Abstract
In the current study, we examined the relationship between Big Five personality traits, cognitive flexibility, and life satisfaction. We expected that the Big Five traits would predict cognitive flexibility, cognitive flexibility would predict life satisfaction, and cognitive flexibility would mediate the relationship between four of the Big Five traits (conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) and life satisfaction. We sampled 258 U. S. participants through MTurk, where they completed a series of self-report measures. Using path analysis, we found support for each of our predictions. Future research should examine the role of affect and cognition in the Big Five traits, and how those might predict cognitive flexibility and life satisfaction.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
Available on Open Science Framework.
References
Anglim, J., Horwood, S., Smillie, L. D., Marrero, R. J., & Wood, J. L. (2020). Predicting psychological and subjective well-being from personality: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 146(4), 279–323. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000226.
Aruguete, M. S., Ho, H., Brown, B. L., Jurs, B., Flint, E., & McCutcheon, L. E. (2019). How serious is the ‘carelessness’ problem on mechanical Turk. International Journal of Social Research Methodology: Theory and Practice, 22(5), 441–449. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2018.1563966.
Campbell, A. M., Davalos, D. B., McCabe, D. P., & Troup, L. J. (2011). Executive functions and extraversion. Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 720–725. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2011.06.018.
Cangur, S., & Ercan, I. (2015). Comparison of model fit indices used in structural equation modeling under multivariate normality. Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods, 14(1), 152–167. https://doi.org/10.22237/jmasm/1430453580.
Casler, K., Bickel, L., & Hackett, E. (2013). Separate but equal? A comparison of participants and data gathered via Amazon’s MTurk, social media, and face-to-face behavioral testing. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(6), 2165–2160. https://doi.org/10.1016/chb2103.05.009.
Chan, C., & Holosko, M. K. (2016). An overview of the use of mechanical Turk in behavioral sciences: Implications for social work. Research on Social Work Practice, 26(4), 441–448. https://doi.org/10.1177/10497315155.
Conway, A. M., Tugade, M. M., Catalino, L. I., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2013). The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions: Form, function, and mechanism. In S. A. David, I. Boniwel, & A. Conley Ayers (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of happiness (pp. 17–34). New York: Oxford University Press.
Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1980). Influence of extraversion and neuroticism on subjective well-being: Happy and unhappy people. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 668–678. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.38.4.668.
Crede, M., Harms, P., Niehorster, S., & Gaye-Valentine, A. (2012). An evaluation of the consequences of using short measures of the big five personality traits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(4), 874–888. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027403.
Curran, T. (2018). An actor-partner interdependence dyad of cognitive flexibility and indicators of social adjustment among mother-child dyads. Personality and Individual Differences, 126(1), 99–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.01.025.
Dajani, D., & Uddin, L. Q. (2015). Demystifying cognitive flexibility: Implications for clinical and developmental neuroscience. Trends in Neurosciences, 38(9), 571–578. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2015.07.003.
DeNeve, K. M., & Cooper, H. (1998). The happy personality: A meta-analysis of 137 personality traits and subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 197–229. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.2.197.
Dennis, J. P., & Vander Wal, J. S. (2010). The cognitive flexibility inventory: Instrument development and estimates of reliability and validity. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 34, 241–253. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-009-9276-4.
Diener, E. (2000). Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and a proposal for a national index. American Psychologist, 55(1), 34–43. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.34.
Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The satisfaction with life scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49, 71–75. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4901_13.
Diener, E., Oishi, S., & Lucas, R. E. (2009). Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and life satisfaction. In S. J. Lopez & C. R. Snyder (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Positive \Psychology (2nd ed., pp. 187–194). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Diener, E., Suh, E. M., Lucas, R. E., & Smith, H. L. (1999). Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 276–302. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.2.276.
Fathi-Ashtiani, M., & Sheikholeslami, R. (2019). Relationship between attachment style and psychological well-beieng: The mediating role of cognitive flexibility. Journal of Psychology, 23(2), 134–147.
Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218–226. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.218.
Hamby, T., Taylor, W., Snowden, A. K., & Peterson, R. A. (2016). A meta-analysis of the reliability of free and for pay big five scales. The Journal of Personality, 150(4), 422–430. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.2015.1060186.
Hauser, D. J., & Schwarz, N. (2016). Attentive Turkers: MTurk participants perform better on online attention checks than subject pool participants. Behavior Research Methods, 48(1), 400–407. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428.015-0578z.
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2–3), 61–83. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0999152X.
Hodson, G., & Busseri, M. A. (2012). Bright minds and dark attitudes: Lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice through right-wing ideology and lower intergroup contact. Psychological Science, 23(2), 187–195. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611421206.
Jensen-Campbell, L. A., Rosselli, M., Workman, K. A., Santisi, M., Rios, J. D., & Bojan, D. (2002). Agreeableness, conscientiousness, and effortful control processes. Journal of Research in Personality, 36(5), 476–489. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00004-1.
