Abstract
In this person-oriented study 722 adolescents and adults filled out formal characteristics of behaviour—temperament inventory, satisfaction with life scale and positive and negative affect schedule. Using k-means clustering we assigned them to four subjective well-being (SWB) types: (1) achievers—high satisfaction, positive affective balance; (2) aspirers—low satisfaction, positive affective balance; (3) resigners—high satisfaction, negative affective balance; (4) frustrated—low satisfaction, negative affective balance; and to four temperament types denoting patterns of stimulation control (1) sanguine: high stimulation processing capacity (SPC) and high stimulation supply (StS); (2) melancholic: low SPC, low StS; (3) phlegmatic: high SPC, low StS; (4) choleric: low SPC, high StS. We compared stimulation control dimensions between SWB types and compared counts of SWB types across four profiles of temperament. SPC and StS were highest among achievers and lowest among the Frustrated, with aspirers and resigners in between. We found a clear correspondence between well-being structures and temperament types (a) the most common temperament among achievers was the sanguine, suggesting that this is the ‘happy temperament’, (b) among the Frustrated it was the melancholic (the ‘unhappy temperament’), (c) among resigners it was the choleric, suggesting that this ‘overstimulated temperament’ results in high satisfaction at the cost of lower affective balance, (d) among aspirers it was the Phlegmatic, suggesting that ‘understimulated temperament’, results in a good affective balance but lower satisfaction. Configurations of temperament dimensions within individuals affect the whole structure of SWB and can explain incongruence between cognitive and affective components of SWB.
Highlights
Happiness is a universal human goal and being happy or leading a satisfying life is important for people across the world (Diener and Diener 1996)
Using k-means clustering we assigned them to four subjective well-being (SWB) types: (1) achievers—high satisfaction, positive affective balance; (2) aspirers—low satisfaction, positive affective balance; (3) resigners—high satisfaction, negative affective balance; (4) frustrated—low satisfaction, negative affective balance; and to four temperament types denoting patterns of stimulation control (1) sanguine: high stimulation processing capacity (SPC) and high stimulation supply (StS); (2) melancholic: low SPC, low StS; (3) phlegmatic: high SPC, low StS; (4) choleric: low SPC, high StS
K-means clustering with K = 4 produced clusters corresponding to Strelau’s (2008) typology of temperament and they are labelled according to the classic hippocratic division
Summary
Happiness is a universal human goal and being happy or leading a satisfying life is important for people across the world (Diener and Diener 1996). The ‘happy personality’ (Costa and McCrae 1980) consists of low Neuroticism and high Extraversion, suggesting that it is in part biologically determined This claim, calls for additional research into the relationships between various conceptualizations of well-being, such as the subjective well-being (Diener 2000) and other stable traits, those that refer to individual differences in stimulation regulation—the ‘how’ of the behaviour and not the ‘what’ (Kandler et al 2012). These traits have been discussed in the regulative theory of temperament (Zawadzki and Strelau 1997) and the present study shows how they interact to create a ‘happy temperament’.1. We examine links between four subjective well-being types (high/low affective balance and high/low satisfaction) and four temperament types (high/low stimulation processing capacity and high/low stimulation supply)
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