In this study we compared the relationships between time perspectives, the Big Five personality traits, and life satisfaction. Our results replicated past work in that personality traits and time perspectives were both associated with life satisfaction. Individuals high on extraversion and those having a past positive and a present hedonism time perspective were more satisfied with their lives; individuals high on neuroticism and those having a past negative time perspective were less satisfied with their lives. Further, hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that time perspectives accounted for an additional 13.7% of the variance in life satisfaction beyond personality traits; whereas, personality traits accounted for an additional 4.4% of the variance in life satisfaction beyond time perspectives. Mediation models demonstrated that time perspectives partially accounted for the personality and life satisfaction relationship. We discuss the possibility that most of the association between personality traits and life satisfaction may be due to individual differences in cognitive time frames.
The relations between personality traits and life satisfaction are well documented (Diener and Lucas, 1999 and Schimmack et al., 2004). For example, there are robust associations between the Big Five personality traits and life satisfaction with extraversion and neuroticism as the most consistent predictors (DeNeve and Cooper, 1998 and Steel et al., 2008). However, the mechanisms to explain these relations are not fully understood. Traditionally, two theoretical approaches have been proposed to explain the strong correlations between personality traits and subjective well-being (see McCrae & Costa, 1991, for a review). The top-down (or temperament) approach emphasizes direct associations between personality traits and life satisfaction. The bottom-up (or instrumental) approach suggests that the relations are indirect and different situations, circumstances, and events in people’s lives lead to differences in well-being (Lucas & Baird, 2004).
However, though only about 10% of the variance in life satisfaction is accounted for by objective life circumstances and relevant events (Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999), it appears that when people judge their life satisfaction they reflect on their feelings about these life circumstances and events (Schimmack, Diener, & Oishi, 2002). This would suggest that the emotional experiences associated with life circumstances are likely better predictors of subjective well-being (SWB) than merely the experiences of the circumstances themselves. Thus, it is possible, and even likely, that the cognitive processes by which individuals remember, experience, and anticipate the circumstances in their life explain important variance in life satisfaction (Lyubomirsky, 2001). Also, individual differences in the cognitive evaluation of one’s past, present, and anticipated future may be the mechanisms by which personality traits lead to increased life satisfaction. For example, chronically accessible information, such as past emotional experiences, strongly predicts life satisfaction (Ross, Eyman, & Kishchuck, 1986). Thus, an extension of the bottom-up approach would be to examine the emotional experiences and cognitive evaluations of one’s life circumstances as mediators of the robust link between personality traits and SWB.
