Personality and life satisfaction: UK data on “the big 5”, and why being (mostly) kind is a win-win

Public policy, and increasingly, companies’ social responsibility approaches, focus on improving people’s lives, today and in the future. I’ve argued previously that an outcome variable we should place particular importance on is self-reported life satisfaction. While not without its problems, it is in my view as close as we get to measuring people’s actual “utility”; and in most contexts, it’s robust enough to build some actionable conclusions on.

One of the big challenges with life satisfaction as the objective function, however, is this: we know that public policy (or corporate activity) can only have a fairly limited impact on it. Academics have been able to explain around 30% of the variation in individuals’ life satisfaction, and there is consensus that the rest might be due to pretty untractable things, such as genetics. Even within the 30%, there are drivers that public policy might choose to not target, such as social relationships or number of children.

While I would argue that that is also true for other things we measure and consider as “objective functions” — such as GDP or social welfare or the different types of capitals (natural, human, social, etc) — I’m not aware of literature that actually shows that to be the case. [Note: I’ve not looked very hard — but it’s an interesting thought. I have always argued that, while important, policy can only do so much: the underlying dynamics of human behaviour, accumulated capital, and so on, are much more powerful. Over long periods of time, policy does, however, provide some boundary conditions to channel these forces towards either more or less positive outcomes.]

An individual’s personality is one of the factors that influences life satisfaction (and many other things in one’s life) but which few would consider the direct target of policy interventions. Various studies looking at life satisfaction have controlled for personality characteristics and found them to be both quite stable and quite important. I wanted to see more than correlation coefficients, so I thought I’d visualise some basic facts about “the big 5” personality traits and life satisfaction.

As you can see from the chart, people scoring low on openness, conscientiousness, extraversion and agreeableness also score low on life satisfaction; while people scoring low on neuroticism tend to be more satisfied with their lives than those of a greater neurotic tendency. Much of this is as you would expect, but let’s look at two interesting patterns in particular. [Useful quick reference definitions of each of the “big 5” personality dimensions are here.]

First, the relationship with openness and agreeableness is not linear. Apparently, beyond a certain point, being “too” open or agreeable can be to your own detriment. For example, I’d hypothesise that someone that is extremely open to new experiences and spontaneous might take excessive risks or find it difficult to complete “boring” but necessary tasks — hence potentially jeopardizing their health. [In most studies, health is the top contributor to life satisfaction, so hugely important.] Similarly, someone who is overly agreeable might find their tendencies exploited by other people.

Second, it’s really interesting — and potentially counterintuitive but rather reassuring — that the relationship with agreeableness is nevertheless strongly positive. Agreeableness “includes attributes such as trust, altruism, kindness, affection, and other prosocial behaviours”. Broadly speaking it is a measure of a person’s tendency to put other people’s needs above their own. So, maximising your own utility is actually partly achieved by being less selfish. [Something I’ve been trying to teach to my kids, with mixed results…]

A whole book could (and should?) be written about this simple finding*. Being kind is a win-win. By definition, it helps other people (most of the time — I’m assuming some competence here on the giver’s part). And, according to this data, it is also strongly associated with your own wellbeing, in a really fundamental way. Of course, this is not a new finding — various “happiness researchers” have consistently found that acts of kindness have a positive impact on the person who undertakes them. [These findings are causal; my graph isn’t but is, in my view, nevertheless a useful illustration.]

I’ve not got space or time today to dwell on some of the big questions this raises. For example, one of them is this: if being more altruistic is positive for your wellbeing, but negative for your success (see e.g., here), then is there a tradeoff between traditional measures of success and happiness? [And if there is, where is are the self-help books that help you to optimise, rather than maximise, success or happiness?]

Another big question is this: while the data shows this positive association, can we trust people to act altruistically — i.e., does the average person instinctively “know” it’s in their own interest to not actually always pursue their own interest? [Realistically, the answer to both questions will be “it depends”.]

Finally, while I’m not an expert on education, I would certainly ask this: to the degree it is possible for parents and teachers to encourage some of the positive traits, and help children avoid some of the negative traits, should they? Probably, yes — but only if that is done in a way that is non-judgemental. The last thing introverted or neurotic children need is to be told that there is something wrong with them… [And yes, I do speak from some personal experience.]

[* I’ve recently discovered the “network theory of wellbeing” and think it is a powerful framework for explaining the dynamics of why people thrive or don’t, and how some aspects of their wellbeing network are probably quite fixed while others can become virtuous (or vicious) circles, reinforcing each other. The point about agreeableness supports this: by being kind (and other non-self-oriented things), people tend to put in place social relationships, trust, and other “capital” that then pays back in their own wellbeing.]