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Doing well-being : Self-reported activities are related to subjective well-being

Nilsson, August Håkan LU ; Hellryd, Erik and Kjell, Oscar LU (2022) In PLoS ONE 17(6 June).
Abstract

Activities and Subjective Well-Being (SWB) have been shown to be intricately related to each other. However, no research to date has shown whether individuals understand how their everyday activities relate to their SWB. Furthermore, the assessment of activities has been limited to predefined types of activities and/or closed-ended questions. In two studies, we examine the relationship between self-reported everyday activities and SWB, while allowing individuals to express their activities freely by allowing open-ended responses that were then analyzed with state-of-the-art (transformers-based) Natural Language Processing. In study 1 (N = 284), self-reports of Yesterday’s Activities did not significantly relate to SWB, whereas... (More)

Activities and Subjective Well-Being (SWB) have been shown to be intricately related to each other. However, no research to date has shown whether individuals understand how their everyday activities relate to their SWB. Furthermore, the assessment of activities has been limited to predefined types of activities and/or closed-ended questions. In two studies, we examine the relationship between self-reported everyday activities and SWB, while allowing individuals to express their activities freely by allowing open-ended responses that were then analyzed with state-of-the-art (transformers-based) Natural Language Processing. In study 1 (N = 284), self-reports of Yesterday’s Activities did not significantly relate to SWB, whereas activities reported as having the most impact on SWB in the past four weeks had small but significant correlations to most of the SWB scales (r = .14 –.23, p < .05). In Study 2 (N = 295), individuals showed strong agreement with each other about activities that they considered to increase or decrease SWB (AUC = .995). Words describing activities that increased SWB related to physically and cognitively active activities and social activities (“football”, “meditation”, “friends”), whereas words describing activities that decreased SWB were mainly activity features related to imbalance (“too”, “much”, “enough”). Individuals reported both activities and descriptive words that reflect their SWB, where the activity words had generally small but significant correlations to SWB (r =. 17 –.33, p < .05) and the descriptive words had generally strong correlations to SWB (r = .39–63, p < .001). We call this correlational gap the well-being/activity description gap and discuss possible explanations for the phenomenon.

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author
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organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
PLoS ONE
volume
17
issue
6 June
article number
e0270503
publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
external identifiers
  • pmid:35749555
  • scopus:85132634101
ISSN
1932-6203
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0270503
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
d34617af-bb9d-4886-8767-52c3b66ca7a7
date added to LUP
2022-09-02 15:53:09
date last changed
2024-04-17 14:03:23
@article{d34617af-bb9d-4886-8767-52c3b66ca7a7,
  abstract     = {{<p>Activities and Subjective Well-Being (SWB) have been shown to be intricately related to each other. However, no research to date has shown whether individuals understand how their everyday activities relate to their SWB. Furthermore, the assessment of activities has been limited to predefined types of activities and/or closed-ended questions. In two studies, we examine the relationship between self-reported everyday activities and SWB, while allowing individuals to express their activities freely by allowing open-ended responses that were then analyzed with state-of-the-art (transformers-based) Natural Language Processing. In study 1 (N = 284), self-reports of Yesterday’s Activities did not significantly relate to SWB, whereas activities reported as having the most impact on SWB in the past four weeks had small but significant correlations to most of the SWB scales (r = .14 –.23, p &lt; .05). In Study 2 (N = 295), individuals showed strong agreement with each other about activities that they considered to increase or decrease SWB (AUC = .995). Words describing activities that increased SWB related to physically and cognitively active activities and social activities (“football”, “meditation”, “friends”), whereas words describing activities that decreased SWB were mainly activity features related to imbalance (“too”, “much”, “enough”). Individuals reported both activities and descriptive words that reflect their SWB, where the activity words had generally small but significant correlations to SWB (r =. 17 –.33, p &lt; .05) and the descriptive words had generally strong correlations to SWB (r = .39–63, p &lt; .001). We call this correlational gap the well-being/activity description gap and discuss possible explanations for the phenomenon.</p>}},
  author       = {{Nilsson, August Håkan and Hellryd, Erik and Kjell, Oscar}},
  issn         = {{1932-6203}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{6 June}},
  publisher    = {{Public Library of Science (PLoS)}},
  series       = {{PLoS ONE}},
  title        = {{Doing well-being : Self-reported activities are related to subjective well-being}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270503}},
  doi          = {{10.1371/journal.pone.0270503}},
  volume       = {{17}},
  year         = {{2022}},
}