Subjective Well-Being and Adaptation to Life Events: A Meta-Analysis on Differences Between Cognitive and Affective Well-Being

By Maike Luhmann, Wilhelm Hofmann, Michael Eid, Richard E. Lucas. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011

1,244 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Previous research has shown that major life events can have short- and long-term effects on subjective well-being (SWB). The present meta-analysis examines (a) whether life events have different effects on cognitive and affective well-being and (b) how the rate of adaptation varies across different life events. Longitudinal data from 188 publications (313 samples, N = 65,911) were integrated to describe the reaction and adaptation to four family events (marriage, divorce, bereavement, child birth) and four work events (unemployment, reemployment, retirement, relocation/migration). The findings show that life events have very different effects on affective and cognitive well-being, and that for most events the effects of life events on cognitive well-being are stronger and more consistent across samples. Different life events differ in their effects on SWB, but these effects are not a function of the alleged desirability of events. The results are discussed with respect to their theoretical implications, and recommendations for future studies on adaptation are given.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Health, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fa288b69adc698c39b581b7a67cd6106ba8d9092

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Citations in the corpus

Linking Goal Progress and Subjective Well-Being: A Meta-analysis (2015, background): “Luhmann et al. (2012) provided meta-analytic evidence that emotional and cognitive SWB differ in their relations with life events.”
Negative life events, self-efficacy, and social support: Risk and protective factors for school dropout intentions and dropout. (2020, background): “Negative life events, such as a severe accident, the death of a close person, or going through an unhappy relationship, may act as stressors and evoke maladaptive responses, thus disrupting normal functioning (cf., Dupéré et al., 2018; Lantz et al., 2005; Luhmann et al., 2012).”
The Relationship Between Self-Compassion and Well-Being: A Meta-Analysis. (2015, methodology): “Further, it was aligned with other comparable meta-analyses regarding the analysis of well-being because they used a similar procedure (e.g. DeNeve & Cooper, 1998; Steel et al., 2008; Luhmann et al., 2012).”
The pains and pleasures of parenting: when, why, and how is parenthood associated with more or less well-being? (2014, background): “Supporting this notion, a recent meta-analysis revealed that individuals’ well-being in the months before childbirth is higher than the estimated population level of well-being (Luhmann et al., 2012).”
Children’s Subjective Well-being: Socio-demographic Characteristics and Personality (2013, positive): “Second, previous studies found life events (see Headey andWearing 1989; Luhmann et al. 2012; Suh et al. 1996) and changes in young people's lives (e.”