Trajectories of multiple subjective well-being facets across old age: The role of health and personality.

S. De Potter, Johanna Drewelies, Jenny Wagner, Sandra Duezel, Annette Brose, Ilja Demuth, Elisabeth Steinhagen–Thiessen, Ulman Lindenberger, Gert G. Wagner, Denis Gerstorf

Psychology and Aging · 2020 · 35 citations · 78 references

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Abstract

= 6.89; 51% women). Results revealed by and large average stability of life satisfaction, morale, and emotions (anger, fear, sadness, happiness) across old age. Most important for our research questions, higher morbidity, poor performance on grip strength and perceptual speed tests, lower extraversion, and higher neuroticism were each uniquely associated with lower life satisfaction, morale, and positive affect and higher negative affect. Some evidence emerged for facet-specific health-personality interaction effects in predicting affective experiences, but effects observed were not consistent across studies and of small size. We take our findings to indicate that health and personality traits constitute important individual difference characteristics for our understanding of subjective well-being in old age and that these likely do not interact with one another to shape well-being. We discuss theoretical and practical implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

References

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