The development of life satisfaction:does personality matter? A five year longitudinal study

TLDR: In this paper, the authors examined the role of personality in one's satisfaction with life and found that specific constellations of personality dimensions are more important for Life Satisfaction than single dimensions by itself, providing some support for the existence of a happy personality and its relation to high LS.

Abstract: Life Satisfaction, which is supposed to predict happiness, has been widely investigated. As personality is part of one of the determinants of Life Satisfaction and provides an explanation for the stability of Life Satisfaction, it gained more interest to examine the role of personality in one’s satisfaction with life. So far, it is evident that certain personality dimensions are related to Life Satisfaction. And although many different studies examined different domains within the topic of Life Satisfaction and personality, there are still some unexplored areas. In a longitudinal research, using a representative Dutch sample (N=3146), the development of Life Satisfaction across a time period of five years was examined in relation to certain personality dimensions. Differences in the development of Life Satisfaction across five years were examined between respondents who score high/low on emotional stability and between respondents who score high/low on extraversion. Results imply that, although the extent of Lifer Satisfaction is influenced by personality, it remains stable across time, regardless of the personality dimensions. The present study also presumes that specific constellations of personality dimensions are more important for Life Satisfaction than single dimensions by itself, providing some support for the existence of a happy personality and its relation to high LS.