Investigating the Relationship Between Satisfaction with Life and Self-Awareness of Big 5 Personality Traits

This research endeavoured to establish if there is a relationship between Satisfaction with Life (SWL) scores and self-awareness of one’s own personality, as measured by the Big 5 personality trait structure. That is to say, where a greater level of self awareness is present, the expectation is that higher SWL will also be present and vice-versa for lower levels. To establish this, participants completed a combined set of questionnaires designed to measure what they believed their respective traits scores are, what their actual trait scores are (the latter subtracted from the former to create a delta score), and what their current (at time of participation) SWL scores are. The delta scores for each of the Big traits along with their aggregated total delta was then compared to the SWL score, with the expectation that higher delta scores (i.e. a lack of self-awareness) would correlate with a lower SWL score and vice versa, where lower delta scores (i.e. greater self-awareness) would correlate with a higher SWL score. The findings of the study did not support the original hypothesis or any of the sub-hypotheses. A such, while research in self awareness in other domains has been shown to be beneficial to SWL and other life outcome measures such as goal achievement, self-awareness of Big 5 does not appear to significantly predict SWL