People rely on their recent emotional experiences when constructing life satisfaction judgments. However, the role of positive and negative affect in life satisfaction across different age groups has rarely been examined in prior research. This study sought to investigate the contribution of positive and negative affect to life satisfaction across five age groups in a large sample of Serbians between 16 and 65 years of age (N = 3287, 59.9% females). Multi-group structural equation modeling was used to establish measurement invariance and to examine the relationships between affect and life satisfaction across the age groups. Full metric invariance was supported for life satisfaction and positive and negative affect across the groups. The results showed that positive affect had strong effects on life satisfaction across the groups, whereas negative affect had weak or nonsignificant effects. The effects of positive and negative affect on life satisfaction were found to be invariant across age groups. Our findings indicate that people rely more on positive emotional experiences than on negative emotional experiences when constructing life satisfaction judgments, and that age does not moderate the effects of affective experiences on life satisfaction.

人们在构建生活满意度判断时依赖于他们最近的情感经历。但是，在先前的研究中很少研究正面和负面影响在不同年龄组的生活满意度中的作用。本研究旨在调查的16至65岁之间的大样本塞尔维亚的跨越5个年龄组积极和消极影响对生活满意度的贡献（ñ = 3287，女性占59.9％）。使用多组结构方程模型来建立度量不变性，并检验各个年龄段的情感和生活满意度之间的关系。完全度量不变性可支持整个群体的生活满意度以及正面和负面影响。结果表明，积极的影响对各组的生活满意度都有很大的影响，而消极的影响则对微不足道或无显着影响。研究发现，正面和负面影响对生活满意度的影响在各个年龄段中都是不变的。我们的发现表明，在构建生活满意度判断时，人们更多地依赖于积极的情感体验而不是消极的情感体验，并且年龄并不能减轻情感体验对生活满意度的影响。