The Effect of Mood on Judgments of Subjective Well-Being: Nine Tests of the Judgment Model

Abstract

Life satisfaction judgments are thought to represent an overall evaluation of the quality of a person's life as a whole. Thus, they should reflect relatively important and stable characteristics of that person's life. Previous highly cited research has suggested that transient factors, such as the mood that a person experiences at the time that well-being judgments are made, can influence these judgments. However, most existing studies used small sample sizes, and few replications have been attempted. Nine direct and conceptual replications of past studies testing the effects of mood on life satisfaction judgments were conducted using sample sizes that were considerably larger than previous studies (Ns = 202, 200, 269, 118, 320, 401, 285, 129, 122). Most of the nine studies resulted in nonsignificant effects on life satisfaction and happiness judgments, and those that were significant were substantially smaller than effects found in previous research.

Recalling Experiences: Looking at Momentary, Retrospective and Global Assessments of Relationship Satisfaction

“…That is, the concurrent evaluation of the relationship seems to capture information beyond the stable variance of global relationship satisfaction, which could be interpreted as state variance that is shared with and relied upon during retrospective evaluations (the correlation between retrospection as a scale and the concurrent CSI was r = .70 for women and men). However, studies examining the processes involved when individuals evaluate their global life satisfaction find little evidence of experientially induced mood on individuals' evaluations (Yap et al, 2016). Future studies should therefore examine the effect of experientially induced momentary relationship feelings on the recall and global evaluation of relationship satisfaction.…”

Rain, Rain Go Away! A Diary Study on Morning Weather and Affective Well‐Being at Work

“…Despite the evidence for a general relationship between weather and well‐being, some studies did not obtain an effect of weather on satisfaction ratings (e.g., Lucas & Lawless, 2013; Yap et al, 2017), activated positive and negative affect (e.g., Lee et al, 2014; Watson, 2000), or deactivated negative affect (e.g., Huibers, de Graaf, Peeters, & Arntz, 2010). That said, people seem to differ in their reactivity to weather.…”

“…Despite some principal evidence for weather's role in well‐being, some studies did not find an effect of weather (e.g., Yap, Wortman, Anusic, Baker, Scherer, Donnellan, & Lucas, 2017), indicating that moderators might exist. Hence, we also included moderators, namely weather sensitivity (Mackensen et al, 2005) and positive and negative affectivity (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), which, by definition, are propensities to be reactive to specific (weather) conditions.…”

Linking Work-Life Balance and Employee Well-Being: Do Supervisor Support and Family Support Moderate the Relationship?

“…Quality of life can be described as a 'composite measure of physical, mental and social well-being, happiness and satisfaction involving many life situations, such as health, marriage, family, work, finance, education opportunities, self-esteem, creativity and trust in others' (DiRenzo, 2010). On the other hand, Yap et al (2017) stated that the key aspect of subjective well-being comprises 'subjectivity, positive measure and global assessment of all aspects of a person's life'. Psychological well-being is seen as an amalgamation of feeling satisfied and being able to effectively serve customers.…”