IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jhappi/v14y2013i1p115-134.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Positive Automatic Cognitions Mediate the Relationship Between Personality and Trait Positive Affect

Author

Listed:
  • Owen Lightsey
  • George Gharibian Gharghani
  • Aron Katz
  • Valerie McKinney
  • Eli Rarey

Abstract

Positive affect (PA) has emerged as a key well-being facet and a powerful predictor of physical and psychological well-being. One of the strongest predictors of PA is personality, particularly neuroticism and extraversion. However, the mechanisms via which personality affects PA are not well-understood. Consistent with theories that accord cognitive factors a role in mediating the relationship between personality and outcomes, we tested whether positive automatic thoughts (PATs) mediated the relationship between neuroticism, extraversion, and PA among 199 college students (137 women, 70% White, 66% first and second year students, mean age = 24.13, SD = 8.86). Consistent with hypotheses, structural equation modeling indicated that PATs fully mediated the relationship between both neuroticism and extraversion and PA. The structural model fit the data well, χ 2 /df = 2.33, CFI = .96, SRMR = .07, RMSEA = .08 (90% CI: .06, .10), AIC = 172.45, and accounted for 58% of the variance in PA. An alternative model in which personality predicted PA, which in turn predicted PATs, did not provide as good a fit to the data, χ 2 /df = 3.03, CFI = .94, SRMR = .09, RMSEA = .10 (90% CI: .08, .12), AIC = 207.40. Models in which negative automatic thoughts (NATs) were construed as fully [χ 2 /df = 4.46, CFI = .95, SRMR = .08, RMSEA = .13 (90% CI: .11, .16)] or partially [χ 2 /df = 4.04, CFI = .96, SRMR = .06, RMSEA = .12 (90% CI: .10, .15)] mediating the relationship between neuroticism and negative affect did not provide a good fit to the data. A final model in which negative affect was tested a mediator of the relationship between neuroticism and NATs also did not fit the data well, χ 2 /df = 4.03, CFI = .96, SRMR = .07, RMSEA = .12 (90% CI: .10, .15). Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013

Suggested Citation

  • Owen Lightsey & George Gharibian Gharghani & Aron Katz & Valerie McKinney & Eli Rarey, 2013. "Positive Automatic Cognitions Mediate the Relationship Between Personality and Trait Positive Affect," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 115-134, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jhappi:v:14:y:2013:i:1:p:115-134
    DOI: 10.1007/s10902-011-9319-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10902-011-9319-x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10902-011-9319-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marco Lauriola & Luca Iani, 2017. "Personality, Positivity and Happiness: A Mediation Analysis Using a Bifactor Model," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 18(6), pages 1659-1682, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jhappi:v:14:y:2013:i:1:p:115-134. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.