Money won’t make you happy but your personality will, study finds
Money and other life circumstances are far less important to life satisfaction than personality is, according to a new study.
In one of the most comprehensive studies on the topic, experts found that 80 per cent of the differences in people’s general life satisfaction could be traced back to their personalities, while individual life circumstances such as wealth accounted for little.
Researchers analysed people’s answers to questions about their life satisfaction and personality and checked their assessments versus that of someone who knew them well.
Whereas asking participants to rate their own happiness can result in biased answers, the researchers decided to cross-reference their answers with an “informant”, reducing the risk of error and the influence of specific events.
The study, led by researchers from the University of Edinburgh and University of Tartu in Estonia, looked at the satisfaction levels of around 22,000 people.
Participants had to fill out surveys on their personalities, general life satisfaction, and then satisfaction across eight separate domains of their lives, while informants did the same for the subject, giving three robust samples to analyse.
The researchers found that they could predict someone’s life satisfaction with 80 to 90 per cent accuracy based on five key personality traits.
Personality traits
They said that the overlap was “strikingly high” and suggests “how satisfied people are with their lives is usually quite close to what one could expect from their personality traits”.
The largest correlations were with emotional stability, extrovertness and conscientiousness, while the relationship with agreeableness and openness was smaller but significant.
Dr Rene Mottus, lead researcher from the University of Edinburgh, said: “It turns out people’s life satisfaction is even more about their personality than we thought.
“Personality tends to be stable, gradually shaped by a mix of thousands of experiences and genetic factors,” he said. “So, the more satisfaction is about personality, the less it is expected to react to life’s ebb and flow.”
The study highlighted that while satisfaction does fluctuate at different points in life, it tends to return to consistent levels.
“Most people’s life satisfaction is highly consistent with their personality traits, even across many years,” the authors concluded. “Satisfaction is usually shaped by these same relatively stable factors that shape personality traits more broadly.”
Dr Mottus said: “Broadly speaking, more satisfied people were more emotionally stable, extroverted and conscientious.
“But more specifically, those satisfied with their life felt understood, excited and decisive, while less satisfied people felt envious, bored, used, unable and unrewarded.”
He added: “This does not mean that experiences cannot have lasting influences on life satisfaction. But when experiences do matter, they have to shape people much more generally than simply making them more or less satisfied with life. This takes time and doesn’t happen too often.”
The study’s findings were published in the Journal of Personality and Psychology.