Life satisfaction has more to do with your personality than your circumstances, according to a new study.
Researchers in Europe have found that while factors such as social circles, income and health influenced levels of contentment, they were less significant than previously thought.
Dr René Mõttus, of the University of Edinburgh, said a team of experts adopted a fresh approach to address a long-standing psychological puzzle of how much feelings of fulfilment, rather than experiences, reflected who we were.
Dr Mõttus said previous studies failed to produce a clear answer, because most had relied on people’s self-ratings of their personality traits and life satisfaction.
“Self-ratings are often biased, by making unrelated things seem connected, or masking connections that actually exist – or both,” he said.
“It turns out people’s life satisfaction is even more about their personality than we thought.”
Dr Mõttus said to overcome the limitations of previous studies, researchers combined two sources of information.
“First, the team asked more than 20,000 people to rate their personality traits and life satisfaction. In addition, each participant was rated by someone else who knew them well.”
He said by cross-referencing the two sources of information, researchers could identify where both agreed, allowing them to estimate life satisfaction’s links with a range of personality traits, free of conventional errors and biases.
“Personality traits were more strongly related to life satisfaction than suggested by previous studies.
“About 80 percent of the differences in people’s life satisfaction could be traced to their personalities, nearly double the estimates of previous studies.”
Dr Mõttus said more satisfied people were more emotionally stable, extraverted and conscientious.
“But more specifically, those satisfied with their life felt understood, excited and decisive, while less satisfied people felt envious, bored, used, unable, and unrewarded.”
The findings are published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
