Influence of extraversion and neuroticism on subjective well-being: Happy and unhappy people

“In nonclinical populations, evidence suggests that broad and stable personality traits represent major determinants of depression [41], psychological distress [42], life stress [43], and subjective mood [44] and well-being [45].”

“For example, extraverted individuals are happier to anxious and worried ones [284].”

“…one of the most consistent findings in the literature is that Extraversion is correlated with both the experience (Schimmack, Radhakrishnan, Oishi, & Dzokoto, 2002) and expression of positive emotions (Costa & McCrae, 1980; Emmons & Diener, 1985, 1986; Pavot, Diener, & Fujita, 1990; Ruch, 1993).”

“…been linked to positive psychological outcomes at the individual level across countries—extraversion, promotion focus, and locomotive regulatory mode (Costa & McCrae, 1980; Diener, Sandvik, Pavot, & Fujita, 1992; Higgins, Pierro, & Kruglanski, 2008; Lucas et al., 2000; Schmitt & Allik, 2005).”

“Costa and McCrae (1980) suggest a mediating role for moods in the relationship of neuroticism and extraversion to subjective well-being.”

“Other studies suggest that personality characteristics (e.g., Costa & McCrae, 1980a, 1980b; George, 1985) and developmental influences across the life course (Caspi & Elder, 1986; Elder, Liker, & Jaworski, 1984) are stronger predictors of subjective well-being in old age than objective…”

“Trait NA is more or less synonymous with neuroticism, whereas trait PA is strongly related to extraversion ( Costa & McCrae, 1980; Emmons & Diener, 1985; Tellegen, 1985; Watson & Clark, 1984, in press).”

“Such effects have not been investigated in the extraversion literature, in part because the trait is linked to positive emotions (Costa & McCrae, 1980), and has thus been seen as beneficial rather than harmful.”

“Arguments such as those of McCloskey and Schaar (1965) and Costa and McCrae (1980) concerning the impact of personality on self-opinion represent a minority view within the large fields of research on self-concept, attitudes and opinions.”

“…parts are related di€erentially and independently to the personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism has been extensively documented since Costa and McCrae (1980) demonstrated that positive a€ect correlates (positively) with extraversion and that negative a€ect correlates (negatively)…”

“Another problem is that previous studies sometimes based conclusions on observed correlations that failed to take correlations between extraversion and neuroticism into account ( Costa and McCrae 1980 ).”

“We also included items from the neuroticism scale of the NEO personality inventory (18).”

“Emotional stability has traditionally been considered a key component of psychological health and well-being (Costa & McCrae, 1980 ; DeNeve & Cooper, 1998 ; Eysenck, 1967 ).”

“High neuroticism predisposes people to react with more negative emotion (anxiety, depressive mood, anger, and irritability) to stressful circumstances [21–23].”

“This has led them to assert that these two basic dimensions of personality lead to positive and negative affect, respectively ( Costa & McRae, 1980; McCrae & Costa, 1991).”

“Set-point theory had several precursors, including adaptation theory (Brickman and Campbell 1971; Brickman et al. 1978), the personality theory of SWB (Costa and McCrae 1980), and dynamic equilibrium theory (Headey and Wearing 1989, 1992).”

“…conflictual relationships, reduced perceptions of support availability (Russell et al. 1997), negative affect and chronic psychological distress (Costa and McCrae 1988; Larsen and Ketelaar 1991; Watson and Clark 1984), while extroversion has been associated with larger networks, more frequent…”

“Adding to findings on young and middle-aged adults (e.g., Costa & McCrae, 1980; Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999), our study provides evidence that extraversion plays a positive role for well-being over the whole life span.”

“The traditional persepctive in psychology is that personality is relatively enduring and stable – essentially personality has been thought of as fixed, particulalrly after the age of 30, where it has been said to be " set like plaster " (Costa & McCrae, 1980, 1988).”

“Costa and McCrae (1980) present evidence which indicates that individual PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERMINANTS OF LIFE QUALITY 27 differences in extraversion and neuroticism relate to life quality ten years later.”

“Specifically, people are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain, and therefore they attempt to increase or maintain positive emotions and to decrease negative emotions at any given moment (R. J. Larsen, 2000; Thayer, 2000; Tice, Baumeister, & Zhang, 2004; Tice & Bratslavsky, 2000).”

“Extraversion was found to be positively related to positive emotions in many studies ( Costa and McCrae, 1980”

“Extraverted individuals tend to be high on sociability, gregariousness, talkativeness, and assertiveness, whereas narcissists exhibit grandiosity, arrogance, selfabsorption, and entitlement (Costa and McCrae, 1980; Emmons, 1987).”

“In addition, personality traits are related to psychopathology (11–13), coping mechanisms (14), adherence to medical treatment (15,16), well-being (17), as well as interpersonal relations and social integration (18), which in turn are all related to health outcomes (19,20).”