Johnson, D. R., & Borden, L. A. (2012). Participants at your fingertips: Using Amazon’s mechanical Turk to increase student-faculty collaborative research. Teaching of Psychology, 39, 245–251. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628312456615.
Kees, J., Berry, C., Burton, S., & Sheehan, K. (2017). An analysis of data quality: Professional panels, student subject pools, and Amazon’s mechanical Turk. Journal of Advertising, 46(1), 141–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2016.1269304.
Kim, H., Schimmack, U., Oisho, S., & Tsutsui, I. (2018). Extraversion and life satisfaction: A cross-cultural examination of student and nationally representative samples. Journal of Personality, 86(4), 604–618. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12339.
Kline, E. B. (2011). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling (3rd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.
Koesten, J., Schrodt, P., & Ford, D. J. (2009). Cognitive flexibility as a mediator of family communication environments and young adults’ well-being. Health Communication, 24, 82–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410230802607024.
Kunicki, Z. J., & Harlow, L. L. (2020). Towards a higher-order model of resilience. Social Indicators Research, 151, 329–344. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-020-02368-x.
Magnus, K., Diener, E., Fujita, F., & Pavot, W. (1993). Extraversion and neuroticism as predictors of objective life events: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1046–1053. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.65.5.1046.
Marcionetti, J., & Rossier, J. (2016). Global life satisfaction in adolescence: The role of personality traits, self-esteem and self-efficacy. Journal of Individual Differences, 37(3), 135–144. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000198.
Martin, M. M., & Anderson, C. M. (1998). The cognitive flexibility scale: Three validity studies. Communication Reports, 11, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/08934219809367680.
Martin, M. M., & Rubin, R. B. (1995). A new measure of cognitive flexibility. Psychological Reports, 73, 623–626. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1995.76.2.623.
McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1987). Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(1), 81–90. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.1.81.
McCrae, P. T., & Costa, R. R. (2009). The five factor model and the NEO inventories. In J. N. Butcher (Ed.) Oxford handbook of personality assessment (pp. 299–332). New York: Oxford University Press.
Mepham, K. D., & Martinovic, B. (2018). Multilingualism and out-group acceptance: The mediating roles of cognitive flexibility and deprovincialization. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 37(1), 51–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X17706944.
Mertler, C. A., & Reinhart, R. V. (2017). Advanced and multivariate statistical methods (6th ed.). New York: Routledge.
Murdock, K. W., Oddi, K. B., & Bridgett, D. J. (2013). Cognitive correlates of personality: Links between executive functioning and the big five personality traits. Journal of Individual Differences, 34(2), 97–104. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000104.
Odaci, H., & Cikrikci, O. (2019). Cognitive flexibility mediates the relationship between big five personality traits and life satisfaction. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 14, 1229–1246. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-018-9651-y.
Pavot, W., & Diener, E. (1993). Review of the satisfaction with life scale. Psychological Assessment, 5(2), 164–172. https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.5.2.164.
Pytlik Zillig, L. M., Hemenover, S. H., & Dienstbeier, R. A. (2002). What do we assess when we assess a big 5 trait? A content analysis of the affective, behavioral, and cognitive processes represented in big 5 personality inventory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(6), 847–858. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167202289013.
Revelle, W., Wilt, J., & Rosenthal, A. (2010). Individual differences in cognition: New methods for examining the personality-cognition link. In A. Gruszka, G. Matthews, & B. Szymura (Eds.), Handbook of individual differences in cognition: Attention, memory, and executive control (pp. 27–49). New York: Springer Science + Business Media.
Rouse, S. (2020). Reliability of MTurk data from masters and workers. Journal of Individual Differences, 41(1), 30–36. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000300.
Saucier, G. (1994). Mini-Markers: A brief version of Goldberg’s unipolar Big Five markers. Journal of Personality Assessment, 63(3), 506–516. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa6303_8.
Shi, J., Yao, Y., Zhan, C., Mao, Z., Yin, F., & Zhao, X. (2018). The relationship between big five personality traits and psychotic experience in a large non-clinical youth sample: The mediating role of emotion regulation. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 9, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00648.
Suchy, Y. (2009). Executive functioning: Overview, assessment, and research issues for non-neuropsychologists. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 37, 106–116. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-009-9097-4.
Wang, Y.-M., & Guo, D.-J. (2008). The effects of positive emotions on task switching. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 40(3), 301–306. https://doi.org/10.3724/SP.J.1041.2008.00301.
Williams, P. G., Suchy, Y., & Kraybill, M. L. (2010). Five-factor model personality traits and executive functioning among older adults. Journal of Research in Personality, 44, 485–491. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2010.06.002.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Smith, C.A., Konik, J. Who is satisfied with life? Personality, cognitive flexibility, and life satisfaction. Curr Psychol 41, 9019–9026 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01359-6
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01359-6