Background

Personality is a predictor of subjective well-being in older and younger adults, but less is known about the underlying mechanisms. One possible mechanism is psychological flexibility, which is the ability to keep an open mind-set in order to make flexible choices adapted to the situation at hand.

Methods

We recruited 60 younger and 60 older adults and measured personality and well-being by questionnaires. To assess psychological flexibility we used questionnaires and a behavioral task assessing flexibility in information acquisition when making choices.

Results

Based on indirect effect analysis of the questionnaire data, in line with former research, our data show that in both age groups, the relationship between personality and well-being runs through psychological flexibility.

Conclusion

This implies that training psychological flexibility may be a promising approach to increase well-being in both older and younger adults. This effect could not be demonstrated with our choice flexibility task, thus more research is needed to uncover why this could not be measured at the behavioral level.

中文翻译：

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灵活地充当老年人和年轻人的性格与幸福之间的中介者：调查问卷数据和行为任务的发现。

背景

人格是老年人和年轻人主观幸福感的预测指标，但对潜在机制的了解却很少。一种可能的机制是心理灵活性，即保持开放的心态以便做出适应当前情况的灵活选择的能力。

方法

我们招募了60位年轻的成年人和60位年龄较大的成年人，并通过问卷调查测量了其性格和幸福感。为了评估心理灵活性，我们使用了问卷调查和一项行为任务来评估做出选择时信息获取的灵活性。

结果

根据对问卷数据的间接影响分析，与以前的研究一致，我们的数据表明，在两个年龄组中，人格与幸福感之间的关系都是通过心理灵活性实现的。

结论

这意味着训练心理灵活性可能是增加老年人和年轻人福祉的一种有前途的方法。我们的选择灵活性任务无法证明这种效果，因此需要更多的研究来揭示为什么不能在行为水平上对其进行测量。