European Journal of Personality

Eur. J. Pers. 15: 2947 (2001)

Discontented People:
Reactivity and Locus of Control
as Determinants of Subjective Well-Being
TATIANA KLONOWICZ*
Warsaw School of Advanced Social Psychology and Institute of Psychology,
Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland

Abstract
This study examines the effects of reactivity temperament and locus of control variables on
subjective well-being (SWB). SWB is operationalized as positive affect, the absence of
somatic concerns, and heightened life satisfaction. The study hypotheses were that (1)
reactivity and locus of control inuenced SWB and that (2) affect either mediated or
moderated the inuence of these traits on SWB. As expected, high reactivity and external
locus of control were associated with lower SWB, whereas low reactivity and internal
locus of control were associated with higher SWB. However, the data indicate that
reactivity and locus of control inuenced different components of SWB and that locus of
control predicted SWB more consistently than reactivity. Somatic health is inuenced by
reactivity, locus of control and negative affect, but not positive affect. Current life
satisfaction is inuenced by locus of control but not reactivity and by both positive and
negative affect. Hope is related to reactivity but not to either locus of control or affect. The
data corroborate the expectation that affect serves as a mediator in the trait SWB
relations, whereas the view that affect moderates the effect of stable dispositions on SWB
nds scant support. Copyright # 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION
A good deal of research and theory over the last 30 years has focused on subjective wellbeing (SWB) in an attempt to better understand what makes people experience their lives
in positive ways (Diener, 1984; Diener, Suh, Lucas and Smith, 1999). Although theoretical
formulations of SWB are extremely rare, operationalizations of this concept suggest that
for most authors SWB consists of two related dimensions representing affective and
cognitive evaluations of life (cf. Bryant and Veroff, 1982; Diener, 1984; Diener and Larsen,
1993). The affective dimension of SWB is conceptualized as the relation between positive
and negative affect, whereas the cognitive dimension is conceptualized as life satisfaction.
*Correspondence to: T. Klonowicz, Warsaw School of Advanced Social Psychology and Institute of Psychology,
Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Podlesna 61, Warsaw, Poland. E-mail: tania@atos.psychpan.waw.pl

Copyright # 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 3 September 1999

Accepted 6 June 2000

30

T. Klonowicz

Central to the research on subjective well-being has been the identication of determinants of SWB. Two approaches emerge (cf. Diener, 1984; Diener et al., 1999). One
proposes that satisfaction and happiness result from biosocial circumstances and life events.
The other emphasizes the role of personal variables or traits. This paper examines the
hypotheses as to the role of personality traits in subjective well-being. I extend the existing
research in this eld by considering the role of mood in the personality SWB relation.
The early formulations of SWB determinants were given in terms of the event-driven
or bottom-up model. However, the evidence that external events predict well-being is, at
best, contradictory. On the one hand, it has been demonstrated that a variety of daily
events, e.g. interpersonal conicts (Bolger and Schilling, 1991), daily hassles and undesirable events (Lazarus and Folkman, 1987; Marco and Suls, 1993) lead to negative
affect; whereas desirable events, e.g. activities that provide intrinsically rewarding
consequences (Csikszentmihalyi and Le Fevre, 1989) are associated with positive affect.
On the other hand, biosocial variables and life events were often found to be rather weak
predictors of SWB. For example, such intuitively important factors as income, occupational status, and prestige were found to have a surprisingly small effect on SWB
(Czapinski, 1992; Diener and Fujita, 1995; Suh, Diener and Fujita, 1996). Studies on life
events have demonstrated that even positive or traumatic events, e.g. winning in a lottery
or being a victim of a disabling accident, do not lead to enduring changes in SWB
(Brickman, Coates and Janoff-Bulman, 1978). The notion that the impact of life events
gradually wears off is further supported by Suh et al. (1996), who demonstrated that only
recent, 36 month old, not remote events inuence assessments of life and affect.
Disappointment with this literature may have inspired the idea that SWB is inuenced
by the lack rather than possession of material resources, youth, health, and so forth. Diener
and Fujita (1995) claim that `Resources should predict SWB only in a case in which people
in a group share a common set of desires yet vary in regard to whether they have resources
to fulll those desires' (p. 935). One possible explanation why resources are only weakly
related to SWB is that people adapt to their resources (Diener and Fujita, 1995). Another
possibility is that people adapt to various events and revert to their habitual level of SWB.
According to the top-down model subjective well-being is essentially determined by
personality: stability of personality is called upon to explain a relative stability in SWB
(e.g. Brief, Butcher, George and Link, 1993; Costa and McCrae, 1980; DeNeve and
Cooper, 1998; Diener, 1984; Diener and Larsen, 1993; Diener et al., 1999; Feist, Bodner,
Jacobs, Miles and Tan, 1995; McCrae and Costa, 1991). The approach received a considerable empirical and theoretical support. The present paper also adopts this perspective.
However, while a perusal of the literature reveals that the empirical evidence is consistent
with the general view that personality exerts an important inuence on SWB, it is rather
confusing with respect to specic personality determinants of SWB. According to DeNeve
and Cooper (1998), so far 137 personality traits have been tested for their inuence on
SWB. The integration of this literature is not an easy task: the data are often equivocal and
the integrative criteria are not quite clear. For example, it is not possible to determine
whether analysis using individual personality traits or those using their clusters, e.g. the
Big Five (DeNeve and Cooper, 1998) is the better procedure. The present study focuses on
two personality dispositions: reactivity and locus of control. These two variables are
chosen because they have been extensively studied in either SWB or stress research or
both and yield most consistent results.
Reactivity is a temperament trait, which co-determines an individual's sensory and
emotional sensitivity and capacity to work or endurance (Strelau, 1983, 1998). Reactivity
Copyright # 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Reactivity and locus of control

