Subjective life satisfaction

Life satisfaction is the way people evaluate their lives and how they feel about their directions and options for the future. It is a measure of well-being and may be assessed in terms of mood, satisfaction with relations with others and with achieved goals, self-concepts, and self-perceived ability to cope with daily life. It is having a favorable attitude of one's life as a whole rather than an assessment of current feelings. Life satisfaction has been measured in relation to economic standing, amount of education, experiences, and residence, as well as many other topics.

One of the most studied concepts of personality is the big five model with dimensions of openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. In a research carried out by Deneve and Cooper in 1998, multiple studies were analyzed and certain personality questionnaires that linked subjective well-being (SWB) and personality measures. They found that neuroticism was the strongest predictor of life satisfaction and negative affect while the personality measure 'openness to experience' correlated equally to life satisfaction and positive affect. Amongst other personality traits chronotype has been consequently related to life satisfaction; morning oriented people (larks) showed higher life satisfaction than evening oriented individuals (owls).

Life satisfaction can reflect experiences that have influenced a person in a positive way. These experiences have the ability to motivate people to pursue and reach their goals. There are two kinds of emotions that may influence how people perceive their lives. Hope and optimism both consist of cognitive processes that are usually oriented towards the reaching of goals and the perception of those goals. Additionally, optimism is linked to higher life satisfaction, whereas pessimism is related to symptoms in depression. The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) is a single scale that is used by UNESCO, the CIA, the New Economics Foundation, the WHO, the Veenhoven Database, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer, and the UNHDR to measure how one views his or her self-esteem, well-being and overall happiness with life. Previous modeling showed that positive views and life satisfaction were completely mediated by the concept of self-esteem, together with the different ways in which ideas and events are perceived by people. Several studies found that self-esteem plays a definite role in influencing life satisfaction. There is also a homeostatic model that supports these findings. A person's mood and outlook on life can also influence their perception of their own life satisfaction.

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