1 Introduction
Traditionally, there have been two theoretical approaches to the concept of life satisfaction, which differ in the causal assumptions: the ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ perspectives (Diener
1984; Headey et al.
1991; Lance et al.
1989). The ‘bottom-up’ perspective assumes that a person’s overall life satisfaction depends on his or her satisfaction in many concrete areas of life, which can be classified into broad life domains such as family, friendship, work, leisure, and the like (Pavot and Diener
2008; Heller et al.
2004; Veenhoven
1996). Multiple discrepancy theory (Michalos
1985), need hierarchy theory (Maslow
1970), and the self-concordance model (Sheldon and Elliot
1999) are all good examples of ‘bottom-up’ theories that conceive domain satisfactions as needs. According to these theories the more needs are satisfied, the greater the satisfaction with life as a whole. From the ‘bottom-up’ perspective, domain satisfactions mediate the effects of situational factors on life satisfaction. The ‘top-down’ perspective is a dispositional explanation, which contends that differences in personality and other stable traits of the person predispose people to be differentially satisfied with their lives (Diener et al.
2003; Steel et al.
2008; DeNeve and Cooper
1998). Defendants of the ‘top-down’ perspective rather than denying the influence of situational factors (Diener
1996), claim that both dispositional and situational factors interact in relation to life satisfaction (Brief et al.
1993; Heller et al.
2004).
‘Top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ perspectives have often been presented as competing theories; however, both approaches are not incongruent when dispositional factors are viewed as more distal predictors of life satisfaction than domain satisfactions (Erdogan et al.
2012). The dispositions of each person influence his or her perceptions of environmental conditions, resulting in more or less satisfaction with life domains. Thus, personality has a distal effect on global life satisfaction according to this integrating approach (Brief et al.
1993). For instance, a meta-analysis by Heller et al. (
2004) showed that job and marital satisfactions mediate the effect of personality on life satisfaction. Erdogan et al. (
2012) claimed that the ‘treating personality as a distal predictor in models of life satisfaction may be more consistent with theory as opposed to treating it as a control variable that needs to be partialled out.’ We focus on the closest predictors in the causality chain in this article.
Drawing from the ‘bottom-up’ perspective, subjective well-being (SWB) researchers have put forth a myriad of life domain satisfactions, which are thought to be relevant to overall life satisfaction. Among the life domains that have generated more consensus are satisfaction with health, family, income, social relationships, leisure-time, work, sex life, housing, safety, self-worth, and education (e.g., Flanagan
1978; Argyle
2001; Headey and Wearing
1992; Greenley et al.
1997; Praag et al.
2003; Costa
2008). Although these essential life domains may be generalised among most people, there is evidence that people from different cultures (Diener
2000; Diener and Suh
2000; Diener and Lucas
2000) and in distinct developmental life stages (Cantor and Blanton
1996; Cantor and Sanderson
1999) weigh life domains differently when asked to judge their global life satisfaction.
Different cultures usually weigh life domains differently because culture shapes individual attitudes, values, and the types of goals individuals pursue (Hofstede
1991; Kim
1994), which in turn determine the specific life domains people consider relevant, and the weight they give to each domain (Oishi et al.
1999; Kasser and Ryan
1993,
1996; Cantor and Sanderson
1999). For example, East Asian cultures tend to be self-critical societies, where modesty and self-improvement is highly valued (Markus and Kitayama
1991). In these cultures past personal accomplishments are not evaluated as positively as in the U.S. (Heine et al.
1999; Markus and Kitayama
1991) because the concept of life satisfaction is based primarily on external conditions and current status rather than past accomplishments. Cross-cultural differences in life satisfaction have been primarily explained in terms of the broad cultural variable of a society’s degree of individualism-collectivism (Triandis
1989) or independent-interdependent concepts of the self (Markus and Kitayama
1991). In individualistic societies such as the US and Western Europe people are oriented toward their personal goals and desires and are more likely to attribute success and failure to themselves. In contrast, people in collectivist cultures view the group as of primary importance and individuals are willing to sacrifice their desires to the will of the group. When individualistic and collectivistic nations are compared in terms of different indicators of SWB, more individualistic nations generally report higher mean levels of life satisfaction (Diener and Diener
1995).
