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Personality, Culture, and Subjective Well-Being : Emotional and Cognitive Evaluations of Life.

Personality, Culture, and Subjective Well-Being : Emotional and Cognitive Evaluations of Life. Diener. Oishi and Lucas (2003). Subjective Well-Being (SWB). Definition:

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Personality, Culture, and Subjective Well-Being : Emotional and Cognitive Evaluations of Life.

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  1. Personality, Culture, and Subjective Well-Being: Emotional and Cognitive Evaluations of Life. Diener. Oishi and Lucas (2003)

  2. Subjective Well-Being (SWB) • Definition: • “People’s emotional and cognitive evaluations of their lives, includes…happiness, peace, fulfillment and life satisfaction” (Diener, Oishi and Lucas, 2003).

  3. History of Research on SWB • Influences from: • Sociologists and Quality of Life Researchers • Mental Health • Personality Psychologists • Social and cognitive psychologists

  4. History Continued • Theories that have contributed to SWB: • Humanistic Psychology • Temperament, adaptation to conditions, goal striving  all influence levels of SWB

  5. History Continued • Measurement of SWB: • Broad survey measures • Experience Sampling • Informant reports • Life satisfaction surveys • Measurement of satisfaction and fulfillment in various life domains.

  6. Why is SWB important? • It is the measure of the QOL of both an individual and societies. • “Positive SWB…necessary for the good life…but not sufficient for it” (Diener, Oishi and Lucas, 2003).

  7. Factors influencing SWB • MANY! • This article focuses on two: • Personalityand Culture

  8. Early work on SWB • Focussed on EXTERNAL factors • However, these only contribute to a small amount of the variance in well-being measures. • Research has shown that SWB if fairly STABLE over time, and is often strongly correlated with personality traits (which are considered by many stable entities).

  9. Personality and SWB • Much work so far has focussed on the traits of Extraversion and Neuroticism. • This data is mostly very consistent. • Extraversion is found to correlate with pleasant affect and Neuroticism with negative affect. • There are also a number of broad dimensions and narrower traits that have shown correlations with SWB constructs.

  10. Careful of causality! • Should take care when determining the direction of causality from correlations. • Not necessarily personality causing SWB effects.

  11. Personality theories of SWB • Researchers must develop theories that can explain why certain individuals are chronically happier and more satisfied with their lives.

  12. Temperament Theories • Temperament theories on personality and SWB have focussed primarily on three aspects of individual differences in well being: • baseline levels of affective and cognitive well being • emotional reactivity • cognitive processing of emotional information

  13. Interaction of Personality and Life Events • Findings that different events and life circumstances affect well-being differently depending on one’s personality. • However, some research is not consistent with this.

  14. Culture and SWB • Differences in mean levels of SWB between nations.

  15. Causes of Societal Mean-level Differences in SWB • Likely due to a number of factors. • Correlation between wealth of nations and their mean levels of SWB. • Differences between developed and developing countries in the effect size of income on SWB.

  16. Other causes • Cultural differences in: • Self-enhancement • Approach vs Avoidance orientation

  17. Tradeoffs between SWB and Other Values • People are sometimes willing to sacrifice immediate happiness for the sake of achieving other goals that are valued in their culture. • People in various societies differentially value happiness.

  18. Measurement Validity • Researchers must be careful in their choice in measures across cultures. • Measures in Western countries may not be valid in non-Western countries.

  19. Are the correlates of satisfied people the same across cultures? • SWB correlated with self-satisfaction and self freedom more in Individualistic Western Nations as oppose to Collectivist Nations. • SWB correlated with financial satisfaction more in poorer nations than wealthier ones. • No difference across cultures in correlations between SWB and friends/family.

  20. Universal vs Variable causes of SWB • Are there human universals for happiness or do causes vary with culture?

  21. Heterogeneity of Cultural Effects • There is variation of SWB within every culture.

  22. Conclusion • Substantial individual differences in SWB • Mean-level differences of SWB across cultures. • Some universal factors for SWB but also differences in goals and values between individuals and across cultures. • Diener, Oishi, and Lucas (2003) conclude by saying that: “people all over the world most want to be happy by achieving the things they value”

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