Personality,Emotional Qualities of Leisure,and Subjective Well-Being in the Elderly

Successful Aging as Activity Engagement: Type, Frequency, and Emotional Valence

An important component of successful aging is an active engagement in life. While there is some discussion about definitions and measures of successful aging (Depp & Jeste, 2006), a prominent framework is that of Rowe and Kahn (1997, 2015) whose model includes three components: low risk of disease and disability, high mental and physical functioning, and engagement with life. As the concept of successful aging continues to evolve, with definitions including, among others, psychological well-being, and adaptation to and compensation for life changes (Cho, Martin, & Poon, 2015), active engagement remains a critical component (Baltes, 1997; Liffiton, Horton, Baker, & Weir, 2012; Rowe & Kahn, 2015; Vaillant, 2002). Many older adults maintain active lives (James, Pitt-Catsouphes, Coplon, & Cohen, 2013) and furthermore, older adults define successful aging in ways consistent with active engagement theory, for example, keeping busy and enjoying hobbies was second only to health when individuals discussed what successful aging meant to them (Knight & Ricciardelli, 2003).

Elderly individuals who engage in a wide spectrum of activities experience greater physical health and life satisfaction (Brajša-Žganec, Merkaš, & Šverko, 2011; Menec, 2003; Ruchlin & Lachs, 1999; Silverstein & Parker, 2002), show less disability (Agahi, Lennartsson, Kåreholt, & Shaw, 2013; Mendes de Leon, Glass, & Berkman, 2003), are less stressed and depressed (Herzog, Franks, Markus, & Holmberg, 1998), and live longer (Glass, Mendes de Leon, Marottoli, & Berkman, 1999; Moore et al., 2012). Vaillant (2007) reported that a “happy retirement” and successful aging would be enhanced by the opportunities and capacity for play, and Knight and Ricciardelli (2003) emphasized the importance of individuals choosing activities consistent with their interests and abilities.

Maintaining an actively engaged life requires strategic compensations, especially in older adults, as described in the Selection, Optimization, and Compensation model (Baltes, 1997; Baltes & Baltes, 1990; Freund & Baltes, 2002). For example, participation in organized sports can be replaced with taking brisk walks or dancing (Brown, McGuire, & Voelkl, 2008), and bowling and tennis can be replaced with interactive computer technologies, resulting in positive outcomes such as decreased loneliness and increased positive mood (Kahlbaugh, Sperandio, Carlson, & Hauselt, 2011). When activities are meaningfully connected to those previously enjoyed, they are more likely to be participated in (Eakman, Carlson, & Clark, 2010; Kahlbaugh et al., 2011). The research showing positive links between activity engagement and overall life satisfaction (Brajša-Žganec et al., 2011; Rowe & Kahn, 1997, 2015; Ruchlin & Lachs, 1999; Vaillant & Mukamal, 2001) have typically taken a “more is better” approach (Lemon, Bengston, & Peterson, 1972; Menec, 2003), focusing on the number and frequency of activities without considering the affective quality of the experience. The emphasis on the number of activities may miss important aspects of successful aging in older seniors, for whom the “paradox of leisure in later life” (Nimrod & Shrira, 2014) is especially relevant—that is, that due to physical limitations, older adults may benefit relatively more from the quality of leisure activities than number. An approach that considers the affective qualities of activity may provide a way to measure the benefit of activities without relying on frequency, a measure likely to reduce naturally with age. Choosing to engage in activities may be predicted by how that activity makes the older individual feel. Researchers have examined specific qualities of activities, such as structure, purpose, and affiliation for younger adults (Celen-Demirtas, Konstam, & Tomek, 2015; Liu, 2014), but this has not been done for older individuals and has not included affective quality.

To address the affective quality of activities, we are interested in activities associated with positive mood states such as happiness and excitement. We consider these to be positively valenced activities (Lewin, 1938; 1951), involving movement toward a desired goal or meaningful state. We also consider activities associated with negative mood states such as fear, anger, and sadness, and as such, consider them to be negatively valenced activities. Negative valence represents an aversion or movement away from the activity. A positive or negative valence “merely indicates that, for whatever reason, at the present time and for this specific individual a tendency exists to act in the direction toward this region or away from it” (Lewin, 1938, p. 88). Beyond number or frequency of leisure activities, research on activities that are positively valenced can add to our understanding of the relationship between active engagement and successful aging.

