Explaining Life Satisfaction Research Articles

Dimensions of personality organisation, mentalisation and evaluation of life and romantic relationship satisfaction

Introduction and objective: The Kernberg’s concept on the levels of personality organisation enables us to understand, on the one hand, the pathomechanism of personality disorders necessary for case conceptualisation in psychotherapy and, on the other hand, to predict individuals’ everyday functioning in interpersonal relationships and the experienced life satisfaction. In this study, we inquire whether dimensions of pathological personality structure are associated with negative evaluations of life satisfaction and interpersonal relationships. Additionally, we explored whether these relationships are modified by impaired mentalisation (as a mediator) and clinical group membership (as a moderator). Materials and methods: The study involved 88 participants (71 women) from both clinical (n = 45) and non-clinical groups, aged between 20 to 69 years (mean, M = 31.39; standard deviation, SD = 11.38). The participants completed the Kernberg’s Inventory of Personality Organization (IPO), the Relationship Assessment Scale (RAS), the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), and the Mentalization Questionnaire (MZQ). Results: The results indicate that higher intensity of all dimensions of personality pathology (identity, defence mechanisms, aggression, reality testing, and moral functioning) is significantly associated with lower life satisfaction (rho = from −0.49 to −0.32) and greater difficulties in mentalisation (rho = 0.72 to 0.56). Increased intensity of defence mechanisms is also related to lower romantic relationship satisfaction (rho = −0.23). Moderated mediation analyses with 5000 bootstrap samples (where life satisfaction is an dependent variable, dimensions of personality organisation are independent variables, mentalisation disturbance is a mediator, and clinical group membership moderates all relationships) showed that disrupted mentalisation plays a mediating role in explaining life satisfaction and that clinical vs. non-clinical group membership may not moderate these relationships. Conclusion: The results help specify the relationships between the characteristics of Kernberg’s personality structure dimensions and the evaluation of everyday life satisfaction, suggesting an important role of mentalisation processes as transdiagnostic factors worth addressing in life satisfaction appraisal.

Financial debts and subjective well‐being of young adults: An adaption of the stress process model

AbstractUsing a stress process theoretical framework, this article examines the relationship between financial debts and the subjective well‐being of young adults and the role of social and personal resources in the mechanism. The analyses include 2348 young adults from the 2017 Transition into Adulthood Supplement study of Panel Study of Income Dynamics, using the structural equation modeling method. We found that when faced with student loans as a stress exposure, young adults' social resources (financial support and social participation) and personal psychological resources (self‐esteem) may act in different ways explaining life satisfaction and subjective well‐being. Having student loans increased the likelihood of receiving financial support from family and social activity participation, while also boosting one's self‐esteem. However, financial support as a social resource was negatively associated with young adults' life satisfaction and subjective well‐being, whereas self‐esteem as a personal resource was positively associated with life satisfaction and subjective well‐being. Our study suggests that exploring the underlying mechanism of the association between debts and subjective well‐being is necessary and crucial because the mediating roles of social and personal resources were important in determining young adults' subjective well‐being. Further research should explore this topic, as recent young adults are more exposed to debt burdens than preceding cohorts.

Relationships between social support, dark triad and life satisfaction in honorary blood donors. The mediating role of emotional support

Background
 The psychological interest in the group of blood donors, in the perspective of worldwide research, is a valuable source of knowledge about variables that may help to attract new blood donors or to maintain the regularity of donations. So far, Polish research in this group has only investigated the state of knowledge about blood donation and has not studied specific psychological predispositions.
 The aim
 The aim of the presented study was to examine the relationship between the dark triad, social support and life satisfaction in a group of polish voluntary blood donors.
 Material and methods
 In order to measure variables of interest, the SD3 scale, the Social Support Scale, and the SWLS were used. The study included a group of 111 voluntary blood donors from different cities in Poland.
 Results
 The conducted analyses showed positive and significant relationships between social support (informational, material, emotional, and valuational), narcissism, and life satisfaction. Furthermore, linear regression analysis showed that social support and the dark triad explain life satisfaction in the study group by 30%. Mediation analysis showed that emotional support enhances the relationship of narcissism and life satisfaction.
 Conclusions
 The associations of narcissism, social support and life satisfaction can be explained through Caroll Ryff's theory of psychological well-being, according to which both subclinical narcissism and received social support can be components of a positive assessment of a person's quality of life. The study may provide a baseline for further research in a group of voluntary blood donors - e.g. with an extension of narcissism to include its communal dimension.

