mental health and SBW

Question 1

subjective wellbeing

Answer 1

• the extent to which people think and feel that their lives are going well; aka happiness
• often seen as constituted by a cognitive component and an affective component (e.g., Tov & Diener, 2013):
• – cognitive (reflective) judgement – an individual’s judgment that his or her life is going well, aka life satisfaction “If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.”
• – affective experience – positive and negative affect (emotions) individuals experience as they live their life “Indicate to what extent you have felt XXX during the past few weeks”
• many factors influence SWB, e.g.:
• Basic needs (food, safety, shelter, meaningful relationships)
• Psychological needs (competence, autonomy, freedom)
• Personality
• Age, gender, ethnicity, education, employment status, income, religiosity/spirituality…
• relevance of factors varies cross-culturally

Question 2

are some cultures happier than others?

Answer 2

Diener& Tay 2015
As a general relationship as income goes up overall current life satisfaction also goes up. (However, expectations such as costa Rica vs Syria, both have a similar income, but much different life satisfaction)
Different countries, so cultures place very differently across the scale of current life satisfaction, but as we can see this may be due to SES
South and central American+ Caribbean= low current life satisfaction. Asia score quite high, as do Europe.

Question 3

subjective wellbeing and personality

Answer 3

• • personality is an important factor in SWB (e.g., Lucas & Diener, 2009)
• This conclusion is supported by several lines of evidence:
• – SWB is moderately heritable (~ 40-50%)
• – SWB is moderately stable over time (“setpoint level of happiness”), though major life events may have large and lasting effects
• – SWB has been linked to specific personality traits
• – SWB’s correlations with personality traits tend to be much larger than correlations with demographic predictors/life circumstances

Question 4

subjective well being and the big 5

Answer 4

• averaged correlations from a large-scale meta-analysis involving over 5900 participants (Steel et al., 2008)
• Extraversion= high positive effect
• Neuroticism= low life satisfaction and high negative effect

Question 5

why is subjective wellbeing associated with personality

Answer 5

• Instrumental theories – personality indirectly affects SWB by influencing choice of situations or the experience of life events (McCrae & Costa, 1991) – E.g., extroverts may participate and enjoy social activities, which may in turn affect the amount of positive affect that they experience
• Temperament theories – there is a direct personality to SWB link (e.g., Larsen & Ketelaar, 1991) – E.g., extroverts respond with more positive emotion to signals of reward; neurotics respond with more negative affect to signals of punishment