Successful Aging as Subjective Well-Being: Cognitive and Emotional Appraisals

Subjective well-being (SWB) can be viewed as cognitive appraisals of the quality of one’s life as a whole (Diener, 1984, Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffen, 1985) and as experiences of positive affect (PA) (Simone & Haas, 2013). From a cognitive perspective, SWB is an evaluation of the quality of one’s state of existence and an expression of the evolving ways of seeing the self in relation to others and to the greater existential questions (Tornstam, 2011). Dimensions of SWB, including developmental, physical, mental, and social, have been identified in qualitative research, with higher order themes emerging such as personal development (including achievement and purpose), independence, fitness, and emotion (Stahi, Fox, & McKenna, 2002). Factors associated with low SWB in older people include frailty due to emotional losses (e.g., missing loved ones, feeling abandoned, etc.), and lack of participating in socially oriented activities (Simone & Haas, 2013), particularly on the weekend (Heo, Kim, Kim, & Heo, 2014).

Emotions provide the motivation for and meaning of experience, both as thought and action, across the lifespan (Izard, 1971). Strong positive emotional content of autobiographical memories predict between a 6.9- and 10.7-year increase in survival rates in the Nun Study (Danner, Snowdon, & Friesen, 2001). Research on cognitive appraisals of SWB and overall PA has been conducted; however, it is not clear how these are related to the emotional qualities of activity engagement. In addition, individual differences in predicting the particular emotional quality of activity engagement should be addressed. One major quality of individual difference is captured in personality traits.

Personality

The positive and negative valence of activities may be connected to one’s personality. Personality traits represent stable approaches to life that provide information about motivations to behave in certain ways and in certain situations (McCrae & Costa, 1997) and provide frames for how experiences are evaluated (Judge, Simon, Hurst, & Kelley, 2014). Personality traits taxonomies, such as the Big Five, have been useful in the study of applied phenomena such as emotions, social behavior, and health (John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008). Each of the Big Five traits are characterized by different trait adjectives. For example, Openness to experience is characterized by trait adjectives such as original, curiosity, and wide interests; Conscientiousness by organized, thorough, responsible; Extraversion by talkative, assertive and energetic; Agreeableness by kind, appreciative, and sympathetic; and Neuroticism by tense, anxious and high-strung (John et al., 2008). Personality traits of Extraversion and Openness to experience have been associated with plasticity and engagement (Hirsh, DeYoung, & Peterson, 2009) and approach motivation (Updegraff, Gable, & Taylor, 2004). Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism have been associated with stability and self-control (Hirsh et al., 2009) and Neuroticism with avoidance motivation (see Updegraff et al., 2004).

The Big Five model of personality has predictive value for aspects of aging well. Extraversion has been identified as an approach motivational trait positively related to SWB, while Neuroticism, as an avoidance motivational trait, is inversely related (see Updegraff et al., 2004). Conscientiousness has particular relevance for health and longevity (Chapman, Duberstein, & Lyness, 2007; Jokela, Pulkki-Råback, Elovainio, & Kivimäki, 2014), possibly due to the effect of increased self-regulation (English & Carstensen, 2014), and behaviors promoting better health outcomes such as adhering to medication regimens (Molloy, O’Carroll, & Ferguson, 2014), health screenings (Gale, Deary, Wardle, Zaninotto, & Batty, 2015), and reduced risk of smoking (Hakulinen et al., 2015; Terracciano & Costa, 2004).

Neuroticism, with the characteristics of negative mood, such as anxiety, has a similarly strong relationship with health outcomes in the negative direction. Neuroticism is associated with greater mortality, even when controlling for social class and health status (Jokela et al., 2014; Mroczek, Spiro, & Turiano, 2009; Shipley, Weiss, Der, Taylor, & Deary, 2007). From the perspective of successful or optimal aging, Neuroticism can be considered an indication of “psychobiological vulnerability” with a myriad of negative consequences for the older adult, including depression (Ormel, Oldehinkel, & Brilman, 2001), lower emotional complexity and emotional well-being (Ready, Akerstedt, & Mroczek, 2012), an increase in the reporting of somatic symptoms (Costa & McCrae, 1985), and lower physical functioning (Canada, Stephan, Jaconelli, & Duberstein, 2016).

Openness to Experience has been found to predict cognitive reserve in older adults, as measured by crystallized intelligence, possibly due to the experience-seeking and engagement aspects of this quality (Franchow, Suchy, Thorgusen, & Williams, 2013) and through a general enhancement of cognitive ability (Booth, Schinka, Brown, Mortimer, & Borenstein, 2006; Soubelet & Salthouse, 2011). Lower Openness to experience scores may be a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease (Duberstein et al., 2011).

A meta-analysis of research on personality and physical activity in adults found that Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness are associated with more activity, and Neuroticism with less (Sutin et al., 2016). Openness and Extraversion facilitate an approach orientation (Zhang & Tsingan, 2014) and are associated with a large variety of leisure activities, ranging from sedentary to more physically challenging (Stephan, Boiché, Canada, & Terracciano, 2014).

