Affective Experiences and Life Satisfaction: A Comparison of Activation and Valence

Positive and Negative Affect have been defined in the literature as either Positive and Negative Activation or Positive and Negative Valence. It has not been examined whether one of these models is a better predictor of Life Satisfaction. We report the results of three studies that control for random and shared method variance using structural equation modelling. Study 1 estimates the relationship between activation measures and Life Satisfaction. Study 2 uses two new datasets that measure Activation and Valence concurrently to predict Life Satisfaction. Study 3 uses available multi-method data to better account for mono-method effects. Our results show that valence measures are better predictors of life satisfaction and that this finding is not explained by method artifacts. The difference between Positive Activation and Positive Valence is larger than the difference between Negative Activation and Negative Valence. We discuss the implications of these results for the measurement of Subjective Wellbeing. Many studies use the popular emotional activation (arousal) measure the Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) to measure Subjective Wellbeing. However, these analyses find that valence and not activation captures more variance related to Life Satisfaction.