However, the weights that people give to multiple life domains also change during life (Cantor and Blanton
1996; Cantor and Sanderson
1999). Domain satisfactions relevant to salient life tasks are more strongly related to global life satisfaction than less relevant domain satisfactions (Harlow and Cantor
1996). For example, building an intimate relationship is a salient life task during young adulthood; as a result, young adults tend to attribute relatively high importance to satisfaction with romantic relationships when assessing their global life satisfaction (Oishi et al.
1999). Given the cross-cultural differences in conceptualisations of life satisfaction and the different weights attributed to life domains in different life stages, SWB researchers have usually studied relatively homogeneous populations that share to some extent the same values, salient life tasks, and cultural context (e.g., Bretones and Gonzalez
2011; Ku et al.
2008; Brown and Tierney
2009).
SBW researchers have tended to focus on nonworking populations—such as children (Huebner
1994), adolescents (Gilman and Huebner
2000), students (Seligson et al.
2003), and those with health problems (e.g., Matthews et al.
2012)—leaving the satisfaction of workers to other research fields (Diener et al.
1999) such as management and industrial/organisational (I/O) psychology. In turn, these fields have usually defined a satisfied worker as someone satisfied with their job and scant attention has been paid to the more holistic concept of workers’ life satisfaction (Erdogan et al.
2012). Recently, some research has shown preliminary evidence that life satisfaction may have a similar predictive power than that of work satisfaction in predicting some important organisational outcomes such as job performance (Jones
2006; Greguras and Diefendorff
2010; Duckworth et al.
2009); job commitment (Vanaki and Vagharseyyedin
2009; Redman and Snape
2006; Susskind et al.
2000); absenteeism (Murphy et al.
2006; Judge and Locke
1993); turnover (Shaw and Gupta
2001; De Cuyper et al.
2009); early retirement intentions (Von Bonsdorff et al.
2010); and employee burnout (Haar and Roche
2010). While research accumulates showing the organisational consequences of workers being more satisfied with their life, less is known about the how different life domains contribute to the overall life satisfaction of workers. Gaining further understanding of how workers weigh multiple life domains in the formation of their life satisfaction evaluative judgments will provide organisations with a more holistic view of their workers—and the associated organisational outcomes—and is also important because two–thirds of the world population are workers (World Bank Indicators 2012). Accordingly, we examine the subjective predictors of life satisfaction of workers in Chile.
Chile is an emerging economy that has experienced remarkably rapid economic growth and significant societal changes over the past 30 years. The average annual growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP) reached 6 % from 1980 to 2012. The Human Development Index (HDI)—a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and income indices that rank countries into four tiers of human development and published by the united nations development programme (UNDP)—showed an increase for Chile from .630 in 1980 to .819 in 2011 (UNDP Human Development Report
2013). This remarkable increase ranks Chile in the first place of Latin American countries and 40th place worldwide in terms of living conditions (UNDP Human Development in Chile
2012). This rapid development has been accompanied of low unemployment rates, of 7 % on average. In this context, organisations increasingly need to better understand worker perceptions, aspirations, and motivations, in order to increase their employee retainment rates and performance indicators.
The article is organised as follows: firstly, we identify a number of life domains that previous research found to be relevant to the life satisfaction of most working adults. Secondly, we develop measures for the multiple domain satisfactions. Thirdly, we examine the relevance that a sample of Chilean workers attribute to different domain satisfactions in the formation of their global life satisfaction evaluative judgments. Finally, we discuss the pattern of weights obtained and interpret the results—while placing a special emphasis on the cultural context of Chile.
2 Model of Life Satisfaction
The number of life domains likely to be relevant to someone’s life satisfaction can range from a small number to an almost infinite recount of spheres of being (Rojas
2006; Cummins
1996). However, according to the compatibility principle, the relationship between two variables increases when both are assessed at the same level of specificity (Fishbein and Ajzen
1974). Given that life satisfaction is a broad concept, then life domains will probably need to be relatively broad as well. Rojas (
2006) suggested that partitions of a human life must value parsimony, should relate to the way people think about their lives, and be useful to the understanding of life satisfaction. For the purpose of this study we selected seven life domain satisfactions that SWB research has consistently identified as relevant to life satisfaction: health, financial situation, social relationships, self-worth, leisure-time, family, and work. Other domains such as sex life, education, and safety have also received considerable attention in the literature (e.g., Headey and Wearing
1992; Cummins
1996; Sirgy et al.
