Length: 1800 words (includes the introduction, which has already been written. See down below)
This assignment is a research report on a correlational study. This research report builds on your previous assessment, 2A – Writing the Report Introduction. Assessment 2A will now become the Introduction section of this research report. You may choose to revise all or part of the Introduction, based on the feedback you have received from the marker.
The research report must be written according to APA formatting guidelines. O’Shea and McKenzie (2013) provide guidance on the structure that is required. You will be provided with data from 20 participants (10 male and 10 female) who completed surveys on well-being and personality. Both descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) and inferential statistics (correlations) will be used in your report. You will be required to calculate the mean and standard deviation for this data and also interpret the correlations between subjective well-being and personality. Please note you are not required to calculate the correlations, but you will need to interpret the correlations. Following this, you are then required to write up and discuss the results.
Full details and instructions for the report, calculating, and interpreting the descriptive statistics and correlations are provided on Interact2. The following readings will assist in understanding report writing and descriptive statistics and correlations:
Chapter 2: Research in Psychology and Chapter 20: Statistics in Psychological Research (Please note: this is an online resource available through the Cengage Coursemate website) from: Bernstein, D.A., Pooley, J.A., Cohen, L, Gouldthorp, B., Provost, S., & Cranney, J. (2018). Psychology: Australian and New Zealand edition. (2nd ed.). Melbourne, VIC: Cengage.
Chapter 2: Writing reports from: O’Shea, R. P. & McKenzie, W. (2013). Writing for Psychology (6th ed.). Melbourne, VIC: Cengage.
Chapter 17 Correlations (pp. 341-358 and page 452) [available on e-reserve*] from: Tropper, R. (1998). The interpretation of data : An introduction to statistics for the behavioral sciences. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Pub. Co.
Appendix B Statistical Methods (pp. A7-A14) [available on e-reserve*] from: Weiten, W. (2017). Psychology: Themes and variations (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.
- The CSU library has developed the following video to demonstrate how to access e-reserve readings: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx1cPoNOmFe09h_-rvVNqPXXsycL_L2CJ
The participant’s subsection describes who participated in your study. For this research
report, you are provided with data for 20 participants (10 male and 10 female) ranging in
age from 55 to 76 years. The participants were retirees belonging to various community
groups in the townships of Wagga Wagga and Bathurst. The only demographic information
collected were the participant’s age and sex. In this subsection, you are required to include
the mean and standard deviation of their ages (the raw data for the participant’s responses
is located at the end of this document).
Ethics was approved through the Charles Sturt University Human Research Ethics
Committee. While you are not required to collect data for this research project, it is
important that you are aware of the ethical procedures that any research project in
psychology should undertake (please refer to Bernstein et al., 2013, pp. 56–58).
Raw Data
ID Number Gender Age SWB Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Neuroticism Openness
1 Male 63 3.93 4.5 6.5 6.0 4.0 4.5
2 Male 63 10.07 6.5 7.0 6.5 2.0 6.5
3 Male 64 8.8 6.0 6.0 6.0 2.0 5.5
4 Male 65 8.7 6.5 6.0 7.0 2.0 6.5
5 Male 67 6.33 4.5 3.5 4.5 6.0 3.0
6 Male 67 7.67 5.0 6.0 4.5 2.0 5.5
7 Male 69 0.9 3.0 3.0 5.0 5.5 2.5
8 Male 70 9.63 6.0 6.5 7.0 2.0 6.5
9 Male 72 6.4 5.5 4.5 6.0 2.0 4.5
10 Male 73 7.8 5.5 5.5 6.5 2.5 6.5
11 Female 55 8.3 5.0 6.0 6.0 3.5 5.5
12 Female 57 9.0 5.0 6.0 7.0 2.0 6.5
13 Female 64 9.6 7.0 7.0 6.5 1.0 7.0
14 Female 66 8.6 6.0 6.5 6.0 1.5 6.5
15 Female 68 2.87 2.5 4.5 5.5 5.0 3.0
16 Female 70 10.0 5.0 6.5 7.0 1.5 6.5
17 Female 70 9.7 6.5 6.5 7.0 1.0 7.0
18 Female 71 9.0 5.0 5.0 6.5 3.0 6.5
19 Female 73 1.3 4.0 4.0 3.5 6.0 5.0
20 Female 76 5.2 5.5 4.0 4.0 2.5 4.0
Report Introduction
Relationship Between Personality Traits and Subjective Wellbeing
Introduction
