title: Is happiness good for your personality? Concurrent and prospective relations of the big five with subjective well-being.
abstract: The present research examined longitudinal relations of the Big Five personality traits with three core aspects of subjective well-being: life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. Latent growth models and autoregressive models were used to analyze data from a large, nationally representative sample of 16,367 Australian residents. Concurrent and change correlations indicated that higher levels of subjective well-being were associated with higher levels of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, and with lower levels of Neuroticism. Moreover, personality traits prospectively predicted change in well-being, and well-being levels prospectively predicted personality change. Specifically, prospective trait effects indicated that individuals who were initially extraverted, agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable subsequently increased in well-being. Prospective well-being effects indicated that individuals with high initial levels of well-being subsequently became more agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable, and introverted. These findings challenge the common assumption that associations of personality traits with subjective well-being are entirely, or almost entirely, due to trait influences on well-being. They support the alternative hypothesis that personality traits and well-being aspects reciprocally influence each other over time.
authors.affiliation: Colby College.
authors.forename: Christopher J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Soto
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D001315:Australia; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D000075384:Neuroticism; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D010551:Personality; D010553:Personality Development; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult