Abstract
Personality traits have been directly associated with happiness. One consistent finding is a strong link between extraversion and happiness: extraverts are happier than introverts. Although happy introverts exist, it is currently unclear under what conditions they can achieve happiness. The present study analyzes, generally, how the quality of social relationships and emotion regulation ability influence happiness and, specifically, how these factors can lead introverts to be happy. In the present study, 1,006 participants aged 18–80 (42% males) completed measures of extraversion, neuroticism, quality of social relationships, emotion regulation ability, and happiness. We found that extraverts had significantly higher happiness, quality of social relationships and emotion regulation ability scores than introverts. In addition, people with high quality social relationships or high emotion regulation ability were happier. Serial mediation analyses indicated that greater levels of extraversion were associated with greater happiness, with small effect size, via two indirect mechanisms: (a) higher quality of social relationships, and (b) higher quality of social relationships followed serially by higher emotion regulation ability. We also found a moderating effect due to the three-way interaction of extraversion, quality of social relationships, and emotion regulation ability: introverts were happier when they had high scores for these two variables, though the effect size was small. These results suggest that the quality of social relationships and emotion regulation ability are relevant to our understanding of complex associations between extraversion and happiness.
Highlights
Personality is one of the personal factors that most influences happiness, as Aristotle first pointed out 2,300 years ago and as scientific studies of the 21st century confirm (Diener & Seligman, 2002)
We found positive correlations between happiness on one hand, and extraversion, quality of social relationships, and emotion regulation ability on the other
Whereas previous work focused on how social relationships or higher emotion regulation ability on their own affect the association between extraversion and happiness, we examine these factors in conjunction and provide the first evidence that they may simultaneously influence happiness
Summary
Personality is one of the personal factors that most influences happiness, as Aristotle (trans. 1984) first pointed out 2,300 years ago and as scientific studies of the 21st century confirm (Diener & Seligman, 2002). The present study takes a closer look at this question by analyzing how quality of social relationships and emotion regulation ability may positively affect the happiness of introverts, especially in large community-based samples. We apply in the present work a broad conceptualization of happiness including both affective and cognitive components based on Lyubomirsky’s approach (Lyubomirsky, King & Diener, 2005; Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999). This perspective attempts to identify people who are global and chronically happy (or unhappy) by directly asking them about their general subjective happiness. Studies have found positive correlations of subjective happiness with life satisfaction and with positive and negative affect, with coefficients ranging from 0.52 to 0.72 (e.g., Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999), the correlations are not large enough to justify completely overlaying these concepts
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