An eight-month study of college students found that students who received autonomy support from others tended to have slightly better subjective well-being. They also showed small increases in agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. The paper was published in. personality journal.
Autonomous support from others refers to interpersonal behaviors that foster an individual’s sense of initiative and psychological freedom, rather than controlling or pressuring them. This is a central concept in a macro-theoretical framework in psychology called self-determination theory.
Supporting autonomy involves acknowledging the perspective of others, even if you disagree with it. This includes providing meaningful options rather than imposing a mandate, and providing a rationale for the request so that the purpose behind the request can be understood.
Autonomy advocates avoid guilt, shame, threats, or conditional approval as motivational tools. They convey confidence in the other person’s ability to make decisions and act competently. In educational and organizational settings, autonomy support has been linked to higher intrinsic motivation and better performance. Close relationships promote trust, authenticity, and psychological well-being.
Study author Elodie Ode and her colleagues wanted to investigate the relationship between subjective well-being as well as autonomy support for important personal goals from close individuals and personality traits measured in the Big Five framework.
The Big Five is a widely accepted personality model that organizes individual differences into five broad dimensions: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. The authors hypothesized that perceived autonomy support would be associated with changes in future personality traits and increased subjective well-being.
Study participants were 1403 university students. Their average age was approximately 20.5 years. About 82% of them were female, 57% were Caucasian, and 38% were Asian. Students were recruited over four different academic years from 2016 to 2020. Within each of these academic years, study participants completed six rounds of data collection.
Participants first identified two close people who supported them in pursuing their goals and described their relationships. They then rated their perceptions of the level of support they received from these individuals. In addition, students recruited in the final academic year of the study (2019-2020) were asked to nominate a friend or family member who could provide additional data. Nominated individuals completed a brief survey regarding the extent to which they engaged in autonomy-supportive behaviors toward the research participants who nominated them.
In addition, study participants completed assessments of Big 5 personality traits (44-item Big 5 Inventory) and subjective well-being (assessed through life satisfaction and frequency of pleasant and unpleasant emotions).
Results showed that people who reported higher autonomy support from others tended to report better subjective well-being and were more conscientious, agreeable, open to experience, extraverted, and emotionally stable (negatively associated with neuroticism).
However, when the authors examined changes in well-being and personality traits between the first and last assessment of the study, the results showed that individuals who received higher levels of autonomy support from others tended to have slightly better subjective well-being and slightly more agreeableness, openness to experience, and conscientiousness over the study period.
Overall, both personality traits and subjective well-being tended to be quite stable over the study period.
“This study provides compelling evidence that autonomy-supportive relationships play a formative role in shaping adolescent personality traits and well-being. Autonomy-supportive relationships were associated with meaningful increases in subjective well-being, as well as increases in agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience across grade levels. These patterns were further supported by informant reports, strengthening the robustness of our findings,” the study authors concluded.
This study contributes to the scientific understanding of the role that autonomy support plays in an individual’s psychological development. However, it should be noted that although this is a longitudinal study, the design does not allow definitive causal inferences to be drawn from the results.
The paper, “Autonomy Support, Personality Traits, and Subjective Well-Being,” was authored by Elodie Ode, Anne Holding, Jeremy Verner-Filion, Ben Thomas, Amanda Moore, and Richard Kaestner.
