صداقت نسبت به تجارب و رضایت از زندگی بزرگسالان فعال قدیمی تر: تجزیه و تحلیل صفت و سطح جنبه

Although the contribution of personality on life satisfaction is well-recognized, less attention has been devoted to openness to experience in gerontological research. The present study aimed at testing the relation between openness to experience and life satisfaction among active older adults, both at the broad and facet-level. Two hundred and thirty-five retired adults aged from 58 to 85 years were administered the openness to experience scale of the NEO-PIR and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Multiple regression analyses revealed that openness to experience added small but incremental variance to the prediction of life satisfaction, beyond subjective health and financial satisfaction. Openness to ideas and to feelings were both positively related to older individuals’ life satisfaction, while controlling for subjective health and financial satisfaction, and accounted for a higher amount of variance than the broad openness factor. The present study suggests that during the retirement years, openness is a resource for life satisfaction. Open individuals are more likely to benefit from the opportunities of personal growth proposed during this period, and thus to satisfy their needs. In addition, a facet-level analysis could provide a fined-grained explanation of the contribution of openness to experience on life satisfaction.

Adaptation of subjective well-being (SWB) has become an important topic in gerontological research in the past decades (e.g., Diener and Suh, 1997 and Mroczek and Spiro, 2005). Research has reported that life satisfaction, the cognitive component of SWB, increases until approximately age 65–70 and then declines (Mroczek & Spiro, 2005). However, there are individual differences in life satisfaction level, rate, and direction of changes around the average trajectory (Mroczek & Spiro, 2005). The present study was designed to gain insights about the determinants of life satisfaction among older adults, and the factors which could potentially explain these individual differences.