What makes experiences satisfying? The interaction of approach-avoidance motivations and emotions in well-being.

Two studies examined how dispositional approach-related and avoidance-related motivations moderate the degree to which people base satisfaction judgments on past experiences of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). Using both laboratory-based (Study 1) and experience sampling (Study 2) methodologies, the authors found that high approach participants, as compared with low approach participants, made satisfaction ratings that were more strongly tied to PA. In contrast, avoidance-related motivations did not moderate the degree to which satisfaction ratings were based on either PA or NA. Results indicate that approach motivations may influence well-being not only through emotion over time but also through the degree to which people weight particular emotional experiences in broader judgments of satisfaction. The power of person and situational influences on psychological life is perhaps no more apparent than it is in the study of subjective well-being (SWB; for a review, see Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999). On the one hand, a large body of research shows that people’s overall sense of happiness and life satisfaction appears to be strongly influenced by their personality, particularly the traits of extraversion and neuroticism (for a review, see DeNeve & Cooper, 1998). In this regard, the relationship is clear: As extraversion increases, so do reports of well-being; however, as neuroticism increases, reports of well-being tend to decline. This consistent influence of dispositional factors on well-being is often referred to as a “top-down” influence (Diener, 1984), in the sense that its root is relatively stable and its effect on well-being can be quite varied and pervasive, often influencing the interpretation of everyday experiences and events. However, as other studies show, SWB is much more than simply a personality phenomenon. Transient and situational factors such as recent positive and negative events (Suh, Diener, & Fujita, 1996), social comparisons (Lyubomirsky & Ross, 1997), and both recent and momentary emotions (Schwarz & Clore, 1983; Suh, Diener, Oishi, & Triandis, 1998) also have been shown to influence people’s judgments of well-being. When judgments of wellbeing are influenced by these more situationally based, experiential sources, the influence reflects more of a “bottom-up” influence. That is, the judgment is made in a more data-driven manner, reflecting people’s actual circumstances and experiences rather than their more stable dispositions. Although there is clear evidence that well-being is affected by both top-down and bottom-up factors, the interplay between the two has received relatively little attention and is an important interaction to consider in terms of how personality affects wellbeing. The present studies attempted to bridge these two lines of research by examining the degree to which personality factors related to extraversion and neuroticism—namely, dispositional approach and avoidance motivations (cf. Carver & White, 1994; Gable, Reis, & Elliot, in press)—influence the way that people integrate emotional experiences when they make broader cognitive judgments of well-being. That is, when people are asked to rate their well-being, for example, in terms of how satisfied they are with their life over the past day, week, or month, how do their chronic motivations influence the way they give weight to the many and varied emotional experiences they had over the given duration?