Healthy, Wealthy, and Happy: The Joint Role of Health and Income in Explaining Global Life Satisfaction

Based on Gallup World Poll data, we explore the heterogeneous evolution of income, health, and well‐being within world population subgroups identified according to country, gender, age, and education, offering an integrated approach with wide geographical coverage. We provide novel evidence on the global “winners” and “losers” in life satisfaction between 2009 and 2018, showing that individuals located at the bottom of the global income distribution and those with poor health saw pronounced reductions in life satisfaction as opposed to populations with incomes falling between the 60th and the 80th centile and the healthy ones, who experienced significant improvements. Our results highlight that health is at least on a par with income in explaining life satisfaction, although there are considerable differences across world regions. In particular, health supersedes income in its relevance to life satisfaction, mostly in more affluent world regions, while the opposite holds in destitute parts of the world.

Relation between parent and child or peer alienation and life satisfaction: The mediation roles of mental resilience and self-concept clarity.

The research on life satisfaction originated in the 1960s and has not been completely studied yet. Life satisfaction is an index related to the state and quality of individual life. With the development of society, the relevant variables affecting life satisfaction have also changed with the times. The purpose of this study is to research the relationship between parent and child or peer alienation, mental resilience, self-concept clarity and life satisfaction, finding the mechanism of action among parent-child or peer alienation, mental resilience, self-concept clarity, and life satisfaction. This cross-sectional study recruites randomly 1,347 adolescents from six middle schools in Chongqing, China, participating in a questionnaire on sociodemographic characteristics, the Inventor of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA), the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10), the Self-concept Clarity Scale (SCCS), and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS). The sample consists of 62.4% female participants (n = 841) and 37.6% male participants (n = 506) aged from 11 to 17 years old (Mean = 14.54, SD = 1.21). We use SPSS 26 to perform the statistical analysis. The study finds that mental resilience-self-concept clarity have mediating effect on the parent or peer alienation to life satisfaction, to the effect that, parent-child or peer alienation explain life satisfaction through the chain mediating effect of mental resilience-self-concept clarity. This study explores the negative multi-use of parent-child or peer alienation on life satisfaction and provides a new perspective for the improvement of life satisfaction of adolescents.

The Importance of Institutional Trust in Explaining Life-Satisfaction: Lessons From the 2008 Global Financial Crisis

ABSTRACT We theorize that greater institutional trust leads to higher levels of life satisfaction and test our hypothesis empirically on a diverse sample of 27 countries for the period of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath. We used country-level data with a time-series cross-sectional design to examine how changes in institutional trust over the period of the crisis and beyond affected changes in life satisfaction vis-à-vis well-established predictors of institutional trust. We found that institutional trust, together with a subjective assessment of the economic situation, is the only significant predictors explaining life satisfaction during the crisis and its aftermath. The magnitude of the effect of institutional trust demonstrates resilience and did not change due to the crisis. The results of individual-level analysis confirmed this conclusion. The individual-level analysis also highlights that the effect of institutional trust is relatively stronger than the effect of many well-established individual-level characteristics. The main theoretical conclusion of our study is that institutional trust is one of the most important determinants of life satisfaction. Policy makers and international donors should focus on nurturing institutional trust through institutional reforms. From the research standpoint, our findings suggest that institutional trust should be included as one of the covariates in studies on life satisfaction.

Life satisfaction among alumni of youth villages in Israel: A life course perspective.