“Extraversion typically accounts for about 15% and in one study accounted for 34% of the variance in positive aVect (Costa & McCrae, 1980; David et al., 1997; Gross et al., 1998; Larsen & Ketelaar, 1989, 1991; Lucas & Baird, 2004; McCrae & Costa, 1991; Rusting, 1999; Watson & Clark, 1992).”

“neuroticism or extraversion) [90], positive factors (e.”

“This finding is consistent with numerous studies that relate extraversion to pleasant affects and neuroticism to unpleasant affects (Coté and Moskowitz, 1998; Costa and McCrae, 1980; Gross et al., 1997; Izard et al., 1993; Larsen and Ketelaar, 1991; Watson and Clark, 1992).”

“negative moods, respectively ( Costa & McCrae, 1980 ), one could argue that the artistic”

“Neuroticism is marked by a lack of emotional stability and a predisposition to experience negative emotions such as anxiety, stress, and worry at a relatively intense level and for extended durations (Costa & McCrae, 1980; 1992; additional control variables are discussed below).”

“Maternal neuroticism is a stable and enduring tendency to experience distress frequently [44, 45] which predisposes mothers to internalizing psychiatric conditions i.”

“Thus, the two types of affect have different links with biological systems of activation (Cacioppo, Gardner, & Berntson, 1999) and personality dispositions (Costa & McCrae, 1980).”

“For example, the biological theory of personality explores how extraversion and neuroticism are linked with the body's physiological response (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1991), and these traits generally correlate with positive and negative mood, respectively (Costa & McCrae, 1980; Rusting & Larsen, 1997).”

“Population: US 42 Costa and McCrae (1980).”

“Using data from their 4-wave Australian longitudinal study they dismiss the Costa and McCrae (1980; 1984) proposition because this would mean that people’s level of SWB “would remain virtually unchanged over their entire lifetimes” (1992, p. 145), which their own data showed was not correct.”

“…of personality have often focused on individual differences in affective processes (Canli, Sivers, Whitf ield, Gotlib, & Gabrieli, 2002; Costa & McCrae, 1980; Larsen & Ketelaar, 1991), there is also theoretical and empirical work focusing on differences in information processing,…”

“Contributions from psychology (Diener, 1984; Brief et al., 1993; Costa and McCrae, 1980; Veenhoven, 1994), economics (Torrance, 1987: Juster and Stafford, 1985) and sociology (Campbell et al., 1976) have helped the paradigm of QofL to mature and the measurement of (health-related) QofL has improved…”

“Inferences were also drawn from personality studies linking happiness to traits known to be stable in adulthood (1, 9, 16).”

“The contention about the independence of negative and positive affect was strengthened by Costa and McCrae's (1980) finding, that they tend to have different correlates, namely, that negative affect is related to neuroticism and positive affect to extraversion.”

“By comparing coefficients, our results supported the concept that negative consumption emotion has a stronger influence on customer loyalty than positive consumption emotion, which is consistent with other studies (Costa & McCrae, 1980; Larsen & Ketelaar, 1991; Mooradian & Olver, 1997).”

“And these outcomes can be predicted months after assessment (Matsumoto et al., 2003; Yoo, Matsumoto, & LeRoux, in press).”

“Moreover , by many authors extraversion is held to be the cardinal trait of happiness and well-being (Argyle & Lu, 1990; Argyle & Martin, 1991; Baumeister, 1991; Costa & McCrae, 1980; Diener & Larsen, 1993 ).”

“Cognitive styles have been referred to as the distinctive ways that individuals come to grips with reality [23], and these dispositions have cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects [24,25].”

“Researchers have also found that wellbeing is related to personality, specifically that happiness is associated with greater extraversion and lower neuroticism (Costa and McCrae 1980).”

“…e.g., Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985)—and positive and negative affective states, accordingly (Abe & Izard, 1999; Carver, Sutton, & Scheier, 2000; Chang, 1997; Costa & McCrea, 1980; Rusting, 1998; Rusting & Larsen, 1997; Tellegen, 1985; Watson, Weise, Vaidya, & Tellegen, 1999; Wilson & Gullone, 1999).”

“Neuroticism, a trait characterized by the tendency to experience negative affect ( Costa & McCrae, 1980; H. J. Eysenck, 1967), appears in nearly all taxonomies of personality.”

“Likewise, personality theory highlights the link between neuroticism and greater experience of negative emotions such as anxiety, depression, and hostility (e.g., Costa & McCrae, 1980).”

“…extraversion, agreeableness, openness, and conscientiousness; McCrae & Costa, 1997), has been linked to SWB in several studies, finding substantial relations between personality factors and SWB (e.g., Costa & McCrae, 1980; Hart, 1999; Heller, Watson, & Ilies, 2004; McCrae & Costa, 1991).”

“They appreciate life more and are more confident (Costa and McCrae, 1980; Varg, 1997).”

“Subjective well-being correlated negatively with the socalled Big Five factor neuroticism and positively with the factors extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience in descending magnitude in 2 American studies [21,22] .”