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The Set-Point Theory of Well-Being: Negative Results and Consequent Revisions

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Abstract

An adequate theory of happiness or subjective well-being (SWB) needs to link at least three sets of variables: stable person characteristics (including personality traits), life events and measures of well-being (life satisfaction, positive affects) and ill-being (anxiety, depression, negative affects). It also needs to be based on long-term data in order to account for long-term change in SWB. By including personality measures in the 2005 survey, the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) became the first available dataset to provide long-term evidence about personality and change in one key measure of SWB, namely life satisfaction. Using these data, the paper suggests major revisions to the set-point theory of SWB; revisions which seek to account for long-term change. Previously, theory focused on evidence that individuals have their own set-point of SWB and revert to that set-point once the psychological impact of major life events has dissipated. But the new SOEP panel data show that significant minorities record substantial and apparently permanent upward or downward changes in life satisfaction. The paper aims to explain why most people’s SWB levels do not change, but why a minority do. The main new result, which must be regarded as tentative until replicated, is that the people most likely to record large changes in life satisfaction are those who score high on the personality traits of extraversion (E) and/or neuroticism (N). These people in a sense ‘roll the dice’ more often than others and so have a higher than average probability of recording long-term changes. Data come from the 3130 SOEP respondents who rated their life satisfaction every year from 1985 onwards, among whom 2843 also completed a set of questions about their personality in 2005.

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Notes

  1. Magnus et al. (1993) replicated Headey and Wearing’s (1989) results and confirmed that personality affects reports of relatively objective events (e.g. got married, became unemployed) and not just events which could be a matter of selective perception.

  2. However, the short O scale used in the German panel was positively related to Life Satisfaction (see below). This is probably a misleading result.

  3. There is some debate about whether complete (100%) adaptation occurs. This is Easterlin’s view. An alternative account suggests that adaptation is typically about 70% (Frey and Stutzer, 2002).

  4. This point is noted by Lykken (2000) but has been ignored by many other investigators in their commentaries on set-point theory.

  5. Omitting any main effect of O, since O is generally found not to be directly linked to SWB.

  6. Like some other researchers we prefer not to use the 1984 data on life satisfaction. It has been shown that life satisfaction scores were ‘inflated’ that year by respondents giving their first interview (Frijters, Haisken-DeNew and Shields, 2004). We will also not use 2005 life satisfaction data due to the risk of correlations with the personality traits of E and N being inflated by contemporaneous measurement. For example, there is some risk that the correlation between E and life satisfaction in 2005 would be inflated by contemporaneous measurement.

  7. In this paper, as in much recent research on life satisfaction, the 0–10 scale is treated as an interval scale even though strictly speaking it is ordinal. So Pearson correlations and OLS regression are used, even though it could be claimed that ordinal correlations and regression would be more appropriate. Andrews and Withey (1976) provided the first detailed demonstration that, substantively, results do not change for life satisfaction measures if interval level rather than ordinal level assumptions are made.

  8. In practice, however, for the total sample the inclusion of years of education, employment status and household disposable income–all measured at the end of the 20-year period–reduces the coefficient for E just from 0.14 to 0.13 and for N from −0.24 to −0.23. Using measures of the extra variables at the start of the period, does not reduce the coefficients for E and N at all.

  9. This follows the same logic as in Tables 4 and 5. Thanks to Umut Ogozoglou for pointing out the need for these inclusions.

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  1. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, 3052, Australia

    Bruce Headey

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Headey, B. The Set-Point Theory of Well-Being: Negative Results and Consequent Revisions. Soc Indic Res 85, 389–403 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-007-9134-2

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