Beyond Life Satisfaction: Lay Conceptions of Well-Being among Middle-Aged and Elderly Adults

The present study examines lay conceptions ofwell-being in a representative sample ofGermans in the second half of life. Respondentsfilled out a sentence completion questionnaireas well as the Satisfaction With Life Scale(SWLS). In their sentence completions,respondents gave spontaneous descriptions oftheir lives as a whole in terms ofsatisfaction, quality (good/bad), achievement,retrospection, and other global dimensions.They also referred to the intrapersonal andinterpersonal domain, health and functioning,and other specific life domains in thesesentence completions. Systematic differenceswere found in the dimensions referred to inpositive and negative judgments and across agegroups. Hardly any of the negative judgmentswere couched in terms of life satisfaction. Thesentence completions and the SWLS resulted insimilar evaluations, but the personallymeaningful dimensions of judgment which emergedfrom the sentence completions were only partlycovered by the dimensions inherent in the SWLSitems. These findings are discussed in relationto existing studies on subjective well-beingand successful aging, which appear to focus toonarrowly on life satisfaction at the expense ofother personally meaningful dimensions of lifejudgments.

[1]  G. Westerhof,et al.  Individualism and Collectivism in the Personal Meaning System of Elderly Adults , 2000 .

[2]  Kyle Kercher,et al.  Assessing Subjective Well-Being in the Old-Old , 1992 .

[3]  J. Brandtstädter,et al.  The Aging Self: Stabilizing and Protective Processes , 1994 .

[4]  E. Diener,et al.  Review of the Satisfaction with Life Scale , 1993 .

[5]  F. Dittmann-Kohli,et al.  Meaninglessness in the Second Half of Life: The Development of a Construct , 1998, International journal of aging & human development.

[6]  M. Lawton,et al.  Affect and age: cross-sectional comparisons of Structure and prevalence. , 1993, Psychology and aging.

[7]  U. Staudinger.  Viele Gründe sprechen dagegen, und trotzdem geht es vielen Menschen gut: Das Paradox des subjektiven Wohlbefindens , 2000 .

[8]  H. Markus,et al.  THE DYNAMIC SELF-CONCEPT: A Social Psychological Perspective , 1987 .

[9]  H. Markus,et al.  Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. , 1991 .

[10]  C. Bode,et al.  Selbstvorstellungen über Individualität und Verbundenheit in der zweiten Lebenshälfte , 2001, Zeitschrift für Gerontologie und Geriatrie.

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

[12]  P. Converse,et al.  The Quality of American Life: Perceptions, Evaluations, and Satisfactions , 1976 .

[13]  Thomas P. Le,et al.  Phenomenology of life satisfaction among elderly men: quantitative and qualitative views. , 1989 .

[14]  Robyn Fivush,et al.  The Remembering Self: Construction and Accuracy in the Self-Narrative , 1996 .

[15]  U. Neisser,et al.  The remembering self Construction and accuracy in the self-narrative: The remembering self , 1994 .

[16]  R. Schulz,et al.  A life-span theory of control. , 1995, Psychological review.

[17]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  Social cognition, 2nd ed. , 1991 .

[18]  Die zweite Lebenshälfte - Psychologische Perspektiven: Ergebnisse des Alters-Survey , 1999 .

[19]  L. Carstensen,et al.  The Process of Successful Ageing , 1996, Ageing and Society.

[20]  J. Blondin,et al.  Happiness A Look into the Folk Psychology of Four Cultural Groups , 1996 .

[21]  N. Steverink,et al.  Towards understanding successful ageing: patterned change in resources and goals , 1998 .

[22]  M. Stones,et al.  The Measurement of Individual Differences in Aging: The Distinction Between Usual and Successful Aging , 1990 .

[23]  Susan Folkman,et al.  Meaning in the Context of Stress and Coping , 1997 .

[24]  B. Neugarten,et al.  The measurement of life satisfaction. , 1961, Journal of gerontology.

[25]  E. Mishler.  Research Interviewing: Context and Narrative , 1986 .

[26]  María Teresa Muñoz Sastre.  Lay Conceptions of Well-Being and Rules Used in Well-Being Judgments Among Young, Middle-Aged, and Elderly Adults , 1999 .

[27]  M. Pinquart,et al.  Influences of socioeconomic status, social network, and competence on subjective well-being in later life: a meta-analysis. , 2000, Psychology and aging.

[28]  Richard A. Shweder,et al.  The semiotic subject of cultural psychology. , 1990 .

[29]  Kerry Chamberlain,et al.  On the structure of subjective well-being , 1988 .

[30]  Roy F. Baumeister,et al.  Meanings of Life , 1992 .

[31]  G. Westerhof,et al.  The sele sentence completion questionnaire: a new instrument for the assessment of personal meaning in research on aging , 1997 .

[32]  Ed Diener,et al.  Assessing subjective well-being: Progress and opportunities , 1994 .

[33]  J. Rowe,et al.  Successful aging. , 1998, Aging.

[34]  E. Sampson.  The debate on individualism: Indigenous psychologies of the individual and their role in personal and societal functioning. , 1988 .

[35]  J. Bruner.  Acts of meaning , 1990 .

[36]  P. Wong,et al.  Aging as an individual process: Toward a theory of personal meaning. , 1988 .

[37]  R. Larsen,et al.  Promises and problems with the circumplex model of emotion. , 1992 .

[38]  C. Ryff.  In the eye of the beholder: views of psychological well-being among middle-aged and older adults. , 1989, Psychology and aging.

[39]  Scaling the Semantics of Satisfaction , 2000 .

[40]  Richard E. Lucas,et al.  Subjective Weil-Being: Three Decades of Progress , 2004 .

[41]  Garfein Aj,et al.  Robust Aging among the Young-Old, Old-Old, and Oldest-Old , 1995 .

[42]  Ed Diener,et al.  Subjective well-being and age: An international analysis. , 1998 .

[43]  D. Watson,et al.  Toward a consensual structure of mood. , 1985, Psychological bulletin.