شخصیت به عنوان یک عامل پیش بینی کننده رضایت از زندگی در نمونه نوجوانان چک: 3 سال پیگیری مطالعه

The study examined personality predictors (based on Cloninger’s psychobiological model of temperament and character – TCI) of life satisfaction in a sample of 15-year-old Czech adolescents (N = 173) and subsequently 3 years after. The focus of the study was to determine the personality dimensions that predict life satisfaction and how those change over 3 years of adolescence. Of all dimensions, significant differences between the two age groups were found only in the character dimensions Self-Directedness and Self-Transcendence. Using stepwise regression analysis, the character scale Self-Directedness alone accounted for 15% of the variance in life satisfaction among 15-year-old adolescents, whereas in the 18-year-old group, 30% of the variance in life satisfaction was explained by the character dimension Self-Directedness and the temperament dimensions Harm Avoidance and Reward Dependence. In both age groups, only Self-Directedness seems to make a unique contribution towards explaining life satisfaction. The results demonstrate that character changes might also account for a great amount of variance in life satisfaction.

Well-being, a multidimensional construct defined as one’s assessment of life in general (Diener, 1984 and Diener et al., 1999), comprises three semi-dependent components: life satisfaction (a cognitive component) and positive and negative affect (affective components). Life satisfaction (LS) or subjective well-being, i.e., an individual’s subjective assessment of overall quality of life (Diener & Diener, 1995), brings about many benefits in people’s lives, in social (e.g., Marks & Fleming, 1999), mental (Lewinsohn, Redner, & Seeley, 1991), and physical health (Howell et al., 2007 and Lyubomirsky et al., 2005a) domains. Although widely studied in adult populations, research concerning the personality determinants of life satisfaction in the adolescent population has gained attention only recently (Fogle et al., 2002, Garcia, 2011a, Garcia, 2011b, Ho et al., 2008 and Proctor et al., 2009). Several studies have shown that personality is an essential determinant of life satisfaction (Cloninger and Zohar, 2011, Diener and Lucas, 1999, Emmons and Diener, 1985, Fogle et al., 2002, Garcia, 2011a, Garcia, 2011b, Josefsson et al., 2011, Lyubomirsky et al., 2005b and Rigby and Huebner, 2005). LS seems to be particularly important in adolescence because it mediates the relationship between negative life events and subsequent externalizing behavior problems (Suldo & Huebner, 2004), but also because lasting LS arises as a result of meaningful values and personal goals during character development (Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2008). Furthermore, personality variables (Big Five Factors, McCrae & Costa, 1990) are consistently the best predictors of LS (Diener et al., 1999), even more than environmental or demographic factors. Namely, Neuroticism and Extraversion correlate with LS in adulthood and adolescents (DeNeve and Cooper, 1998, Diener et al., 2003, Garcia, 2011a, Huebner et al., 2004 and Schimmack et al., 2004). The heritability and relative stability, particularly of those two traits, have been demonstrated (Bouchard & Loehlin, 2001). However, most of the studies focused on adolescents´ well-being investigated the relationship between personality assessed by trait models of personality (Big Five Factors, Costa & McCrae, 1992), omitting an important contribution by character (the Temperament and Character Inventory, Cloninger, Svrakic, & Przybeck, 1993) to life satisfaction as pointed out by Garcia (2011a). Thus, we adopted Cloninger’s biopsychosocial model of personality, which deems personality an interaction between a biological base (i.e., temperament) and its modification elicited by self experience (i.e., character) (Cloninger, 1994, Cloninger, 2004 and Cloninger et al., 1993). While temperament is genetically influenced, character is mutable due to age and maturation. Character is defined as a construct representing one’s self-government, as it modulates the leverage of unconscious or preconscious automatic percepts and affects managed by temperament by assigning meaning to them (Cloninger et al., 1993 and Svrakic et al., 2002). Character has been found to strongly correlate with well-being, while temperament is only weakly related (Cloninger, 2004, Cloninger and Zohar, 2011, Josefsson et al., 2011 and Ruini et al., 2003). A study by Tkach and Lyubomirsky (2006) showed that intentional, self-regulatory behaviors work jointly with traits to explain well-being. People experiencing greater life satisfaction are more likely to perceive greater self-control (Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002), tend to be more cooperative and centered on others (Williams & Shiaw, 1999), have a greater locus of control (Ash & Huebner, 2001) and greater self-efficacy (Fogle et al., 2002 and Fogle et al., 2002). Those characteristics are embedded in Cloninger’s definition of character (Garcia, 2011b), which consists of three dimensions pertaining to self-relation to self (Self-Directedness – SD), to others (Cooperativeness – CO), and to the universe at large (Self-Transcendence – ST) (Cloninger, 2004). While equally important to studying adult populations, examining the relationship between personality and life satisfaction among adolescents is particularly important as it might help in the understanding of the developmental aspect of the relationship between personality and life satisfaction. As character evolves it can modulate the way certain negative situations are experienced and promote healthier coping strategies, and subsequently improve one’s happiness. Garcia (2011a) states that longitudinal studies concentrating on the transition between adolescence and adulthood need to be conducted in order to answer the question of the role of character in life satisfaction. Our study focused on examining this linkage between personality and life satisfaction in Czech adolescents at 15 and subsequently 18 years of age. Our study was premised on the assumption that character is an important predictor of life satisfaction among adolescents due to its role in the perception of experienced emotions (Cloninger, 2004 and Kim-Prieto et al., 2005). Furthermore, we took into account that the importance of character increases with age, predominantly between adolescence and early adulthood (Cloninger et al., 1993). Arnett (2000) suggests that engagement of character is very important for the period of emerging adulthood, i.e., the period between 18 AND 25-years-old. This period is characteristic of individualistic qualities of character, such as accepting responsibility for oneself and making independent decisions (Arnett, 1998). Taken together, character should gain significance in explaining life satisfaction with increasing age (i.e., in our case at the age of 18).