2010); however, we did not include them in our model for the sake of parsimony. Without pretending to be an exhaustive list, Table
1 summarises how the seven selected life domains have been represented in extant models of life satisfaction and SBW. We only considered the direct effects of the multiple domains on life satisfaction, although the authors are aware of the possible modes of interaction among life domains (Wilensky
1960; Judge and Watanabe
1994; Wu
2009). Also, we assumed that domains had additive effects on life satisfaction. Finally, given that the focus of our research are the subjective predictors of life satisfaction we did not draw hypotheses for age and gender—although both were incorporated as control variables.
Table 1
Life domains in previous studies
| • | • | • | | | • | • |
Andrews and Inglehart ( 1979) | • | • | • | | • | | • |
| • | | | | • | | • |
| • | • | | | • | • | • |
| • | • | • | • | • | • | • |
| • | • | • | | • | • | • |
| • | • | • | • | • | • | • |
| • | • | | | | | |
| | | • | • | | • | • |
| • | • | • | | • | | |
| | | | | | | |
Gregg and Salisbury ( 2001) | • | • | • | • | | • | • |
| • | • | • | | • | | • |
| • | • | | | • | | • |
| • | | • | • | | • | |
| • | • | • | | | | |
| • | • | • | | • | • | • |
5 Discussion and Conclusion
Previous research examining the effects of satisfaction with multiple life domains on overall life satisfaction has usually reported what accounts for about 50 % of the variance in life satisfaction (Andrews and Withey
1976; Campbell
1976; Hart
1999; Near et al.
1984). The nine predictors included in this study explained 70 % of life satisfaction variance. However, not all the domains had the expected effects on life satisfaction. Results indicated that Chilean workers attribute most importance to their financial situation, followed by family, work, and health. The effects of satisfaction with one’s self-worth and leisure-time—although not significant at .05—both had associated t values near the critical value. Satisfaction with social relationships did not seem to be a relevant factor for Chilean workers.
These results are consistent with previous research that found that satisfaction with income, or financial situation, was a dominant predictor of life satisfaction in emerging economies, where gross national product (GNP) grows rapidly but its level is still far lower from most advanced economies like the US or Western European economies. Saris et al. (
1996), for instance, found that satisfaction with income was more strongly related to SWB in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe. Similarly, in the Russian context, Saris (
2001) found a ‘bottom-up’ effect for satisfaction with financial situations—but not for housing and marriage satisfactions. Building on Maslow’s (
1970) needs hierarchy theory, Saris (
2001) claimed that in the emerging economies finance satisfaction might be dominant, while in richer countries the effect of the domain satisfactions of social contacts or marriage on SWB might be significant instead because income levels are sufficiently high that people are no longer unduly worried about finance situation.
Regarding the relatively strong relationship found between satisfaction with family and global life satisfaction—the second strongest predictor—we attribute this result to the collectivistic orientation of Chilean culture (Hofstede et al.
2010). This cultural orientation makes the group, and particularly the family, of primary importance. Although material intergenerational dependence may be weaker for workers than for other nonworking populations, the family model of emotional interdependence characterises collectivistic cultures (Kagitcibasi
1996), where individuals emotionally rely on family and maintaining harmonious family relationships is a central goal. Individualistic and collectivistic cultures also differ in their conceptualisation of the self (Diener
2000; Suh et al.
1998). In the former cultures the self is self-contained, isolated, independent, and clearly bounded (Markus and Kitayama
1991; Sampson
1989); while the self is enmeshed, interdependent, and contextualised in the later cultures (Tafarodi and Walters
1999). The non-significance of satisfaction with self-worth in our study may reflect the collectivistic nature of Chilean culture since in a cross-national study, Diener and Diener (
1995) found that self-esteem correlated more strongly with life satisfaction in individualistic than in collectivist societies.