Empirical evidence on life satisfaction of care leavers is scant and often based on small and nonrepresentative samples. Based on the life course perspective, this study explored the role of objective and subjective factors in explaining life satisfaction among care leavers, both general and domain-specific (work-financial-housing, social relationships-emotional state). The sample was randomly drawn from the whole population of eight graduating birth cohorts of alumni of educational residential care in Israel and consists of 2, 295 alumni (24-31 years old). The study is based on an extensive set of longitudinal administrative records combined with structured phone interviews. Bivariate analysis and multiple regression models were used to assess associations between precare context, in-care and postcare experiences and achievements with general and domain-specific life satisfaction. Gender differences were found in both domain-specific life satisfactions with men having greater satisfaction. Family background indicators were generally more predictive of general and social relationships- emotional state satisfaction. In-care experiences of peer and staff support and postcare experience of material deprivation were strong predictors of general and domain-specific life satisfaction. Postcare contacts with care staff, surprisingly, were associated with lower general satisfaction and satisfaction with social relationships-emotional state. Higher educational attainment at the end of placement and integration into postsecondary education were associated with greater general and work-financial-housing satisfaction. The effects of in-care preparation for independent adult living, employment and parenthood are not consistent across different domains of life satisfaction. Implications for policy and practice during and after care are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Analysi̇s of li̇fe sati̇sfacti̇on level of uni̇versi̇ty students usi̇ng hi̇erarchi̇cal li̇near modeli̇ng

Life satisfaction is among the basic components which demonstrate that individuals can lead a quality life. Many intertwined factors affect individuals' life satisfaction. Analyzing these factors at different levels will allow the analysis results to be more significant. This study aimed to reveal the effects of variable at the student and department level that will affect the life satisfaction level of university students, using the Hierarchical Linear Modeling. In addition, the study aimed to reveal which variables have a significant effect on life satisfaction in this two-level structure. The sample of the research consists of 1237 students, studying in 30 departments in different faculties at Inönü University in the 2020-2021 academic year. The variables about students represent the first level while variables about department represent the second level. Considering the life satisfaction levels of individuals, it was concluded that 13% of the variability was due to the differences between departments and that 87% of variability due to the differences between students. It was also concluded that variables that became important in explaining the differences between students' life satisfaction at the first level were: working, selfregulation, physical discomfort, physical activity variables and that variables such as gender, age, income, having a sibling, relationship status, family cohesion, emotion regulation, parents' education level, having close friends and a religious belief were found to be insignificant in explaining life satisfaction at the student level and that the added variables could explain 75% of students' life satisfaction. Variables at the department level explain 6% of the differences between departments. It was concluded that the variable that could explain the differences between students' life satisfaction at this level was the variable of departments' scores on assigning teachers and that the number of students and faculty members in the department were found to be insignificant.

AGGRESSION, EMPATHY, AND LIFE SATISFACTION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AMONG STUDENTS IN PRIVATE HIGHER EDUCATION

<p>The primary purpose of this study was to investigate relationships between aggression, empathy, and life satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main aim was to analyse the contribution of empathy components (empathic concern, personal distress, perspective-taking, and fantasy) above reactive and proactive aggression in predicting life satisfaction.. The Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ), Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), Single Item on Overall Life Satisfaction (OLS), and Single Item on Overall Happiness (OH) measures were applied to 418 students in private higher education (232 male, 186 female). The participants’ age ranged from 18 to 34, with a mean age of 21 years (SD = 3.18). Results showed that reactive aggression negatively predicted satisfaction with life and overall happiness, while proactive aggression did not significantly predict indicators of life satisfaction. Empathic concern showed a significant positive effect on satisfaction with life, while personal distress showed a significant adverse effect on all indicators of life satisfaction. Aggression and empathy together accounted for 14% of the variance in the satisfaction with life and 5% of the variance in overall life satisfaction and overall happiness. Empathy added incremental variance in explaining life satisfaction after controlling for aggression. The results highlight the importance of reactive aggression and emotional empathy in the explanation of life satisfaction.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0983/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Acculturation of Migrant Latinos in a Positive Psychology Framework

