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Journal of Happiness Studies

, Volume 13, Issue 3, pp 455–467 | Cite as

Predicting Well-Being From Personality in Adolescents and Older Adults

  • Ana Butkovic
  • Irma Brkovic
  • Denis Bratko
Article
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Abstract

The relationship between personality and well-being is dynamic and therefore should be examined within aging perspective. In study presented here we compared the prediction of well-being from personality in two samples–223 adolescents attending high-school (16–19 years; M = 16.94, SD = 0.51) and 134 older adults (54–90 years; M = 77.20, SD = 7.39) living in retirement home or at home. Different aspects of well-being were included in the study. Subjective well-being was measured with Index of Well-Being, but also self-esteem and loneliness were included as measures of psychological well-being. Personality (measured with FFPI; Hendriks et al. in Pers Individ Dif 27:307–325, 1999) significantly predicted indicators of well-being (Self-Esteem, Loneliness and Index of Well-Being) in both samples, with emotional stability and extraversion as most pronounced predictors. Personality explained more variance of well-being in adolescents than in older adults, and more variance in eudaimonic than hedonic aspects of well-being.

Keywords

Personality Well-Being Adolescents Older adults 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social SciencesUniversity of ZagrebZagrebCroatia

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