Much of the research on the relationship between personality and leisure activities has focused on the frequency or variety of activities rather than the emotions associated with participating in them. Research in this area also has not been sensitive to the age of the participants. What is not known is how personality traits are related to emotions linked to particular leisure activities and to cognitive and affective appraisals of SWB in older adults. Investigating associations between personality traits and positive and negative emotionally valenced activities in older people provides predictive information about the motivations to engage in particular leisure pursuits. Will a person higher in Neuroticism find the same degree of happiness while participating in activities such as physical exercise or social outings compared to a person lower in Neuroticism or compared to a person higher in Openness to experience? Is there a match between individuals’ personality traits and the types of activities that make them happy or afraid? The present study focuses on a range of activities older individuals engage in, and explicitly on the positive and negative emotions reported to have been experienced while doing so. By capturing the emotional quality of the activity, this research can expand the picture of the motivational quality of active engagement.

The present study investigates the following three questions: In what ways do personality traits predict positive and negative emotionally valenced leisure pursuits, do these traits predict the emotional components of SWB, specifically, PA and negative affect (NA), and finally, do these personality traits predict the cognitive appraisal of the overall quality of their life experience?

We predict that personality characteristics of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Openness to experience, and Conscientiousness will be related to positive emotionally valenced leisure pursuits and Neuroticism will be related to negative emotionally valenced leisure pursuits. Specifically, positive emotions associated with social activities like visiting friends and family will be more likely to occur for people higher in Extraversion, Openness to experience, and Agreeableness. Positive emotions associated with physical activities will be more likely to occur for people higher in Extraversion and Openness to experience. Positively valenced activities involving attention to detail will be more likely to occur for people higher in Conscientiousness, and activities accompanied by positive emotions involving exploration and curiosity, such as outings and reading, will be more likely to occur for people higher in Openness to experience. Individuals higher in Neuroticism are expected to experience have lower positive emotions with physical, social, and cognitive activities.

We predict that for the emotional component of SWB (i.e., PA and NA), Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness to experience will predict PA, and Neuroticism should predict NA. Finally, we predict that for the cognitive appraisal of SWB, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Openness will be positively related and Neuroticism will be negatively related.

Participants

Forty-nine participants were recruited using a snowball sampling strategy resulting in a community sample of individuals from CT (n = 24), NY (n = 10), MT (n = 3), MO (n = 3), AZ (n = 2), FL (n = 2), GA (n = 2), MA (n = 2), and PA (n = 2) (17 men and 32 women) aged 65–97 years (M = 74, SD = 8.5, Mdn age = 71).

Measures

Analysis

The analyses focus on three questions, the first of which concerns patterns of relationships between personality traits and positive and negative emotionally valenced leisure pursuits. Pearson correlations between personality traits and positive emotions reported to be experienced while engaging in Games, Reading, Physical Exercise, Outings, Visiting, Puzzles, and Crafts were computed. As predicted, Openness to experience was positively correlated to positive emotion while visiting with friends and family (r = .362, p < .05), participating in physical exercise (r = .518, p < .001), reading (r = .497, p < .001), and going on outings (r = .432, p < .01). Although not predicted, Openness was also related to positive emotions reported while doing crafts (r = .465, p < .01). Finally, Openness was related to TPVA (r = .286, p < .05).

Similar to Openness to experience, people higher in Agreeableness reported more positive emotions while reading and going on outings (r = .471, p < .01 and r = .396, p < .01, respectively) and had higher TPVA (r = .291, p < .05). We did not find a relationship between Agreeableness and positive emotions while visiting with friends and family.

Contrary to our hypotheses, Conscientiousness was inversely related to reporting positive emotions while doing crafts (r = −.392, p < .05) and was not related to positive emotions while doing puzzles. However, people higher in Conscientiousness reported experiencing fewer negative emotions while doing puzzles (r = −.385, p < .05). Finally, although research points to a relationship between Extraversion and physical exercise, Extraversion was not related to positive emotions associated with this activity. In fact, no relationships between Extraversion and positive emotional valence of particular activities emerged, suggesting that assessing the number and frequency with which activities are participated in is different from assessing the emotions that are reported to be experienced while doing them.

We did not expect that Neuroticism would be associated with positive valenced activities, and in fact, no relationships were observed; however, aggregating across activities, we found that Neuroticism was negatively related to TPVA (r = −.303, p < .05). In addition, as would be expected, Neuroticism was associated with negative emotions while visiting with friends and family (r = .391, p < .01).

Our second hypothesis involved a set of predictions about the relationship between personality traits and the emotional aspects of SWB, specifically PA and NA. We examined relationships between PA and NA and personality traits, and supporting previous research, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to experience were correlated with PA while Neuroticism was correlated with NA (see Table 2).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 2.

Personality and PA and NA: Emotional Component of SWB.