This article features a positive psychology perspective on migration, using hope theory as a conceptual framework to explain life satisfaction of Hispanic migrants in the United States. The cross-sectional study considers the association of acculturation and social support on wellbeing while accounting for the demographic and personal characteristics of Latino migrants ( N = 169) in California and Florida. The final regression model (with the demographic variables of gender, health, realized expectations, the main effect of country, and the interaction variable of realized expectations by country), resulted in significant associations between life satisfaction and the variables of gender and health status. The study demonstrates that expectations (among other factors) significantly predict life satisfaction of Hispanic migrants, which implies that contextualizing migration experience in the positive light (rather than looking at stressors) may impact their quality of life.

Testing the job demands-resources model in explaining life satisfaction of Nigerian correctional staff

ABSTRACT The bulk of correctional staff life satisfaction research has focused on staff in Western nations, particularly the United States. The current study examined how workplace variables are related to life satisfaction among Nigerian correctional staff, and it used the Job Demands-Resources Model as a theoretical framework. This model postulates that workplace variables can be broken into job demands and resources. Job demands are workplace variables that cause strain. Job resources are workplace variables that help staff be productive and successful and help buffer job demands. Job demands tend to be associated with negative outcomes, such as job stress, and job resources tend to be associated to positive outcomes, such as life satisfaction. Data for this study came from staff at a prison located in southeast Nigeria. The job demand variables examined were role overload and fear of victimization at work, and the job resource variables were quality of training, job autonomy, and job variety, with the outcome variable being life satisfaction. In a multivariate Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis, fear of victimization had a nonsignificant relationship with life satisfaction, role overload had a negative relationship, and quality training, job autonomy, and job variety each had a positive associations.

Wisdom, Self-transcendent Emotions (Compassion, Gratitude, and Awe), and Life Satisfaction: The Role of Awe of God and Connectedness.

self-transcendent emotions like compassion, gratitude, and awe, can encourage individuals to transcend their own momentary needs and desires and focus on those of another. These emotions help solve three key social problems—caretaking, cooperation, and group coordination. However, there has been little research on one of the strongest religious emotions—awe of God and whether it differs significantly from the awe that arises outside the context of religion. Moreover, how self-transcendent emotions and awe of God interplay in explaining life satisfaction and pro-sociality is still an open question. For this, we propose a theoretical framework, explaining how self-transcendent emotions improve life satisfaction. In this regard, we modified the Krause & Hayward (2015) model to include Self-transcendent emotions. We hypothesized that self-transcendent emotions like compassion, gratitude, and awe along with practical wisdom, increase the awe of God. This would in turn increase connectedness with others (pro-sociality) through the sense of oneness with God. Increased connectedness would ultimately lead to Life satisfaction. Empirical validity was established by conducting a survey using a close-ended questionnaire. Data was collected from 400 respondents and analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structured equation modeling. The result suggested that Awe, compassion, and gratitude have a positive and significant effect on Awe of God, and the Feeling of connectedness with others, however, their effect on life satisfaction remained insignificant. On the other hand, practical wisdom seems to increase life satisfaction, however, remained insignificant in explaining others. Awe of God seems to positively affect life satisfaction directly as well as indirectly through connectedness. Hence, there is a strong mediation effect of Awe of God, as well as a further mediation by Connectedness in explaining the effect of all three Self-Transcendent Emotions on life satisfaction. Awe of God, as well as Connectedness, also directly mediate the impact of Self-Transcendent Emotions on Life Satisfaction. Hence, this study is a novel attempt to implant the self-transcendent emotion in a wider latent – variable model that restrain diverse hypotheses.

What explains life satisfaction? Relative income or rank income? The case of Ecuador

ABSTRACT We test whether various measures of relative income and rank income hypothesis explain life satisfaction in Ecuador. We found robust evidence that the rank position of the income within the reference group explains life satisfaction. In contrast, the effect of relative income measures on happiness is sensitive to the variables used to construct the reference group.

