Both extraversion & agreeableness are positively associated with life satisfaction and this association is much stronger for extraversion; agreeableness can even be detrimental on life satisfaction

Agreeableness, extraversion and life satisfaction: Investigating the mediating roles of social inclusion and status. Filip Fors Connolly, Ingemar Johansson Sevä. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, June 22 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12755

Abstract: We examine inclusion and status as potential mediators in the relationships between extraversion and agreeableness, on the one hand, and life satisfaction, on the other hand. Previous research has shown that agreeableness is less strongly related to life satisfaction compared to extraversion. We argue that the relatively weak association between agreeableness and life satisfaction is due to the fact that, even though this personality trait is positively related to inclusion, it is only weakly related to status. Using structural equation modeling (SEM) and survey data from Australia, Denmark and Sweden, we test five hypotheses about the linkages between these personality traits, inclusion, status and life satisfaction. Our results show that both extraversion and agreeableness are positively associated with life satisfaction and that this association is much stronger for extraversion. Furthermore, our results show that extraversion is reliably associated with both inclusion and status, whereas agreeableness is a reliable predictor of inclusion but not of status. Turning to our mediation analysis, our main results demonstrate that the relationship between extraversion and life satisfaction is fully mediated by both inclusion and status, whereas the relationship between agreeableness and life satisfaction is partially mediated by inclusion. Our mediation analysis further shows that agreeableness has a negative direct effect on life satisfaction over and above the positive indirect effect through inclusion. Our findings highlight the role of both inclusion and status as important mediators in the relationships between extraversion and agreeableness, on the one hand, and life satisfaction, on the other hand.

DISCUSSION

The purpose of this study was to increase knowledge about the role of both social inclusion and social status in explaining the relationships between the personality traits extraversion and agreeableness, on the one hand, and life satisfaction, on the other hand. Given that both inclusion and status constitute the social basis of life satisfaction, it is surprising that no previous studies have investigated the extent to which each of these social needs can explain the relationship between personality traits and life satisfaction. More specifically, it is notable that the role of social status largely has been neglected in the literature on subjective well-being until recently, and that no studies have examined the mediating role of status in the extraversion–life satisfaction relationship as well as in the agreeableness–life satisfaction relationship.

Turning to our main result, we expected that status should mediate the relationship between extraversion and life satisfaction over and above inclusion, and that inclusion but not status should mediate the relationship between agreeableness and life satisfaction. The results confirm our hypotheses in showing that the relationship between extraversion and life satisfaction is mediated by both status and inclusion, whereas the relationship between agreeableness and life satisfaction is primarily mediated by inclusion. In addition, we found a direct negative effect of agreeableness on life satisfaction over and above the indirect positive effect through inclusion. We thus contribute to previous research by showing that both status and inclusion are independently and positively related to life satisfaction, thereby confirming that the social basis of life satisfaction is constituted by both types of social rewards. We also replicated results from previous research in showing that extraversion displays a much stronger relationship to life satisfaction than agreeableness. Our study also adds to previous research by demonstrating that extraversion is reliably related to both inclusion and status, whereas agreeableness is only a reliable predictor of inclusion but not of status. Although previous studies have demonstrated similar relationships, our study contributes using a larger and more representative sample than most other studies (cf. Anderson et al., 2001; Mahadevan et al., 2019).

If high levels of life satisfaction depend on being both included and admired, traits that increase both of these needs will have a larger impact compared to traits that only fulfill one of these needs. Previous studies on the relationship between extraversion and life satisfaction have largely focused on measures related to inclusion as an important mediator. However, based on our findings, inclusion is only a partial mediator in this relationship, as status also plays an important role. The role of status is compatible with Smillie et al. (2015) and Sun et al. (2017), who found that social contribution is an important mediator in the extraversion-positive affect relationship. Since social contribution most likely is an important antecedent of status, we consider our results to be an extension of these studies on the role of extraversion, social contribution and positive affect. Nevertheless, we suggest that future studies should further assess the relative importance of social contribution and social status as mediators in the relationship between extraversion and life satisfaction.

Regarding inclusion, our findings showed that inclusion in the family domain was more strongly related to life satisfaction than inclusion in the domain of friends. This result mirrors previous studies, which have found that satisfaction with family is a stronger correlate of life satisfaction than satisfaction with friends (Tiefenbach & Kohlbacher, 2015). We also found that both agreeableness and extraversion were positively related to inclusion in the domain of family to a similar degree, but that extraversion was slightly more strongly related to inclusion when it comes to friends. This suggests that extraversion is at least as important as agreeableness in nurturing positive social relationships beyond its effect on social status.

When it comes to the negative direct association between agreeableness and life satisfaction observed in our mediation model, that is, when holding levels of inclusion constant, a more agreeable person tends to have lower levels of life satisfaction compared to a less agreeable person. Future studies should devote attention to explaining this negative association. We consider one possible explanation to be that individuals with high levels of agreeableness risk being exploited in social interactions (Hilbig, Glöckner & Zettler, 2014), which may negatively affect life satisfaction through reducing personal goal attainment.

