Psicología Positiva,Felicidad y Bienestar. Positive Psychology,Happiness & Well-being

(Available in free full text) Culture is an important factor affecting happiness. This paper examines the predictive power of cultural factors on the cross-country differences in happiness and explores how different dimensions of cultural indices differ in their effects on happiness. Our empirical results show that the global leadership and organizational behavior effectiveness nine culture indices are all significantly related with happiness. Out of these nine indices, power distance (PDI) and gender egalitarianism (GEI) play the most important and stable role in determining subjective well-being (SWB). We further examine the relative importance of the various variables in contributing to the R-squared of the regression. The results show that PDI is the most important, accounting for 50 % of the contributions to R-squared of all variables, or equalling the combined contributions of income, population density and four other traditional variables. The contribution of GEI is 37.1 %, also well surpassing other variables. Our results remain robust even taking account of the different data for culture and SWB.

Via Dr James Hawkins

The current study investigated the relationships among personality factors and life satisfaction in high school students (N = 624), who completed self-report measures of global life satisfaction and personality characteristics consistent with a Five Factor Model (i.e., extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness). Analyses indicated that approximately 47 % of the variance in adolescents’ life satisfaction scores was accounted for by their levels of the Big Five personality factors. Neuroticism emerged as the strongest predictor. Openness, conscientiousness, and extraversion were also significant and unique predictors of life satisfaction. Regarding gender differences, a higher level of agreeableness was related to higher life satisfaction for girls, but not for boys. Findings support the importance of including all Big Five personality factors in exploratory models of life satisfaction, and contribute to an understanding of gender-specific models of predictors of life satisfaction.

Via Dr James Hawkins