Subjective Well-Being of Portuguese Employees: The Role of Personality and Organizational Context

Subjective well-being (SWB) has been widely associated with quality of life and health outcomes. In the organizational and work context, SWB has been also related to better outcomes, like higher levels of job satisfaction, productivity and enhanced career development. Yet in the present context of economic pressure and highly dynamic work markets employees are asked to be better at taking risks to come with fast and creative solutions and companies are facing the challenge of recruiting best equipped individuals and assuring the conditions for them to be at their best. Personal and organizational characteristics, like personality and psychological safety seen to play an important role in these matters. However, it is still to know how are these variables associated with the employees’ well-being. The aim of this study is to explore the impact of open to experience, resilience and psychological security on SWB. A sample of 193 Portuguese adults working in 20 companies of the industry and IT sectors answered a standardize questionnaire. In order to explore what and to what extent personal (open to experience and resilience) and organizational (psychological safety) variables impact SWB the multiple regression models were computed. Results showed that the most associated variable in the three models is resilience and that the three predictors have higher impact on explaining Life Satisfaction (29.5%) and Positive Affect (26.5%).

Perception of invulnerability, engaging in risky behaviors and life satisfaction among high school students

A sense of invulnerability is commonly associated only with adolescents’ risk behaviors, but according to some developmental theories, it is also an adaptive response to developmental tasks that occur during that period of life. The objective of this paper was to explore two aspects of the sense of invulnerability (physical and psychological) on a sample of high school students. More specifically, the relationship between physical and psychological invulnerability in terms of engagement in risky behaviors (cigarette use) on the one hand and indicators of subjective wellbeing (life satisfaction) on the other was explored. The data from 297 adolescents aged 16 to 20 years (M = 17.33; SD = 0.834; 54.2% girls) were analyzed. The study found that boys’ assessment of physical and psychological invulnerability was higher in comparison to girls’ assessment. Smokers rated their physical invulnerability higher than adolescents who had quit smoking, who had only tried smoking and those who had never smoked. While physical invulnerability was not associated with life assessments in most domains of life satisfaction, psychological was positively associated with all domains as well as general life satisfaction. The findings also showed that assessing psychological invulnerability contributed more to explaining life satisfaction than assessing physical invulnerability, whereas physical invulnerability was a significant predictor of smoking frequency among adolescents. The results of this study indicate the significance and importance of both domains of invulnerability in adolescence.

Positive attributes and life satisfaction in homeless youth

The purpose of this secondary analysis of data from an ongoing, longitudinal intervention study for homeless youths (ages 18–24 years) was threefold: (1) to differentiate by age, sex, and sexual orientation, the positive attributes of hope, optimism, resilience, future time perspective, and gratitude, (2) to determine how these positive attributes might be related to life satisfaction, and (3) to determine which set of variables might best explain life satisfaction. We found a statistically significant difference in resilience scores by sex, H(2) = 6.591, p = .037, with males scoring higher than females. None of the other positive attributes differed significantly by sex. Future time perspective (FTP) differed significantly by sexual orientation with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth scoring higher than others on FTP (p = .046). All theoretical variables (hope, optimism, FTP, resilience, and gratitude) were significantly related to life satisfaction (p < .01). After controlling for all other variables, hope and gratitude significantly explained variance in life satisfaction (p < .001). This analysis supports the claim that despite their vulnerabilities and limitations, homeless youths have many positive attributes that are related to their life satisfaction. It may be that future interventions focused on positive attributes of hope and gratitude can be developed to further enhance psychological capital and contribute to life satisfaction among these young people.