When respondents are asked to judge the importance of various domains of their lives, ‘good health’ usually obtains one of the highest ratings (Campbell
1976). In our study, satisfaction with health had a weaker effect on life satisfaction than found in previous research (e.g., Marmot
2003; Gempp and Thieme
2013). We attribute this weaker effect to the nature of participants in the study. We infer that the workers are relatively healthy and are not suffering severe illnesses or disabilities. When a disabling condition is not severe, people tend to adapt and health domain decreases in importance in priorities (Diener et al.
1999). This lower value given for health could, in turn, result in a lower weight of satisfaction with health in overall satisfaction (Oishi et al.
1999). However, this is speculation and needs to be further researched.
The effect of work satisfaction on overall life satisfaction was in the range found in previous research, when the effects of satisfaction in non-work domains were controlled (Rice et al.
1980; Tait et al.
1989; Bowling et al.
2010). Despite the fact that for most adults work is a central task to which they devote a large amount of time and energy, conclusions from meta-analysis studies indicate that work satisfaction is only moderately related to global life satisfaction (Tait et al.
1989; Bowling et al.
2010). Rice et al. (
1980) suggested a disaggregation hypothesis of work and life satisfaction, which proposes that the relationship is stronger for individuals who value work in their lives.
Surprisingly, both the effect of satisfaction with social life and leisure-time were non-significant—although in different degrees. While satisfaction with leisure-time was nearly significant, satisfaction with social life was clearly not relevant. According to Kitayama and Markus (
2000), SWB comes from social participation, which can take different forms. In the case of workers, social participation may take place primarily at work. Harlow and Cantor (
1996) found that social participation was a stronger predictor of life satisfaction for retirees than for elders who still hold a job, concluding that social participation was more important for life satisfaction during stages when the opportunity for social interaction was limited by the loss of a job.
Our results also showed that age had a negative effect on life satisfaction. This seemingly paradoxical effect may be explained by the quadratic pattern that previous research has found to characterise the relationship between age and life satisfaction, which reaches its lowest point at middle age but then increases into later adulthood (Blanchflower and Oswald
2008; Kimberly et al.
2012; Löckenhoff and Carstensen
2004). SWB generally does not decline again until after the age of seventy (Baird et al.
2010). Graham and Pettinato (
2001) found that Latin America is not different from other economies in this matter. These authors found that happiness had a quadratic relationship with age, initially decreasing, and then increasing monotonically after 49 years of age. Given that our sample was made of workers, the negative effect we found is indicative of the initial decline of life satisfaction in early adulthood. Regarding gender, our results are similar to Graham and Pettinato (
2001), who found no significant gender effect for Latin America countries, in contrast to more advanced industrial countries such as the US where women usually tend to be slightly happier than men.
Three main limitations are worth noting in this study. First, we only considered the direct effects of life domain satisfactions on overall life satisfaction. However, life domains are rarely disconnected from each other. Domains tend to interact with each other in different ways (Wilensky
1960). The spillover model posits that life domain satisfactions are positively related and that satisfaction in one domain affects the others. The compensatory model states that a negative relation exists among domain satisfactions because people compensate for negative experiences in one domain by enriching the others (Wu
2009). Judge and Watanabe (
1994) found that spillover characterised most of the individuals; however, some authors do not agree with this conclusion (Hart
1999). Secondly, we assumed an additive relationship between the life domain satisfactions and overall life satisfaction, although more flexible types of relationships have been proposed. For example, Rojas (
2006) argued that there could be substantial gains in the understanding of the relationship by assuming alternative specifications such as an additive relationship, a semi-logarithm relationship, a logarithm-logarithm relationship, or a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) relationship. In particular, Rojas suggested that a CES specification is preferable if the objective is to understand rather than to predict life satisfaction. Finally, the measure development process reduced the number of indicators per life domain to two. As Kline (
1998, p. 358) argued: ‘having only two indicators per factor may lead to problems. Such models may be more likely to be empirically under identified than models with at least three indicators per factor…part of the model where some factors have only two indicators per factor are not self-sufficient in terms of the covariance matrix.’