Cognitive Correlates of Subjective Well-Being: The Processing of Valenced Life Events by Happy and Unhappy Persons

Abstract In a two-phase study, we examined the relations of subjective well-being with the cognitive processing of affectively valenced life events. In Phase 1, both more intense and more enduring reactions to positive life events than negative ones were associated with higher well-being, and for intensity of reactions, this relation was stronger for those events that were subsequently recalled. When equal numbers of positive and negative life events were eligible for recall, well-being was unrelated to the relative likelihood of recalling the two types of events. Phase 2 suggested that life events are organized in memory according to the domain in which they occur but not according to their valence. However, neither the organization nor the retrieval of life events correlated with well-being. In combination, these findings suggest that cognitive processes associated with the encoding of life events, but neither the organization nor the retrieval of these events, are associated with subjective well-being.

[1]  E. Diener,et al.  Memory for positive versus negative life events: theories for the differences between happy and unhappy persons. , 1993, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[2]  G. Clore,et al.  Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. , 1983 .

[3]  J. Riskind,et al.  Nonverbal Expressions and the Accessibility of Life Experience Memories: A Congruence Hypothesis , 1983 .

[4]  C. Showers,et al.  Compartmentalization of positive and negative self-knowledge: keeping bad apples out of the bunch. , 1992, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[5]  R. Larsen,et al.  The Satisfaction with Life Scale , 1985, Journal of personality assessment.

[6]  John D. Mayer,et al.  Mood-congruent judgment is a general effect. , 1992 .

[7]  F. Strack,et al.  Happiness and reminiscing: The role of time perspective, affect, and mode of thinking. , 1985, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

[8]  T. K. Srull,et al.  Handbook of Social Cognition , 1993 .

[9]  P. Costa,et al.  Influence of extraversion and neuroticism on subjective well-being: happy and unhappy people. , 1980, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[10]  G. Clore,et al.  Affective causes and consequences of social information processing. , 1994 .

[11]  J. Reich,et al.  Life events and perceptions of life quality: Developments in a two‐factor approach , 1983 .

[12]  Ed Diener,et al.  Subjective Well‐Being: The Convergence and Stability of Self‐Report and Non‐Self‐Report Measures , 1993 .

[13]  E. Diener,et al.  Subjective well-being. , 1984, Psychological bulletin.

[14]  Robert S. Wyer,et al.  The mental representation of trait and autobiographical knowledge about the self , 1993 .

[15]  E. Diener,et al.  Sex differences in the recall of affective experiences. , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[16]  R. Wyer,et al.  Social Cognition, Inference, and Attribution , 1979 .

[17]  Allan Collins,et al.  A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing , 1975 .

[18]  Ed Diener,et al.  Influence of impulsivity and sociability on subjective well-being , 1986 .

[19]  G. Bower.  Mood and memory. , 1981, The American psychologist.

[20]  M. Conway,et al.  Organization in autobiographical memory , 1987, Memory & cognition.

[21]  Bruce Headey,et al.  Personality, life events, and subjective well-being: Toward a dynamic equilibrium model. , 1989 .

[22]  P. H. Blaney.  Affect and memory: a review. , 1986, Psychological bulletin.

[23]  T. K. Srull,et al.  Memory and Cognition in Its Social Context , 1989 .

[24]  John B. Black,et al.  Knowledge structures in the organization and retrieval of autobiographical memories , 1985, Cognitive Psychology.

[25]  E. Diener,et al.  Further validation of the Satisfaction with Life Scale: evidence for the cross-method convergence of well-being measures. , 1991, Journal of personality assessment.

[26]  J. Forgas,et al.  After the Movies , 1987 .

[27]  Ed Diener,et al.  Memory accuracy in the recall of emotions. , 1990 .