life satisfaction. Positive affect correlated with employment, age, and gender; however, negative affect was unrelated to demographic characteristics (Table 1).
Neuroticism, Extraversion and Conscientiousness showed the highest correlations with SWB indicators, except that Extraversion did not correlate with negative affect. Agreeableness was weakly
Discussion
This study examines whether the facets of the Big Five Model and other personality characteristics not included in this model, such as optimism, self-esteem, and social support, are better predictors of SWB than Big Five broad dimensions.
Previous research has consistently shown the association of Neuroticism with negative affect and Extraversion with positive affect (Costa and McCrae, 1980, DeNeve and Cooper, 1998), also confirmed in the present study. In addition, we found that Neuroticism was
References (40)
- et al.
Big five correlates of three measures of subjective well-being
Personality and Individual Differences
(2003) Facets of Extraversion related to life satisfaction
Personality and Individual Differences
(1998)- et al.
Personality moderates the interaction between positive and negative daily events predicting negative affect and stress
Journal of Research in Personality
(2009) - et al.
Predictive validity of explicit and implicit self-esteem for subjective well-being
Journal of Research in Personality
(2003) Openness to experience and active older adults’ life satisfaction: A trait and facet-level analysis
Personality and Individual Differences
(2009)- et al.
Happiness
- et al.
The role of optimism in social network development, coping, and psychological adjustment during a life transition
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
(2002) - et al.
On the self-regulation of behavior
(1998) Optimism-Pessimism and stress appraisal: Testing a cognitive interactive model of psychological adjustment in adults
Cognitive Therapy and Research.
(2002)Personality dimensions and subjective well-being
The Spanish Journal of Psychology
(2006)
Social support, stress, and the buffering hypothesis: a theoretical analysis
Influence of Extraversion and Neuroticism on subjective well-being: Happy and unhappy people
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory professional manual
Six approaches to the explication of facet-level traits: examples from conscientiousness
European Journal of Personality
Inventario de Personalidad Neo Revisado (NEO PI-R) e Inventario Neo Reducido de Cinco Factores (NEO-FFI)
The happy personality: A meta-analysis of 137 personality traits and subjective well-being
Psychological Bulletin
Subjective well-being
Psychological Bulletin
Cross-cultural correlates of life satisfaction and self-esteem
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
The Satisfaction with Life Scale
Journal of Personality Assessment
Very happy people
Psychological Science
Cited by (75)
Modeling the hierarchy of teacher personality: The predictive power of domains and incremental facets for teacher job-related outcomes
2024, Personality and Individual DifferencesAssociation of personality facets and cognition in the Lifelines population-based cohort study
2023, Journal of Psychiatric ResearchInside the happy personality: Personality states, situation experience, and state affect mediate the relation between personality and affect
2020, Journal of Research in PersonalityCitation Excerpt :Previous studies that did not consider personality states mostly used longer scales. We might thus have used an operationalization of extraversion that was not as strongly related to positive affect as other measures (Howell et al., 2017; Margolis, Stapley, & Lyubomirsky, 2019; Marrero Quevedo & Carballeira Abella, 2011). Overall, our results do not directly contradict previous findings but rather add new aspects to this field of research and point out questions to be investigated by future research.
Personality predicts words in favorite songs
2019, Journal of Research in PersonalityBig Five and psychological and subjective well-being in Colombian older adults
2019, Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics