Predictors of life satisfaction across cultures: Values and self-construals on the UK, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria

MENA Dubai 2003 Abstract

Author Charles Harb
Copy The Subjective Well-Being (SWB) literature has often sought to identify predictors of life satisfaction (LS) without necessarily taking cultural variations and influences into account. Recent developments have proposed a "personal attunement with the dominant cultural complex" model (Markus & Kityama, 2000), whereby predictors of LS vary with the cultural matrix to which individuals belong. The present paper explores the differential predictors of life satisfaction in four student samples from the UK, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan (N = 854). In accordance with the proposed model, different sets of values types and constructions of self emerged as predictors of life satisfaction per sample investigated.