Abstract
Research shows that people use their current mood along with other sources of information to assess their overall life satisfaction. Therefore, it has been assumed that the positive relationship between affective well-being and life satisfaction means that affective well-being influences life satisfaction and not vice versa. However, this assumption has not been rigorously tested in within-person analyses. Existing empirical evidence suggests that life satisfaction may also influence future affective experiences. The purpose of the present study was to examine the longitudinal within-person relationships between the components of affective well-being (i.e., positive and negative affect) and life satisfaction. The study used a sample of adults from the German Aging Survey collected at 5 time points over a 13-year period (N = 12,216, baseline age ≈ 60 years). The results of the random intercept cross-lagged panel model showed that changes in affective well-being predicted subsequent changes in life satisfaction. Changes in life satisfaction predicted subsequent changes in positive affect significantly and in negative affect marginally. This study provides insight into the direction of the long-term relationship between affective well-being and life satisfaction and highlights the importance of within-person analyses in understanding the relationships between these variables.
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The DEAS data and materials are publicly available at https://www.dza.de/en/research/fdz/german-ageing-survey.
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This study used secondary and public data provided by the German Centre of Gerontology. For more information about the dataset see https://www.dza.de/en/research/fdz/german-ageing-survey.
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Joshanloo, M. Thirteen Years of Subjective Well-Being: Within-Person Association between Positive Affect, Negative Affect, and Life Satisfaction. Int J Ment Health Addiction (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-023-01223-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-023-01223-7