1. Personality and Life Satisfaction
Geri McLeod PhD
Christchurch Health and Development Study, University of Otago, Christchurch
4 June 2014

2. Outline What is life satisfaction?
Who measures life satisfaction and why?
How is life satisfaction measured?
Bottom-up and top-down approaches to exploring life satisfaction
Copy of life satisfaction questionnaire
Introduce myself
Get students to have a think about their life satisfaction and what may influence it?
Two schools of thought. Top down and bottom up

3. Question
‘‘All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?’’
1 (Dissatisfied) to 10 (Satisfied) (Bray 2006)
This is a well-established measure that is widely used in
global (e.g. World Values Survey [38]), European (e.g.
European Social Survey [37]); and UK (e.g. British Social
Attitudes Survey [28]) population surveys.

4. Question
‘‘All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?’’
1 (Dissatisfied) to 10 (Satisfied) (eg. Bray 2006)
How did you evaluate your life satisfaction?
This is a well-established measure that is widely used in
global (e.g. World Values Survey [38]), European (e.g.
European Social Survey [37]); and UK (e.g. British Social
Attitudes Survey [28]) population surveys.

5. How did you evaluate your life satisfaction? Do you…
Ascertain your general mood?
Think about how happy you have been feeling lately?
Think about how many life goals you have achieved?
Think about other people’s feedback about your life?
Focus on one particular domain on which to evaluate your life satisfaction?

6. Dr Happiness
Ed Deiner (aka Dr Happiness) is a well-known researcher in “positive psychology”
Deiner believes that subjective well-being is composed of:
1) imperfect assessment of the balance of positive and negative affect in one’s life, and
2) assessment of how well one’s life measures up to aspirations and goals
Diener’s research has led him to claim that there are three major components to SWB: positive affect (pleasurable feelings), negative affect (painful feelings), and life satisfaction, which is composed of 1) imperfect assessment of balance of positive and negative affect in one’s life, and 2) assessment of how well one’s life measures up to aspirations and goals. Using these components, Diener has found that SWB has “construct validity-“ that is, it actually measures something real in the human psyche. This is so because the measures given for SWB seem to be pretty constant over time, they are highly correlated with certain personality traits and other people’s reports, and they have the ability to predict future outcomes.

7. Diagram of subjective well-being
Affective well-being
Presence of pleasant affect
Absence of negative affect
Evaluated life satisfaction

8. Who measures life satisfaction and why?
Dr Happiness states “While happiness and life satisfaction are not synonymous, understanding factors relating to life satisfaction is crucial to understanding what makes individuals happy.”
Since 2006 politicians have become interested in measuring the happiness of their citizens.

10. Who measures life satisfaction and why?
In July 2011 the UN General Assembly passed a historic resolution…it invited member countries to measure the happiness of their people and to use this to help guide their public policies.
Two World Happiness Reports have now been published (

11. Higher life satisfaction and subjective well-being
Is related to:
Reduced cardiovascular mortality
fewer sleep complaints
Lower job turnover
Better job performance
Less burnout (Erdogan 2012) ….

12. How did you evaluate your life satisfaction?
Can anyone point out any potential problems with measuring life satisfaction?

13. How did you evaluate your life satisfaction?
Can anyone point out any potential problems with measuring life satisfaction?
Unscientific
Subjective
Vague

14. How is life satisfaction measured?
The OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) has now published guidelines regarding collecting life satisfaction data (
Emphasizes a SINGLE primary measure (life satisfaction) intended to be collected consistently across countries

15. Some quick facts… According to OECD information:
Switzerland has the highest average life satisfaction score of 7.8/10
Greece has the lowest average life satisfaction score of 4.7/10
New Zealand has a score of 7.3/10

16. Personality and life satisfaction
Dr Happiness argued for the genetic basis of positive affect in humans
In general we are programmed to be happy (individual personality influences)
But he also argued that most life events (positive and negative) only change our happiness briefly as we are able to revert back to our “set level” of happiness (hedonic adaptation).

17. Theoretical linkages
Linkages between personality, life events and subjective well-being (both affective well-being and cognitive well-being) have focussed on:
the bottom-up approach
the top-down approach

18. Bottom-up approach
Life satisfaction is shaped by current contentment in multiple domains

19. Adaption Luhmann, Eid, Hofmann, & Lucas (2012).
Meta-analysed subjective well-being (both affective and cognitive) and adaption to life events
A meta-analyis is a method of combining results from a group of studies
Luhmann combined data from 188 studies of life events: marriage, divorce, bereavement, childbirth, unemployment, reemployment, retirement, relocation/migration

20. Adaption Overall Luhmann et al., 2012 found that:
The desirability of the life event was not a good predictor of subjective well-being.
Desirability of the life event is individual-specific. Eg, some people may be happy to get a divorce, while others may not
Speed of adaption may not be influenced by the desirability of the event.

21. Selected results for life satisfaction
Marriage: Before ↑ ; Reaction ↑; After ↓
Before the event life satisfaction was higher than usual; after the event adaption brings life satisfaction back to pre-marital levels.
Childbirth: Reaction ↑; After ↓
Parental life satisfaction decrease; however affective well-being in daily life compensates for this.
Unemployment: Reaction ↓; After ↓
Because of the extremely negative reaction and only slow and small adaption, pre-event life satisfaction levels are not reached for about 3 years!

22. Top-down approach
Views life satisfaction as a function of stable individual-level traits.
e.g. personality traits.
Some people have a propensity to feel more satisfied with their lives

23. Top-down cont.
For example, Steel, Schmidt, and Shultz (2008) meta-analysed 249 studies, and showed that the “Big Five” personality traits predicted 18% of the variance in life satisfaction.
Most related = neuroticism (-.38)
Moderately related = agreeableness (.14), extraversion (.28), conscientiousness (.22)
Least related = openness (.03)

24. Summary and conclusions
Many nations have started to measure their citizens’ happiness.
Happiness is usually measured as an individual’s subjective cognitive evaluation of their life.
There is evidence that:
Life events may influence life satisfaction (bottom-up approach). Research has show that people adapt to life events.
Personality may influence life satisfaction (top-down approach). Research has shown that personality accounts for about 18% of the variation in life satisfaction.

25. References
Bray, I., & Gunnell, D. (2006). Suicide rates, life satisfaction and happiness as markers for population mental health. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 41(5),
Erdogan, B., Bauer, T. N., Truxillo, D. M., & Mansfield, L. R. (2012). Whistle While You Work: A Review of the Life Satisfaction Literature. Journal of Management, 38,
Luhmann, M., Eid, M., Hofmann, W., & Lucan, R. E. (2012). Subjective well-being and adaption to life events: A meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(3),
Steel, P., Schmidt, J., & Shultz, J. (2008). Refining the relationship between personality and subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 134(1),