What’s the relationship between personality and life satisfaction? We took a stab at figuring it out!
We conducted a study of 999 people in the United States; recruited through our study platform at Positly.com. We looked for a correlation between 18 different personality traits (each trait being assessed with two questions) and life satisfaction. We examined the association each trait had with scores on the Satisfaction With Life Scale (a 5 question scale by Diener, Emmons, Larsen, Griffin). There are, of course, many personality traits beyond the 18 we measured!
We found that 8 of the 18 personality traits were strongly associated with life satisfaction, in the sense that the relationship held in the same direction whether measured:
(1) as simple correlations between each individual trait and life satisfaction
(2) controlling for all the other personality traits as well as income, age, gender and education (using linear regression), or
(3) controlling only for the other personality traits most strongly associated with life satisfaction (again using linear regression).
We also found a 9th personality trait with a slightly weaker association to life satisfaction; it was statistically significant, at p=0.05, using two of the three methods mentioned above.
The personality traits we found to be most closely associated with life satisfaction are listed below (ordered roughly by strength of association).
While reviewing the results, please keep a few things in mind:
A. The personality traits were reworded (to have the reverse meaning) in cases where there was a negative correlation to life satisfaction, so that all associations are positive.
B. Also, the exact cause of association is somewhat ambiguous so, for each trait, I cited three different speculative theories on why the relationship to life satisfaction may exist. For example, an association between X (e.g. a personality trait) and Y (e.g. life satisfaction) doesn’t necessarily mean that X causes Y (see this for all the meanings a correlation can have).
In the case of any particular association, it could be that:
- (a) the trait CAUSED greater life satisfaction (i.e. X->Y)
- (b) the trait is CAUSED BY greater life satisfaction (i.e. Y->X)
- (c) some other variable or variables increase the value of the trait and SEPARATELY cause greater life satisfaction. In other words, mutual exclusivity (i.e. Z->X and Z->Y).
The 9 personality traits together (in a linear regression without any other variables) explain about 23% of the variance in life satisfaction (i.e. adjusted R^2 = 0.23). Of course, we only studied 18 personality traits in this study, there are many others that exist that we did not investigate in this work.
Personality Traits Most Positively Associated with Life Satisfaction
1. At Ease – Seldom experiencing fear / Seldom worrying
Perhaps because…
- (a) High levels of anxiety cause people to feel unsatisfied with life.
- (b) People become anxious about the fact that they are unsatisfied with life (for instance, worrying because they feel like they “should” feel satisfied and that something must be wrong with them because they don’t)
- (c) Tough life situations (e.g. divorce or job loss) cause both lower life satisfaction and higher anxiety (separately).
Note: Many people learn to reduce their fear and worry. For instance, they may use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (including Exposure Therapy for specific fears) or Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. I think it’s likely this really does improve life satisfaction for people who don’t naturally feel “At Ease”. If you feel a lot of anxiety, fear, stress, or worry in your life, I recommend trying out our app Mind Ease.
2. Self-Valuing – Feeling of superiority / Feeling equal to others
Perhaps because…
- (a) Feeling inferior to others makes people feel bad about themselves which makes them feel unsatisfied with their lives.
- (b) Being unsatisfied with life causes people to feel inferior to others (e.g. due to blaming themselves for their unsatisfying situation).
- (c) Some commonly occurring bad life events (e.g. being harshly rejected or being put down a lot by family members) cause people both to become unsatisfied with life and to feel inferior to others.
Note: Some people learn not to view themselves as inferior to others by challenging their feelings of inferiority (e.g. using Cognitive Therapy techniques) or learning self-compassion (some have benefited from related literature like “Self-compassion” by Kristin Neff). I expect that for someone low on the trait of Self Valuing, learning to view yourself as equal to others may improve life satisfaction.
3. Warm – Laughing aloud / Expressing happy feelings
Perhaps because…
- (a) Being warm causes others to be drawn to us, this closeness improves life satisfaction.
- (b) Being satisfied with life causes people to feel more relaxed around others, which causes them to openly share positive emotions.
- (c) Having emotionally supportive caregivers growing up causes people to be both more comfortable showing their positive feelings, and more satisfied with life.
Note: People can get better at expressing their positive feelings (e.g. I have!), for instance by consciously channeling positivity when greeting people, consciously smiling when feeling happy (if it doesn’t happen automatically, which it doesn’t for some people), verbally expressing that something has made you feel good, etc. I suspect that for those low on the Warm trait these efforts might cause at least a minor boost to life satisfaction.
Personality Traits A Bit Positively Associated with Life Satisfaction
4. Unselfish – Putting others before oneself
Perhaps because…
- Being unselfish leads to better interpersonal relationships which makes people more satisfied with life.
- Being more satisfied with your life means you have less need to focus on yourself, hence, increased focus on others.
- When bad interpersonal experiences teach people that they shouldn’t trust others, they become less satisfied with life (due to worse social relationships) and become more selfish (because they don’t expect others to be unselfish toward them).
5. Forgiving – Not wanting or seeking revenge
Perhaps because…
- Harboring anger and dwelling on wrongs makes you feel bad about your life.
- Being more satisfied with your life makes it easier to minimize or forget about ways you were wronged by others.
- Growing up around forgiving people makes you both more satisfied with life as an adult and more forgiving of others.
6. Improvisational – Being adaptable or quick on your feet
Perhaps because…
- Being adaptable is often useful in the workplace, leading to increased effectiveness and work satisfaction; this leads to increased life satisfaction.
- When you are unsatisfied with life, that unhappiness causes a cognitive burden that makes it harder to be improvisational
- Negative thinking makes them less satisfied with life, and it also separately makes it harder for them to be think quickly on their feet because it’s distracting.
7. Self-Defending – Not being overly self-critical when things go wrong
Perhaps because…
- Blaming yourself for a lot of things may cause you to become unhappy about your life.
- Having a life that makes you feel satisfied may give you greater self-esteem (if you attribute that good life to your own character), which could prevent you from blaming yourself for problems.
- Being the sort of person that very rarely upsets other people could cause you to be both more satisfied with life (due to better social relationships) and less likely to attribute negative incidents to your own character.
8. Normal – Acting in a socially acceptable way
Perhaps because…
- Behaving normally may allow people to fit in better with their social groups; making them more satisfied with life.
- Being increasingly unsatisfied with life may cause people to engage in increasingly abnormal seeming behavior.
- Being a social outcast may cause people to be both less satisfied with life and less likely to care about their behaviors conforming to what others view as normal.
Personality Trait Possibly Associated with Life Satisfaction
(this final trait was not as consistently associated with life satisfaction as those above)
- Unfeeling – being indifferent to the feelings of others
Perhaps because…
- Feeling too intensely when others suffer causes one to suffer; leading to lower life satisfaction.
- Being more satisfied with life makes people feel less need for maintaining existing social relationships causing indifference to the feelings of others
- People with a more positive disposition feel less negative emotions (causing more satisfaction with life) and less negative emotion in response to other people’s feelings (hence greater indifference).This fairly weak association could easily be a statistical fluke.
Note that there is some subjectivity in the rank order above because the strength order varied somewhat based on which method was used to measure the associations, and because there is a limit to the precision with which the associations can be measured using our data (which, naturally, depends on the sample size).
Also, since each personality trait was measured using only two questions (and, as a result, each trait was measured only superficially for each person), one might assume that these results fail to capture the true extent of the correlations. On the other hand, since we tested 18 traits and selected the strongest, a regression to the mean effect will be working in the opposite direction to some extent.
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