The Contribution of Positive and Negative Affect to Life Satisfaction across Age

Veljko Jovanović () and Mohsen Joshanloo
Additional contact information
Veljko Jovanović: University of Novi Sad
Mohsen Joshanloo: University of Melbourne

Applied Research in Quality of Life, 2022, vol. 17, issue 2, No 3, 524 pages

Abstract: Abstract People rely on their recent emotional experiences when constructing life satisfaction judgments. However, the role of positive and negative affect in life satisfaction across different age groups has rarely been examined in prior research. This study sought to investigate the contribution of positive and negative affect to life satisfaction across five age groups in a large sample of Serbians between 16 and 65 years of age (N = 3287, 59.9% females). Multi-group structural equation modeling was used to establish measurement invariance and to examine the relationships between affect and life satisfaction across the age groups. Full metric invariance was supported for life satisfaction and positive and negative affect across the groups. The results showed that positive affect had strong effects on life satisfaction across the groups, whereas negative affect had weak or nonsignificant effects. The effects of positive and negative affect on life satisfaction were found to be invariant across age groups. Our findings indicate that people rely more on positive emotional experiences than on negative emotional experiences when constructing life satisfaction judgments, and that age does not moderate the effects of affective experiences on life satisfaction.

Keywords: Positive affect; Negative affect; Life satisfaction; Subjective well-being; Age (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11482-020-09903-5 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:ariqol:v:17:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s11482-020-09903-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11482

DOI: 10.1007/s11482-020-09903-5

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Research in Quality of Life is currently edited by Daniel Shek

More articles in Applied Research in Quality of Life from Springer, International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().