Unique Associations Between Big Five Personality Aspects and Multiple Dimensions of Well-Being

Objective: Personality traits are associated with well-being, but the precise correlates vary across well-being dimensions and within each Big Five domain. This study is the first to examine the unique associations between the Big Five aspects (rather than facets) and multiple well-being dimensions. Method: Two samples of U.S. participants (total N = 706; M_age = 36.17; 54% female) recruited via Amazon's Mechanical Turk completed measures of the Big Five aspects and subjective, psychological, and PERMA well-being. Results: One aspect within each domain was more strongly associated with well-being variables. Enthusiasm and Withdrawal were strongly associated with a broad range of well-being variables, but other aspects of personality also had idiosyncratic associations with distinct forms of positive functioning (e.g., Compassion with positive relationships, Industriousness with accomplishment, and Intellect with personal growth). Conclusions: An aspect-level analysis provides an optimal (i.e., parsimonious yet sufficiently comprehensive) framework for describing the relation between personality traits and multiple ways of thriving in life.