Self-deception as a mediator of the relationship between dispositions and subjective well-being.

Summary-Psychological theories of subjective well-being (SWB) have been ambiguous in their explanations of how dispositions influence happiness. This paper suggests that self-deception may serve as one important psychological variable that partly explains the disposition-subjective well-being link. Our findings suggested that self-deception significantly affected subjective well-being. In addition, our results indicated that dispositional tendencies such as affective disposition and locus of control influenced subjective well-being through self-deception. Consequently, individuals who were positively disposed or had high expectations of control tended to use self-deception which in turn increased their SWB. This research provides a preliminary yet provocative look at the explanatory power of thought processes such as self-deception on subjective well-being. Despite a long tradition of research exploring the sources of individuals’ happiness, no one theory of subjective well-being (SWB) has risen above others to dominate this area of study. The main reason for this is incompleteness in the existing subjective well-being theories. Psychological theories of SWB are mainly divided into two broad categories, top-down and bottom-up (Diener, 1984). The top-down approach suggests that individuals are happy because they are predisposed to react to events and circumstances in a positive way, while the bottom-up approach maintains that people are happy because they experience numerous happy moments in their lives. A key distinction between these two approaches revolves around the role of personality. Top-down approaches emphasize the role of personality in interpreting the environment, while bottom-up approaches downplay personality influences. Both these theoretical approaches, however, ignore the cardinal question of /ZOCL’ personality influences SWB. The top-down theory does not explain how and why predispositional reactions to stimuli influence happiness, while the bottom-up theoretical approach does not explain how different people can experience the same events but have very different interpretations. Consequently, although evidence has been presented to support both hypotheses (Diener & Larsen, 1993), the fact that these theories are ambiguous makes it difficult to interpret the research testing these theories, as well as determine which results are valid and explain why contradictions occur. Accordingly, in order to make these theories more useful, they need to be better clarified and developed. In as much as these theories are deficient in their explication of the mental processes leading to SWB, one possible way of better constructing these theories is by linking them to individual thinking styles. Thinking styles may explain how individuals select and process information in interpreting life events, and may account for individual differences in these interpretations. The idea of linking certain thinking styles to subjective well-being is not a new one. Evidence has been presented that dysfunctional thought processes, such as perfectionism and overgeneralization may cause unhappiness (Haaga, Dyck & Ernst, 199 1). These thought processes are self-detracting and comprise inaccurate cognitions involved in screening, encoding and evaluating information (Keller, 1983), thus negatively biasing attitudes. On the other hand, accumulated evidence in social psychology research suggests that individuals may possess self-enhancing thought processes that, although irrational by nature, have a positive influence on levels of subjective well being (Taylor & Brown, 1988). For example, thought processes such as unrealistic optimism, egocentric attributions, and illusion of control were found to