Human beings are confronted by numerous situations, both positive and negative, in their day-to-day lives. However, individuals react differently to these situations, hence the concept of subjective well-being. Diener et al. (2016) define subjective well-being as the outcome of how people evaluate their lives as well as emotional experiences, which determine the degree of satisfaction with one’s life. Gutiérrez et al. (2005) simplify subjective wellbeing to mean happiness. There are many factors that influence a person’s subjective wellbeing; these include personality, genes, and temperament (Diener et al., 2016). Out of these three, personality has received significant attention from psychologists and scholars. Soto (2015, p.45) states that “people with different personality traits tend to experience different degrees of subjective well-being”. Extensive research has been done to establish the connection between subjective wellbeing and personality. According to Libran (2006), personality is categorized into five key traits, but out of these, neuroticism and extraversion are the most widely studied in respect to subjective wellbeing. This author reports that extraverts tend to experience or exhibit a higher degree of subjective wellbeing, while neurotics exhibit low levels of subjective wellbeing. A third trait, agreeableness, has also been found to positively influence subjective well-being (Gutiérrez, 2005).
While it is universally agreed that personality traits influence subjective well-being, there is evidence that the exact relationship between these two variables is also dependent upon national culture. Zhai et al. (2013) conducted a study in which they compared the relationship between personality and subjective wellbeing among participants drawn from China and the West. It emerged that in collectivist cultures, extraversion has the greatest and most significant impact on subjective wellbeing. On a different note, authors seem to be divided on the issue of which among the key personality traits have the greatest effects on subjective wellbeing. Much as it is widely held that extraversion is the largest predictor of subjective wellbeing, Libran (2006, p.39) reports that recent studies have established that emotional stability exerts greater impact than extraversion on emotional stability. Such a disclosure indicates that contrary to popular belief that neuroticism and extraversion are the most important influencers of emotional stability, there are other traits that equally influence the same. For example, agreeableness has been found to positively influence subjective well-being (Soto, 2015), the explanation being that agreeable persons are generally cooperative, compassionate and respectful towards others (Bernstein et al., 2018). Consequently, they are liked by peers and can build and sustain satisfying relationships, which in turn bolster their subjective well-being (Soto, 2015).
From the above literature, it is evident that each of the Big Five personality factors influences subjective wellbeing in a unique way. More importantly, the assertion that emotional stability is weightier than extraversion in terms of influence on subjective wellbeing may be interpreted to insinuate some controversies regarding the relationship between personality factors and subjective wellbeing. In this light, the present research seeks to establish the correct position regarding this relationship. Attention is drawn to the debate on whether or not extraversion is the most critical determinant of subjective wellbeing, especially now that emotional stability has been introduced into the discussion.
The research will be guided by three hypotheses as stated below:
a) There is a positive correlation between extraversion and subjective well-being
b) There is a negative correlation between neuroticism and subjective well-being
c) There is a positive correlation between agreeableness and subjective well-being
References
Bernstein, D. A. (2018). Psychology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Diener, E., Heintzelman, S. J., Kushlev, K., Tay, L., Wirtz, D., Lutes, L. D., & Oishi, S. (2016). Findings all psychologists should know from the new science on subjective well-being. Canadian Psychology/psychologie canadienne, 58(2), 87.
Gutiérrez, J. L. G., Jiménez, B. M., Hernández, E. G., & Puente, C. (2005). Personality and subjective well-being: Big five correlates and demographic variables. Personality and Individual Differences, 38(7), 1561-1569.
Librán, E. C. (2006). Personality dimensions and subjective well-being. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 9(1), 38-44.
Soto, C. J. (2015). Is happiness good for your personality? Concurrent and prospective relations of the big five with subjective well‐being. Journal of personality, 83(1), 45-55.
Zhai, Q., Willis, M., O’shea, B., Zhai, Y., & Yang, Y. (2013). Big Five personality traits, job satisfaction and subjective wellbeing in China. International Journal of Psychology, 48(6), 1099-1108.