An integrative model of the subjective well-being of staff working in intellectual disability services

BackgroundThe detrimental effects of caregiving have been well documented. In order to compensate for the disadvantages of caring, research has also tried to identify factors associated to caregivers’ subjective well-being (SWB). AimsWe aim at presenting an integrative model of SWB. Methods and proceduresSample consisted of 228 staff working with people with intellectual disabilities. Measures employed included three different components of self-care (social, internal and physical), mental and physical health, conscientiousness, hope, and life satisfaction. The model aimed to explain SWB, measured by life satisfaction, by several variables (self-care, mental and physical health, and conscientiousness), while checking for the role of hope as a partial mediator of these relationships. Outcomes and resultsResults show an overall good fit of the model: χ2(6) = 12.274, p = .056; CFI = .953; RMSEA = .077 [.000, .139], hence establishing the first model of prediction of SWB of staff in services for people with intellectual disabilities. Conclusions and implicationsSocial self-care, mental health and conscientiousness were capable of explaining life satisfaction but only through hope, that is, these factors did not have significant direct effects. The presence of hope may be then necessary for these factors to benefit staff. Strengths and limitations are discussed.

Family, School, and Neighbourhood Microsystems Influence on children’s Life Satisfaction in Chile

At an international level, different researches have pointed out the importance of taking into account opinions of children and adolescents in order to study their subjective wellbeing. Reviewing scientific literature, it is recognized that wellbeing is, specially, affected by microsystems such as family, school or neighbourhood. However, these microsystems have not been studied enough regarding their influence on subjective wellbeing on childhood. This research aims to identify the joint influence of family, school and neighbourhood microsystems on life satisfaction of Chilean children. The sample were 1392 children between 10 and 13 years, from state subsidized municipal schools, state subsidized private schools and non-subsidized private schools. Results show that after analysing different structural equation models, a better adjustment is obtained by a five dimension configured model which allows to explain life satisfaction of students. It is concluded that the higher influence factor on life satisfaction is school relationships, followed by satisfaction with the family, satisfaction with the neighbourhood and family relationships. A relevant finding was that satisfaction with school does not exerts any significant influence on life satisfaction.

Self-stigma among parents of children with autism spectrum disorder

BackgroundParents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) vary in not only the extent to which they endorse their self-stigmatizing thoughts, referred to as self-stigma “content”, but also the extent to which they think about their self-stigmatizing thoughts repetitively and automatically as a mental habit, referred to as self-stigma “process”. Existing measures of self-stigma, however, focus almost solely on self-stigma content. No measures are available for assessing self-stigma process among parents of children with ASD. The present study examined the psychometric properties of a recently developed measure of self-stigma process, the Self-Stigmatizing Thinking’s Automaticity and Repetition Scale (STARS), among parents of children with ASD. MethodCross-sectional, questionnaire data were collected from 424 parents of children with ASD residing in Hong Kong, China. ResultsConfirmatory factor analyses supported the originally proposed, two-factor model of the STARS. The entire scale, as well as its two subscales, had excellent internal consistency. The STARS demonstrated construct validity by being correlated with self-stigma content. It also showed criterion validity by being correlated with mental health (as indicated by life satisfaction and depression) and caregiving experiences (as indicated by caregiving gain and caregiving burden). Furthermore, the STARS exhibited incremental validity by explaining life satisfaction, depression, caregiving gain, and caregiving burden, even after adjusting for self-stigma content. ConclusionsOur findings provided evidence for the reliability, and the factorial, construct, criterion, and incremental validity, of the STARS among parents of children with ASD. Our findings highlighted the content-process distinction of self-stigma, and provided important insights on the design of effective anti-self-stigma interventions.

Life satisfaction in divorced or separated people: a comparison between Spain and Chile / La satisfacción vital en personas divorciadas o separadas: una comparación entre España y Chile

This paper analyses life satisfaction after divorce, comparing Chilean and Spanish divorced or separated people. There were 468 divorced people included in the study, 240 Spanish and 228 Chilean. 71.5% of the Chilean and 100% of the Spanish people had children. An analysis of the variance identified that life satisfaction is higher in Chilean people than in Spanish people, although the size of the effect is moderate. Regression analysis of the data sets shows that the time since divorce and provenance explain life satisfaction for those divorced people who participated in this study. Separate analyses by country show that while for divorced Spanish people time since their divorce was the only predictor of life satisfaction, age and time since separation were the predictors of life satisfaction for Chilean divorced people.