About the research
Our lives are filled with major events that change our perceptions and our levels of life satisfaction. Marriage, the birth of a child, the death of a spouse and periods of unemployment can be stressful at the time but can have long-lasting effects on how we feel about life in general. However, people experience these events and their effects differently. Could our individual personalities be an influence? Researchers from Michigan State University have been trying to find out.
The researchers looked into the major life events listed above and found all of them led to some kind of short-term change in life satisfaction. Only marriage and widowhood were found to have persistent changes in life satisfaction after age-related and normative changes were accounted for.
The researchers discovered that personality did not have a consistent moderating effect on how individuals would react and adapt to these life changes.
Methodology
This research used life satisfaction, Big Five personality domains and demographics as its variables and marriage, childbirth, widowhood and unemployment as its life events to be examined.
Firstly, they examined whether the survey participants’ reported happiness was higher or lower after the event compared to before. Secondly, they wanted to account for normative changes to well-being over time so they could measure if people’s happiness was different from where it would have been without the life event to change normal patterns. Thirdly, they examined the influence of certain personality traits on affecting these outcomes.
Publications
Yap, S.C.Y, Anusic, I., and Lucas, R.E. (2012) ‘Does personality moderate reaction and adaptation to major life events? Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey’, Journal of Research in Personality. 46(5), pp. 477-488. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2012.05.005 Retrieved 2 September 2013 from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656612000827#