Measure(s)	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
1. Positive affect		.085	.414**	.532**	.362*	−.227	.517**
2. Negative affect			.200	−.176	.111	.526**	−.092
3. Extraversion				.334**	.017	−.089	.305*
4. Agreeableness					.331*	−.328**	.353*
5. Conscientiousness						−.020	.037
6. Neuroticism							−.341*
7. Openness to experience

Our third hypothesis predicted relationships between personality traits and the cognitive appraisal of quality of life experience (i.e., SWB measure). Two traits were related to SWB: Agreeableness, (r = .348, p < .05) and Neuroticism (r = −.339, p < .05).

In this work, we have viewed successful aging well as composed of three aspects: emotional quality of activity engagement, and the emotional (PA and NA) and cognitive appraisals of SWB. Notably, our focus on activity engagement moved beyond frequency measures to capture the emotional qualities of activity engagement. As part of our work, then, we considered how personality traits and demographic variables of age, gender, and functionality predict variables TPVA, PA and NA, and SWB. Our last set of analyses was concerned with prediction and exploration, working toward an understanding of how these variables together predict these aspects of successful aging. Because our goals are prediction and exploration we conducted stepwise regression analyses, which can be used with forward and backward elimination (Keith, 2006).

Four stepwise linear regressions were performed, and in these models, demographic variables, such as age, gender and functional status (IADL), and personality traits of Extraversion, Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism as predictors were included. In the first regression analysis, the criterion was TPVA. The overall model included two predictors of TPVA: IADL and Agreeableness, F(2, 45) = 5.896, p = .007, accounting for 19.9% of the variance in TPVA. The first predictor was functional status (IADL) with a β = .329, t = 2.465, p = .018, R²= .109, and the second was the personality trait, Agreeableness, with a β = .299, t = 2.245, p = .030, R² change = .09.

In the second and third regression analyses, the same predictors as in the first regression were used and the criterion was first PA and then NA. For PA, the overall model, F(4, 40) = 14.265, p = .001, accounted for 54.7% of the variance, and included two personality traits, Agreeableness, β = .299, t = 2.625, p = .012, R²= .283, and Openness, β = .397, t = 3.567, p = .001, R² change = .123, and two demographic characteristics, Gender, β = .365, t = 3.33, p = .002, R² change = .078, and IADL, β = .332, t = 3.175, p = .003, R² change = .104. For NA, the overall model, F(2, 42) = 11.44, p < .001, included Neuroticism, β = .568, t = 4.5, p < .001, R²= .272, and Extraversion, β = .288, t = 2.29, p = .027, R² change = .081, accounting for 35.3% of the variance in NA.

Finally, the fourth regression analyses investigated the demographic and personality traits predictive of reported SWB. In forward elimination, Neuroticism was the sole predictor of SWB, F(1, 46) = 6.712, p = .013, accounting for 10.8% of the variance, β = −.36, t = −2.59, p = .013, and in backward elimination, the personality trait of Agreeableness was the sole predictor of SWB F(3, 44) = 4.063, p = .012, accounting for 16.4% of variance, β = .323, t = −2.145, p = .038. Because the regressions resulted in two different models, both are presented to be interpreted.

Limitations and Future Research

Future research should explore the meaning of positive valence, that is, do positive feelings associated with activities mean greater pleasure, or do they refer to a meaningful connection between the person and activity? Wong (2011) describes one type of happiness—“prudential happiness” as coming from engagement or “flow” from enjoyable activities. Moreover, leisure activities with a positive valence may contribute to SWB using the “broaden and build” theory (Fredrickson, 2003) which describes the potential of positive emotions to lead to more openness, creativity, and resiliency. Frederickson suggests that people find ways to experience positive emotions more frequently—which may happen when there is a good fit between the personality and activity. In depth interviewing of the activities listed, as well as the activities mentioned in the open-ended responses, such as volunteering, gardening/being in nature, could provide more information about the meaning of positively valenced activities. One suggestion for future work would be to capture emotional reactions, both positive and negative, while individuals are actually participating in the activity. In this study, we were only able to capture how people understood the emotional quality of a particular activity in retrospect. A strategy of interviewing individuals about their emotions while engaging in activities would most likely result in a richer description of the emotional valence of activities.

Finally future work should look at the role of social support as a mediator between the trait Agreeableness and measures of SWB. Much research has focused on Extraversion and Neuroticism, and more recently Conscientiousness, but our work points to the importance of the traits Agreeableness and Openness in understanding successful aging. These traits may have emerged as important as a function of our sampling technique and so future work will aim to replicate our findings. In addition, although our sample spanned the ages of 65 to 97, our sample of older adults had a mean age of 74 and was higher functioning, thus limiting the generalizability of the findings. Future should extend our paradigm to adults who are older and less functional. Finally, we believe that interventions can use this information to help tailor options for elderly individuals with the goal of encouraging more active and rewarding lives.