The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) is a measure widely used to assess life satisfaction. This paper aims to test its psychometric properties, factor structure, and distribution scores across age, gender, education, and employment status. For this purpose, a representative sample of the Spanish population (N = 2,964) was used. Although analyses showed no significant differences across age or gender, participants with higher education level and those who held an occupation were more satisfied with their lives. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a unifactorial structure with significant correlations between the SWLS, and subjective happiness and social support. The internal consistency of the scale was .88. Thus, our results indicate that the Spanish version of the SWLS is a valid and reliable measure of life satisfaction within the Spanish context.

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Sustained attentional processing of negative information plays a significant role in the development and maintenance of depression. The present study examines the relationships between rumination, a relevant factor in information processing in depression, and the attentional mechanisms activated in individuals with different levels of depression severity when attending to emotional information (i.e., sad, angry and happy faces). Behavioural and physiological indicators of sustained processing were assessed in 126 participants (39 dysphoric and 87 non-dysphoric) using eye-tracking technology. Pupil dilation and total time attending to negative faces were correlated with a global ruminative style in the total sample once depression severity was controlled. Furthermore, in dysphoric participants the brooding component of rumination was specifically associated with the total time attending to sad faces. Finally, bootstrapping analyses showed that the relationships between global rumination and pupil diameter to emotional faces were accounted by total time attending to emotional faces, specifically for participants reporting lower levels of depression severity. The results support the idea that sustained processing of negative information is associated with a higher ruminative style and indicate differential associations between these factors at different levels of depressive symptomatology.

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Results indicate that the 4 types of rumination are differentiated constructs. Ruminative thoughts experienced after a stressful event predicted posttraumatic consequences 6 months later. Implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record