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Wisdom Gained? Assessing Relationships Between Adversity, Personality and Well-Being Among a Late Adolescent Sample

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Abstract

How do late adolescents make sense of stressful life events they have experienced in their lives? In a sample of 1320 college students, 676 (58% White, 63% female) reported the stressful events they had experienced in their lifetime up until the present survey and indicated whether they considered each stressful event to be a turning point and/or an opportunity for wisdom. Students also completed measures of personality and well-being. We hypothesized that the tendency to interpret stressful events as turning points or opportunities for wisdom would explain the associations between three personality characteristics (Openness to Experience, Extraversion, and Emotionality) and well-being. We used a multi-step ESEM approach in which we first assessed the measurement structure of our items before testing partial and complete structural models. We tested partial and structural models according to extant guidelines associated with the evaluation of indirect effects models. We did not find support for the indirect effects model, but Openness was associated with the tendency to view stressful events as turning points, and Openness and Extraversion were associated with the tendency to view stressful events as leading to wisdom, as well as with increased well-being.

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Notes

  1. Throughout the Results section we present standardized results using STDYX standardization, an Mplus standardization method that is based on all variables in the model; in the case of the models in this article, this method is equivalent to STDY standardization (Muthén and Muthén 2015).

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Acknowledgments

This publication was made possible through the support of grant #87 from the Templeton Religion Trust awarded to Jayawickreme & Blackie. This publication was also supported by grant #24322 from the John Templeton Foundation awarded to Jayawickreme. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton Religion Trust. This project has received funding support from grant #87 from the Templeton Religion Trust awarded to Jayawickreme & Blackie and grant #24322 from the John Templeton Foundation awarded to Jayawickreme.

Authors’ Contributions

EJ conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination, reviewed the analysis and drafted the manuscript. NB performed the statistical analyses and interpreted the statistical results. LB participated in its design and helped draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Office of Institutional Research, Wake Forest University, 415 Greene Hall, P.O. Box 7778, Winston-Salem, NC, 27109, USA

    Eranda Jayawickreme & Nicole W. Brocato

  2. School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, East Drive, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

    Laura E. R. Blackie

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  1. Eranda Jayawickreme
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Correspondence to Eranda Jayawickreme.

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Ethical Approval

The study was approved by the Internal Review Board of Wake Forest University. The undergraduate student body of Wake Forest University (with the exception of students who were studying abroad) was invited to participate in an online survey about personality and well-being over the course of the 2013–2014 academic year. Approximately 4800 students were invited to participate. This study was part of a larger, multi-wave research study conducted in collaboration with the Office of Campus Life at Wake Forest University. The research study included several questionnaires not relevant to the current investigation, and which are not reported here.

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All eligible students received an email from the Office of Campus Life inviting them to participate in this multi-wave study. If they chose to participate, they read and assented to an informed consent form before completing any of the surveys.

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Jayawickreme, E., Brocato, N.W. & Blackie, L.E.R. Wisdom Gained? Assessing Relationships Between Adversity, Personality and Well-Being Among a Late Adolescent Sample. J Youth Adolescence 46, 1179–1199 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0648-x

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