May 3, 2024

Personality and Life Satisfaction: New Research Identifies a Strong Connection

The study also found that personality characteristics effect life, social, and work fulfillment, with conscientiousness for work fulfillment and extraversion and agreeableness for social complete satisfaction. Boosts in these traits result in increased total satisfaction.
According to the study, certain characteristics are connected to life fulfillment no matter age.
Recent research released by the American Psychological Association discovered that particular personality characteristics are linked to life complete satisfaction and remain steady no matter age or modifications in social functions and duties over the course of adulthood.
Extraverted– that is sociable, talkative– people might be particularly pleased in young adulthood, when they generally are forming new social relationships,” said study co-author Gabriel Olaru, Ph.D., an assistant teacher at Tilburg University. “We therefore desired to examine if some personality traits are more or less relevant to life, social, and work fulfillment in specific life stages.”
The research was released in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

To determine how the relationship between character qualities and life complete satisfaction changes over time, researchers analyzed data gathered from 2008 to 2019 by the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel survey, a nationally representative study of families in the Netherlands. Over 11 years, 9,110 Dutch participants varying from 16 to 95 years of ages at the time of the first study answered several questionnaires to evaluate their Big Five personality traits– openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability/neuroticism– and their fulfillment with their social connections and their life overall. Just the 5,928 individuals who were employed at the time of the survey also answered concerns about their complete satisfaction with their work lives.
The scientists found that the majority of the relationships in between character characteristics and fulfillment stayed the very same across the adult life expectancy and that emotional stability was the quality most strongly associated with individualss satisfaction with their life, social connections, and career.
” Our findings reveal that– in spite of differences in life obstacles and social roles– personality type are appropriate for our complete satisfaction with life, work, and social contacts across young, middle, and older adulthood,” said Manon van Scheppingen, Ph.D., an assistant teacher at Tilburg University and another co-author on the study. “The characteristic stayed similarly relevant throughout the adult life expectancy, or became even more interconnected sometimes for work satisfaction.”
The researchers also found that various characteristic were associated with individualss complete satisfaction with their social lives and careers– most especially conscientiousness for work fulfillment, and extraversion and agreeableness for social satisfaction. Individuals who saw boosts in these characteristics across time also reported increases in their life, social and work satisfaction.
Individualss fulfillment with their work was the most impacted by differences in age. As participants in the research study aged, the relationship in between profession fulfillment and emotional stability grew moderately stronger.
In spite of a weaker correlation between openness and life fulfillment in general, the researchers found that people who increased in openness likewise increased in life complete satisfaction throughout the 11 years determined by the LISS survey. This relationship may be described by indirect processes, according to the scientists.
” Emotional stability most likely programs a strong link with worldwide and domain-specific satisfaction due to the fact that this quality colors individualss basic view of the world,” Olaru said.
” A fine example of how character engages with the environment can be found in the work context. Among our findings was that the link between emotional stability and work satisfaction increases throughout ages. This may be discussed by the truth that mentally stable people are less frightened to quit unacceptable tasks and most likely to use for tasks that are more challenging and maybe more satisfying and pleasurable in the long run,” van Scheppingen added.
Future research studies should take a look at how variables that change with age, such as earnings, employment status, marital status, and health, impact the relationship in between personality characteristics and total complete satisfaction with life, according to the scientists.
” While we did not analyze what triggered these modifications, [the research] shows that our personalities and our joy are not set in stone,” van Scheppingen said. “Perhaps we may even be able to influence how we alter: If we try to end up being more arranged, outgoing, friendly, this might increase life, social or work fulfillment too.”
Recommendation: “The Link Between Personality, Global, and Domain-Specific Satisfaction Across the Adult Lifespan” by Gabriel Olaru, Manon A. van Scheppingen, Wiebke Bleidorn and Jaap J. A. Denissen, 2023, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.DOI: 10.1037/ pspp0000461.

“We thus desired to take a look at if some personality qualities are more or less relevant to life, social, and work fulfillment in particular life phases.”
To determine how the relationship in between personality qualities and life fulfillment changes over time, scientists examined data gathered from 2008 to 2019 by the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel study, a nationally representative survey of homes in the Netherlands. Over 11 years, 9,110 Dutch individuals ranging from 16 to 95 years old at the time of the very first survey responded to numerous questionnaires to evaluate their Big Five personality qualities– openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and psychological stability/neuroticism– and their complete satisfaction with their social connections and their life in general. Just the 5,928 individuals who were employed at the time of the study likewise addressed concerns about their satisfaction with their work lives.
“Perhaps we might even be able to affect how we alter: If we try to end up being more arranged, outgoing, friendly, this might increase life, social or work complete satisfaction as well.”