Frank Fujita

Events and subjective well-being: only recent events matter.

The effect of life events on subjective well-being (SWB) was explored in a 2-year longitudinal study of 115 participants. It was found that only life events during the previous 3 months influenced life satisfaction and positive and negative affect. Although recent life events influenced SWB even when personality at Time 1 was controlled, distal life events did not correlate with SWB. SWB and life events both showed a substantial degree of temporal stability. It was also found that good and bad life events tend to covary, both between individuals and across periods of the lives of individuals. Also, when events of the opposite valence were controlled, events correlated more strongly with SWB. The counterintuitive finding that good and bad events co-occur suggests an exciting avenue for explorations of the structure of life events.

The personality structure of affect

We examined the organization of individual differences in pleasant affect, unpleasant affect, and six discrete emotions. We used several refinements over past studies: a) systematic sampling of emotions; b) control of measurement error through the use of latent traits; c) multiple methods for measuring affect; d) inclusion of only affects that are widely agreed to be emotions; e) a statistical definition of independence; and f) a focus on the frequency and duration of long-term affect. There was strong convergence between the two pleasant emotions (love and joy) and between the four unpleasant emotions (fear, anger, sadness, and shame). The results indicated, however, that individual differences in the discrete emotions cannot be reduced to positive and negative affect. The latent traits of pleasant and unpleasant affect were correlated -.44, and a two-factor model accounted for significantly more variance than a one-factor model. This finding indicates that long-term pleasant and unpleasant affect are not strictly orthogonal, but they are separable.

Gender differences in negative affect and well-being: The case for emotional intensity.

Affect intensity (AI) may reconcile 2 seemingly paradoxical findings: Women report more negative affect than men but equal happiness as men. AI describes peoples varying response intensity to identical emotional stimuli. A college sample of 66 women and 34 men was assessed on both positive and negative affect using 4 measurement methods: self-report, peer report, daily report, and memory performance. A principal-components analysis revealed an affect balance component and an AI component. Multimeasure affect balance and AI scores were created, and t tests were computed that showed women to be as happy as and more intense than men. Gender accounted for less than 1% of the variance in happiness but over 13% in AI. Thus, depression findings of more negative affect in women do not conflict with well-being findings of equal happiness across gender. Generally, womens more intense positive emotions balance their higher negative affect.

Extraversion and neuroticism as predictors of objective life events : a longitudinal analysis

Data from a 4-year longitudinal study of young adults were used to examine the causal pathways between personality and life events. To reduce measurement artifacts, analyses were conducted using reports of more objective life events. It was found that extraversion predisposed participants to experience more positive objective life events, whereas neuroticism predisposed people to experience more negative objective events. In contrast, personality was somewhat stable. and life events were found not to have a prospective influence on it. Objective positive and negative life events covaried, suggesting that people who experience more of 1 type of event are also likely to experience more events of the opposite valence as well

Life satisfaction set point: Stability and change

Using data from 17 years of a large and nationally representative panel study from Germany, the authors examined whether there is a set point for life satisfaction (LS)--stability across time, even though it can be perturbed for short periods by life events. The authors found that 24% of respondents changed significantly in LS from the first 5 years to the last 5 years and that stability declined as the period between measurements increased. Average LS in the first 5 years correlated .51 with the 5-year average of LS during the last 5 years. Height, weight, body mass index, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and personality traits were all more stable than LS, whereas income was about as stable as LS. Almost 9% of the sample changed an average of 3 or more points on a 10-point scale from the first 5 to last 5 years of the study.

Extraversion and happiness

Abstract The relationship between extraversion and happiness or subjective well-being (SWB) is one of the most consistently replicated and robust findings in the SWB literature. The present study was conducted in order to examine three key aspects of the relationship: (1) Whether it is primarily substantive in nature, or a product of self-report response artifacts, such as social desirability; (2) What the underlying systems or mechanisms involved in the relationship are; and (3) Whether Eysencks two dimensions of extraversion and neuroticism combine additively or interactively in their influence upon an individuals level of SWB. The results are supportive of the substantive nature of the relationship, and suggest that both situational and personality factors combine to produce the positive correlation between extraversion and SWB. In terms of the interaction of extraversion and neuroticism, the results are mixed in supporting both an additive and interactive relationship.

Schizophrenia and Personality: Exploring the Boundaries and Connections Between Vulnerability and Outcome

This article discusses the issues and evidence concerning the relationship between schizophrenia and personality. We examine personality dimensions in individuals with schizophrenia, both before and after the onset of their psychoses, and in their relatives. Schizophrenia is associated with high levels of peculiarity and neuroticism and with low levels of extraversion. The relationships between schizophrenia and both psychopathy and creativity remain unclear. Personality dimensions vary in the manner in which they are associated with a variety of correlates of psychopathology, such as prognosis. We recommend that psychopathologists interested in schizophrenia devote more attention to the study of personality.

Consistency, Specificity, and Correlates of Negative Emotions

Four studies with college student participants examined the consistency, specificity, and correlates of sadness, fear, and anger. Study 1 measured emotions with daily diaries, and Study 2 examined the relationship between trait emotions and state emotions. Studies 1 and 2 indicated that specific negative emotions are temporally stable, are positively correlated, and provide information above and beyond that provided by other negative emotions. Study 3 found that negative emotions are differentially associated with different facets of cognitive style, as measured by questionnaires that examined dysfunctional attitudes and attributions concerning negative events. Study 4 indicated that negative emotions are differentially associated with different facets of response style, as measured by the degree to which individuals described their thoughts, feelings, and actions in response to hypothetical events

The relation between self-aspect congruence, personality and subjective well-being

Abstract The relationship between self-aspect congruence, subjective well-being (SWB), and personality was examined in two studies. In Study 1, the congruence between ‘real’ and ‘ought’ Q-sort self-descriptions was found to be positively related to measures of SWB and life satisfaction. Among the five personality factors of Costa and McCrae (1991), congruence was negatively related to neuroticism and positively related to agreeableness. In study 2, the congruence between ‘real’ and ‘ideal’ Q-sort self-descriptions was found to be positively related to both self- and non-self-report measures of SWB, and was significantly related to four of Costa and McCraes five personality dimensions. Implications for research in the area of emotion and SWB are discussed.

Emotional experience over time and self-reported depressive symptoms

Research on depression requires investigation of the roles played by emotions. A study of 137 college students tested hypotheses that fear and anger, as well as sadness and guilt, are associated with the symptoms of depression, and that individuals in whom these four negative emotions tend to occur on the same days are more likely to be depressed. Measures included emotion scales completed daily for 52 days, informant-reported emotion scales, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), a new MMPI-derived Symptoms of Depression Scale (SDS) reflecting the nine diagnostic symptoms of major depression, and a modified version, the SDS-M, that omitted depressed mood and guilt items. All four emotions, as measured by self- and informant-reports, were correlated with depressive symptoms (P<0.05). Within-subjects correlations between sadness and anger were in turn positively correlated with depressive symptoms. Theory and clinical understanding of depressive disorders can be enlarged by further investigation of the role of emotions.