Unraveling values and well-being—Disentangling within- and between-person dynamics via a psychometric network perspective.

Abstract

There have been long-standing debates on the relationships between values as important motivational goals and well-being. We used a longitudinal network perspective to examine how value states and well-being are related over time, separating within-person lagged, within-person contemporaneous, and between-person perspectives. A total of 227 young adults (1,007 observation points) participated in the study and rated their values states and well-being over a 6-day period. Value–well-being linkages varied across levels of analysis for participants who reported at least three times (N = 187). Momentary self-transcendence values predicted both simultaneous and subsequent well-being. The motivationally opposing self-enhancement values negatively related to well-being contemporaneously within person. This supports clinical research emphasizing that pursuing other-focused values increases well-being and highlights the importance of values for well-being. At the same time, individual differences in self-transcendence values were negatively related to well-being, supporting previous value models. In line with self-determination theory, openness to change values were related to well-being at both the within- and between-person level. These patterns unify diverging theoretical positions, and suggest that different dynamics operate across levels (within-person lagged or contemporaneous vs. between-person). We also provide new insights into value dynamics by describing how distributions of value states may give rise to more stable value differences between individuals. Overall, within- and between-person associations differed suggesting greater attention to person-level processes is needed.

Testing the Applicability of Idionomic Statistics in Longitudinal Studies: The Example of ‘Doing What Matters’

“…Future research would also benefit from collecting additional quantitative and qualitative data to get deeper insight into the psychological processes related to valued action and affect, especially in those who deviate from the norm. Recent research using the network analysis approach similar to the one we used proved helpful in separating the between-vs. within-person associations of specific kinds of values (e.g., self-transcendence or self-enhancement) and well-being (Fischer & Karl, 2023). Some might see secondary data analysis as a potential weakness of our study.…”

Value fulfillment and well‐being: Clarifying directions over time

“…More recent research found associations between wellbeing and value states (how important a value has been in the past 15 min; Fischer & Karl, 2022) and whether people's values match with those living around them (Hanel et al, 2020;i.e., value congruence;Sortheix & Lönnqvist, 2015;Wolf et al, 2021). However, effect sizes were small as well, suggesting that measures of value Schwartz's (1992) importance, by themselves, offer limited insight into psychological bases of well-being.…”

“…Research has found that ratings of value importance help to predict a range of behaviors (Roccas & Sagiv, 2017) and attitudes (Hanel et al, 2021) such as pro‐environmental behavior (Bouman et al, 2018) and attitudes toward immigrants (Davidov et al, 2008). Values may also predict well‐being in an iterative manner: Values guide what emotions someone wants to experience and what situations someone is actively seeking, which can impact how they feel (Kesberg & Keller, 2018; Tamir et al, 2016), which in turn can reinforce their values (Fischer & Karl, 2022). However, associations of values with positive and negative aspects of well‐being were mostly inconsistent.…”

“…First, there is a lack of evidence for the causal direction of influence between value fulfillment and well‐being. The extant research assumes an influence from value fulfillment to well‐being, but it is also plausible that higher well‐being makes people more able to pursue and fulfill their values (DeYoung & Tiberius, 2023; Fischer & Karl, 2022). Disentangling these effects in everyday life can help to determine whether value living is as much a foundation for well‐being as it is a symptom of well‐being.…”