Psychological Richness in Everyday Life: Personality, Novelty, and Emotional Engagement

Objective: Psychological richness has been proposed as a distinct dimension of the good life, characterized by complexity, emotional engagement, and perspective-altering experiences. However, relatively little is known about the personality traits and everyday processes that give rise to psychologically rich lives. Method: In a four-week longitudinal study (N ≈ 300), we examined how personality, daily psychological need satisfaction, and week-to-week experiential qualities relate to psychological richness and other well-being outcomes. Results: At baseline, openness to experience emerged as the strongest personality correlate of psychological richness, alongside extraversion and agreeableness. Personality traits did not predict changes in psychological richness over the four-week period once baseline richness was accounted for. Satisfaction of competence, relatedness, and novelty needs was associated with higher life satisfaction and life worthwhileness, with novelty showing unique within-person associations above and beyond other needs. Weekly excitement predicted increases in psychological richness from Week 1 to Week 4, controlling for baseline richness. Conclusions: These findings highlight richness as an experiential pathway to the good life that is distinct from happiness and meaning.