Subjective well-being (SWB) is people’s cognitive and emotional evaluation of their lives, which in our everyday vocabulary is called happiness (Diener et al., 2003). The scientific analysis of subjective well-being refers to people’s emotional reactions to events and global judgments about life satisfaction. Life satisfaction is an overall positive perception or feeling about the quality of own life (Corsini, 1999) and it can be broken down in satisfaction with specific important domains like close romantic relations or satisfaction with job (Daukantaitë and Bergman, 2003). Emotional component of SWB means a tendency to respond to one’s environment with good or bad feelings, emotions, reactions (Corsini, 1999). Though, scientists divide affect into two different groups – positive affect and negative affect.
The purpose of the study is to investigate subjective well-being in the sample of Lithuanian men. The main interest was to study: 1) the relationship between general SWB components and satisfaction with important domains; 2) the differences in SWB in different groups based on demographic factors; 3) the relationship between general SWB components and personality traits. The statistical package SPSS with a probability level of 0.05 was used to process the data.
The research was based on self-report questionnaires in Lithuanian male sample (n = 115). The criteria for recruitment was age, the average age of the sample was 39,67 years. Men were contacted at their working place and were given a self-reported questionnaire. The research took place in different towns of Lithuania.
Results confirm, that components of general SWB are connected to satisfaction with work, leisure, health, relations to partner and children. We found that the mean of each SWB component differed in 3 out of 8 groups of sociodemographic factors such as educational level, current studies, and income per each member of the family. Thus, we support the statement that demographic factors are not strongly related to subjective well-being. The results of the research confirmed findings of other authors, that the strongest and the most reliable correlations were found between SWB components and personality traits such as neuroticism, extraversion, openness to new experiences, agreeableness, consciousness, optimism, and self-esteem. The results of the research let us confirm the results obtained by other scientists that subjective wellbeing is not strongly dependent on the demographic characteristics, but is more likely to be connected to the personality traits.