This specific type of positive emotion predicts life satisfaction better than the rest

An analysis of data from two longitudinal studies conducted in Germany and the Netherlands found that both energized and pleasant positive emotions are associated with life satisfaction, but that this association was much stronger with pleasant positive emotions. The paper was published in the Journal of Positive Psychology.

Subjective well-being is a person’s overall evaluation of how well their life is going. It is typically described as a combination of how satisfied people are with their lives and how frequently they experience positive and negative emotions. Yet researchers still disagree about exactly how these components fit together and whether they reflect a single underlying form of well-being.

One particularly important source of confusion concerns positive affect, which is often treated as if it were one simple psychological state. In reality, the term can refer to very different experiences, ranging from calm pleasure and happiness to excitement, enthusiasm, interest, and energetic engagement.

This means that two studies can both claim to measure positive affect while actually assessing rather different emotional experiences. The distinction matters because pleasant and energized positive emotions may play different roles in well-being. Pleasant feelings may be especially closely connected to satisfaction because they signal that things are going well or that important goals have been achieved. More energized states such as interest, engagement, and enthusiasm may instead be especially useful for motivating activity, exploration, and personal growth.

Study author Jinrui Liu and her colleagues conducted a study in which they explored whether positive emotions and life satisfaction are associated with each other over time. They also wanted to know whether energized and pleasant positive emotions have associations of similar strength with life satisfaction. Finally, they wanted to know whether personality traits that predict energized positive emotions are the same ones that predict pleasant positive emotions.

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Study authors analyzed data from the Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics from Germany (PAIRFAM) and the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) from the Netherlands. PAIRFAM is a longitudinal study of more than 12,000 individuals from three different birth groups (those born between 1971 and 1973, between 1981 and 1983, and between 1991 and 1993). Study authors analyzed data collected between 2014 and 2021.

The LISS data used in this analysis was collected between 2013 and 2024. The LISS conducted monthly internet surveys of a sample of Dutch individuals aged 16 and older from 5,000 households in each data collection wave. They were recruited randomly from the Dutch population. The sample analyzed in this study included 17,532 participants. 53.3% of them were women.

The measure of pleasant positive emotions used in this analysis was derived from an assessment of depression in PAIRFAM, using items initially meant to capture a lack of depressive symptoms, which actually describe the presence of pleasant feelings (e.g., “I am happy”, “I feel good”).

The assessment of energized positive emotions came from the LISS dataset where the Positive and Negative Affect Scale was used. Both datasets contained a measure of life satisfaction. Additionally, both datasets contained assessments of participants’ personalities in line with the Big Five model (the BFI-20 in the PAIRFAM, and IPIP-50 in the LISS).

Results showed that both pleasant and energized positive emotions were associated with life satisfaction, but that the association with pleasant positive emotions was much stronger. The associations ran in both temporal directions, meaning that earlier life satisfaction was associated with later positive emotions and vice versa.

The associations of the two types of positive emotions with personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism also differed. Neuroticism showed a stronger negative association with pleasant positive emotions, while energized positive emotions were more strongly associated with extraversion.

“In sum, our results indicate that pleasant and energized PA [positive affect] are not interchangeable in longitudinal SWB [subjective well-being] dynamics. Both PA types showed bidirectional within-person associations with LS [life satisfaction] beyond their shared trait-like SWB factor, supporting the view that these SWB elements are further causally related beyond a common underlying construct. However, these associations were consistently stronger for pleasant PA with LS than energized PA,” the study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the theoretical conceptualization of subjective well-being. However, it should be noted that the study authors’ measurements of energized and pleasant positive emotions were driven by the data that were available in the datasets they used. It is possible that different ways of measuring these two categories of positive emotions would yield different results.

The paper, “Jingle all the way? Pleasant and energized positive affect show differential longitudinal relationships with life satisfaction and personality,” was authored by Jinrui Liu, Joar Vittersø, Irene J. E. Teulings, Ragnhild Bang Nes, Lilian Mayerhofer, and Espen Røysamb.