We acknowledge the following potential limitations in our study. Since our analysis is cross-sectional, we cannot claim that the observed effects are causal, only that the results do not reject causal effects. However, since personality traits are highly stable over time (especially rank order stability) and partly inherited (McCrae, 2011; Specht, Egloff & Schmukle, 2011), it is reasonable to assume that personality traits mainly affect status and inclusion rather than the reverse. However, since some studies show that life events can affect personality traits (Scollon & Diener, 2006), reciprocal effects between status/inclusion and personality traits can certainly not be entirely ruled out. An important avenue for future research is, therefore, to investigate this issue using longitudinal data and/or experimental research designs.

Another potential limitation is that all our measures were based on self-reports. As a consequence, the strength of the associations between agreeableness, extraversion, inclusion, status and life satisfaction may be inflated due to common method bias (see Schimmack & Kim, 2020). However, even though the magnitude of these associations may be inflated in an absolute sense, the relative strength of these associations should still be reasonably accurate. For instance, even if the true association between extraversion and status is weaker than the one based on self-reports, the finding that extraversion is more strongly associated with status than agreeableness should still be valid.

Furthermore, even though we used large-scale survey data, in contrast to most previous studies on the relationship between personality and life satisfaction, our data were restricted to participants from Australia, Denmark and Sweden. Previous research provides some support for cross-cultural differences in terms of the associations between personality traits and life satisfaction. For instance, Kim et al. (2018) found that extraversion was a stronger predictor of life satisfaction in US samples compared to samples from the UK, Germany and Japan. It is conceivable that the cultural emphasis on social status attainment in American society might explain this pattern. Thus, future research should investigate whether the mediating role of status in the extraversion–life satisfaction relationship is stronger in the US compared to the countries analysed in this paper.

There could also be potential limitations associated with the measures used in our analysis, in particular regarding the measures of extraversion, agreeableness and inclusion. For example, the items used to capture inclusion were originally created for measuring loneliness and relationship satisfaction. However, since we were able to estimate an underlying latent factor using these items, we argue that this factor most likely captures the degree to which individuals are included in the domains of family and friends. When it comes to our personality measures, a limitation is that we used a relatively short scale with only four items for capturing extraversion and agreeableness, respectively. Consequently, our measures may not capture each trait in a fully balanced way. For instance, previous studies have shown that the mini-IPIP measure used to capture extraversion in this study relates more strongly to facets such as gregariousness and friendliness compared to assertiveness (Donnellan et al., 2006), which could have inflated the association between extraversion and life satisfaction somewhat. Future studies should, therefore, attempt to replicate our findings using more exhaustive measures of extraversion and agreeableness.

Finally, future research should also investigate to what extent status and inclusion mediates the relationship between extraversion, agreeableness and other forms of well-being such as psychological well-being (Ryff, 1989). It has previously been shown that personality traits are more strongly associated with it than with life satisfaction (Anglim et al., 2020; Kokko, Tolvanen & Pulkkinen, 2013). However, no studies have to our knowledge investigated how psychological well-being is related to social status. Another important avenue for future research is to investigate whether self-esteem acts as an additional mediator in the relationships analysed here. Mahadevan et al. (2019) recently showed that self-esteem tracks both inclusion and status. One could, therefore, expect that extraversion and agreeableness should affect inclusion/status, which in turn influence self-esteem and subsequently judgements of life satisfaction.

We highlight several important contributions of our study. First, while previous research on life satisfaction as well its relationship to personality has primarily focused on social inclusion, our study has shed light on the importance of social status for life satisfaction as well the role of status in the relationship between personality traits and life satisfaction. Second, our study also increases the understanding of why extraversion is more strongly related to life satisfaction than is agreeableness, by showing that both inclusion and status mediate the relationship between extraversion and life satisfaction, while the relationship between agreeableness and life satisfaction is primarily mediated by inclusion. Furthermore, we contribute by demonstrating that agreeableness is negatively associated with life satisfaction when taking the mediating role of inclusion into account. Our findings thereby suggest that pro-social motives and behaviors, which characterize high levels of agreeableness, may have only a weak effect on life satisfaction, since they do not necessarily lead to higher status. Moreover, high levels of agreeableness that do not lead to social inclusion may even be detrimental for life satisfaction. Third, while our study emphasizes the importance of social status for life satisfaction, it also points to a potential dilemma when thinking about how to promote life satisfaction and life satisfaction–enhancing behaviors. The pursuit of social status constitutes a zero-sum game, that is, one individual’s attainment of status will, by definition, lead to another individual’s loss of status. Therefore, promoting the status-enhancing effects of extraversion will not necessarily be beneficial for societal levels of life satisfaction and overall subjective well-being. Moreover, promoting agreeableness as well as the softer aspects of extraversion (warmth) should increase inclusion, which is beneficial for other people and society at large.