Can Big Five Facets Distinguish between Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being? A Dominance Analysis.

Abstract

In this study, the aim was to analyze the relative importance of Five-Factor Model (FFM) personality facets for eudaimonic or psychological well-being (PWB) and hedonic or subjective well-being (SWB) through dominance analyses. The participants were 1,403 adult residents of Spain (mean age 37.2 years, SD = 13.9). As expected, facets captured a substantial proportion of the variance in PWB and SWB, with PWB being better predicted than SWB (explaining around 36-55% of the variance of PWB vs. 25% of the variance of SWB). Some facets were common to both types of well-being such as depression (explaining between 5-33% of the variance), vulnerability (explaining between 4-21% of the variance), positive emotions (explaining between 2-9% of the variance) and achievement striving (explaining between 2-10% of the variance), whereas others made a unique contribution according to type of well-being. Certain facets had a greater relative importance for women's well-being -e.g., positive emotions explained 9% of the variance of self-acceptance for women vs. 3% for men- and others for men's well-being -e.g., achievement striving explained 9% of the variance of personal growth for men vs. 2% for women-. The present results contribute to the literature by identifying which Big Five facets showed greater relative importance in explaining and distinguishing between PWB and SWB for women and men.