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The Influence of the Evaluative Factor on the Relationship Between Personality and Well-Being

Kallio Strand, Kalle LU (2020) PSYP01 20201
Department of Psychology
Abstract
As social desirability has not received enough focus when estimating the predictive power of personality in explaining well-being variance, recent accounts of the relationship between ratings of personality and well-being might be overestimated. The current study investigated the influence of social desirability, operationalized as the evaluative factor of personality (i.e., the tendency to react to evaluative content in questionnaire items), on the relationship between personality and general well-being. Participants (N = 236) completed two personality inventories (one evaluative and one evaluatively neutralized) and a total of 10 measures of subjective and psychological well-being. Structural equation modeling was employed, and model... (More)
As social desirability has not received enough focus when estimating the predictive power of personality in explaining well-being variance, recent accounts of the relationship between ratings of personality and well-being might be overestimated. The current study investigated the influence of social desirability, operationalized as the evaluative factor of personality (i.e., the tendency to react to evaluative content in questionnaire items), on the relationship between personality and general well-being. Participants (N = 236) completed two personality inventories (one evaluative and one evaluatively neutralized) and a total of 10 measures of subjective and psychological well-being. Structural equation modeling was employed, and model comparisons were conducted. Results identified the evaluative factor as the strongest predictor of well-being, explaining more variance than all personality traits combined. When accounting for the evaluative factor, the only personality traits that significantly predicted general well-being were neuroticism, conscientiousness, and extraversion, as opposed to previous research in which all five personality traits have been important. A model with indirect relations between personality and well-being via the evaluative factor provided the best fit to the data of the theory-based models (CFI = .908, RMSEA = .120), but an investigation of the correlation residuals suggested that several lower-order relations between personality and well-being were underestimated. Adding five such relations yielded acceptable levels of fit (CFI = .962, RMSEA = .080). The evaluative factor appears to play a large role in personality and well-being research. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed. (Less)
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author
Kallio Strand, Kalle LU
supervisor
organization
course
PSYP01 20201
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
social desirability, well-being, personality, self-ratings, structural equation modeling
language
English
id
9029961
date added to LUP
2020-09-28 15:05:31
date last changed
2021-03-09 09:42:00
@misc{9029961,
  abstract     = {{As social desirability has not received enough focus when estimating the predictive power of personality in explaining well-being variance, recent accounts of the relationship between ratings of personality and well-being might be overestimated. The current study investigated the influence of social desirability, operationalized as the evaluative factor of personality (i.e., the tendency to react to evaluative content in questionnaire items), on the relationship between personality and general well-being. Participants (N = 236) completed two personality inventories (one evaluative and one evaluatively neutralized) and a total of 10 measures of subjective and psychological well-being. Structural equation modeling was employed, and model comparisons were conducted. Results identified the evaluative factor as the strongest predictor of well-being, explaining more variance than all personality traits combined. When accounting for the evaluative factor, the only personality traits that significantly predicted general well-being were neuroticism, conscientiousness, and extraversion, as opposed to previous research in which all five personality traits have been important. A model with indirect relations between personality and well-being via the evaluative factor provided the best fit to the data of the theory-based models (CFI = .908, RMSEA = .120), but an investigation of the correlation residuals suggested that several lower-order relations between personality and well-being were underestimated. Adding five such relations yielded acceptable levels of fit (CFI = .962, RMSEA = .080). The evaluative factor appears to play a large role in personality and well-being research. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.}},
  author       = {{Kallio Strand, Kalle}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{The Influence of the Evaluative Factor on the Relationship Between Personality and Well-Being}},
  year         = {{2020}},
}