Personality, Attachment, and Well-Being in Adolescents: The Independent Effect of Attachment After Controlling for Personality

Paulo Moreira (), Susana Pedras, Márcia Silva, Maria Moreira and Joana Oliveira
Additional contact information
Paulo Moreira: Universidade Lusíada-Norte (Porto)
Susana Pedras: Universidade Lusíada-Norte (Porto)
Márcia Silva: Universidade Lusíada-Norte (Porto)
Maria Moreira: Universidade Lusíada-Norte (Porto)
Joana Oliveira: Universidade Lusíada-Norte (Porto)

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2021, vol. 22, issue 4, No 16, 1855-1888

Abstract: Abstract Although there is evidence that parental attachment and personality interact during development and exert mutual influences on one another, studies describing how parental attachment and personality dimensions interact in predicting well-being are scarce. Studies that help clarify the shared and unique variance on well-being explained by these two constructs are required, and as such, the objective of the present study was to describe the relationships between personality, attachment, and well-being. A total of 336 adolescents participated in this study (M age = 15 years; SD = 1.73). Participants completed self-report measures of personality, attachment, and well-being. The present study expands current knowledge in three ways. First, attachment dimensions of communication, trust, and involvement were significant predictors of well-being, even after controlling for age, gender, and personality dimensions. Second, age and gender moderate the associations between parental attachment and cognitive (but not affective) well-being, reflecting the representations systems, which are culturally and socially construed underlying cognitive well-being. Third, adolescents low in self-directedness and low in persistence are more dependent on their parental attachment to have better well-being. In sum, our results support the idea that parental attachment is one of the most crucial mechanisms for the promotion of well-being as it acts as a promoter of the development of adolescent socio-cognitive processes (such as self-directedness, which development depends strongly on the parental factors) as well as a coping mechanism for those with less adaptive personality characteristics.

Keywords: Adolescents; Attachment; Personality; Affective well-being; Cognitive well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10902-020-00299-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jhappi:v:22:y:2021:i:4:d:10.1007_s10902-020-00299-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... fe/journal/10902/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-020-00299-5

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Happiness Studies is currently edited by Antonella Delle Fave

More articles in Journal of Happiness Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().