De wederkerige relatie tussen emotioneel en psychologisch welbevinden in een longitudinale studie

There are two philosophical traditions of happiness in positive psychology, hedonism and eudaimonism. The hedonic view is based upon the concept of emotional well-being, which describes people’s cognitive and affective evaluations of their life. The eudaimonic psychologists share the view of happiness as an ongoing process emphasizing the importance of personal goals and meaning-making (psychological well-being). The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between emotional and psychological well-being over time. Method: The study draws on the data of a representative panel (Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences of CentERdata). A sample of 1662 Dutch adults filled in the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF) to measure positive mental health. The participants had to fill in the questionnaires four times in intervals of three month. To examine the possible relationship between emotional and psychological well-being, cross-lagged correlations were calculated. There were strong, positive correlations between emotional well-being over time and strong, positive correlations between psychological well-being over time. In addition, the cross-sectional correlations between emotional and psychological well-being were strong and positive. The cross-lagged correlations between the two concepts were weak, but significant. There was no difference between the cross-lagged correlations of emotional and psychological well-being, so they predicted each other in the same way. The relationship between emotional and psychological well-being is strong at the cross-sectional level, so they are clearly interrelated at each timepoint. Cross-lagged panel observations show no significant differences between the influence of emotional well-being at one moment of time on psychological well-being at another moment of time and the other way round. This suggests a reciprocal relationship between emotional and psychological well-being, so they influence each other in the same way.