31

amplies or dampens arousal and thereby modies the individual's own activities.
Research has demonstrated that reactivity is a powerful predictor in studies of stress. The
empirical evidence indicates that the effect of external or task stimulation depends on the
level of reactivity. The high reactives solve problems and adapt effectively up to a certain
degree of stimulation but always at a higher cost to themselves than the low reactives. As
a rule, however, an increase in stimulation load favours the low reactives and has an
adverse impact on the high reactives. The high reactives also are more sensitive than the
low reactives to uncertainty and to changes in their environment or task demands (for
reviews see Klonowicz, 1992; Strelau, 1983, 1998). Recent studies have also demonstrated
the direct relevance of reactivity to SWB research. This data indicate that as compared to
the high reactives, the low reactives experience more positive and less negative affect, less
variability of mood, and lesser somatic concerns (Klonowicz, 2000).
Theoretically, the concept of reactivity has been shown to be strongly related to both
extraversion and neuroticism (Strelau, Zawadski and Angleitner, 1995): high reactivity is
related to introversion and neuroticism, whereas low reactivity is related to extraversion
and emotional stability. Following the seminal work of Costa and McCrae (1980)
extraversion and neuroticism have become widely studied variables in SWB research. A
review of the literature indicates the following.
(i) Extraversion correlates positively with positive affect and life satisfaction (e.g. Costa
and McCrae, 1980; Diener and Fujita, 1995; Diener and Larsen, 1993; Eysenck and
Eysenck, 1985; McCrae and Costa, 1991; Rusting and Larsen, 1997), whereas
(ii) Neuroticism is primarily associated with negative affect. There also is a negative
correlation between neuroticism and life satisfaction (e.g. Clark and Watson, 1988;
Costa and McCrae, 1980; Eysenck and Eysenck, 1985; McCrae and Costa, 1991;
Rusting and Larsen, 1995), as well as a negative correlation between neuroticism and
positive affect (Costa and McCrae, 1980; Suh et al., 1996). Thus, as observed by
DeNeve and Cooper (1998), neuroticism indicates what subjective well-being is not.
It is worth noting that, according to McCrae and Costa (1991), the explanation of the roles
of extraversion and neuroticism in SWB is temperamental, because `if temperament is
measured directly by asking people about the frequency and intensity with which they
experience positive or negative emotions, the resulting scales invariably load on E and N
factors' (p. 228). The present study focuses directly on reactivity as a temperament trait;1
however, as shown in the above discussion, the theoretical and empirical research on
extraversion and neuroticism will also be relevant here. In addition, I will examine the
impact of locus of control.
The notion of locus of control refers to the extent to which individuals believe that
outcomes are determined by their actions and exerting control over their lives rather than
being chance, unpredictable, and noncontingent on their actions (Rotter, 1966). Results
indicate that the belief that one exerts control over one's life is usually associated with
better task performance and less costs, whereas belief that one's behaviour is controlled by
external forces leads to worse task performance (e.g. Klonowicz and Zawadzka, 1988;
1

Following Strelau's (1983, 1998) distinction between temperament and personality, i.e. between the style and
the content of behaviour, extraversion is conceptualized here as a broader dimension that includes not only
biologically determined energy level, which is dened as temperamental, but also other components, such as e.g.
sociability and dominance. Although the latter are closely related to and perhaps even shaped by the biological
mechanism of personality they represent the content of behaviour, i.e. personality.

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T. Klonowicz

Lefcourt, 1991). Research has also demonstrated that psychological health and mood
depend on control beliefs: the feeling that one's behaviour and the desired outcomes are
noncontingent has been associated with less positive and more negative affect, worse
physical and psychological health and lower life satisfaction (Emmons and Diener, 1985;
Heckhausen and Schulz, 1995; Hong and Giannokopoulos, 1994; Lachman and Weaver,
1998; Lefcourt, Miller, Ware and Sherk, 1981).
Several conceptualizations have been offered to answer the question of how personality
inuences SWB. The rst approach posits that stable traits have a direct effect on SWB
(Diener, 1984; Diener et al., 1999). In a more elaborated model Headey and Wearing
(1989) propose that personality sets the standard or adaptation level and safeguards the
stability of SWB. Events are compared to this standard and even if they provoke any shifts
in SWB, these changes are momentary.
Two other approaches suggest more complex mechanisms in determining SWB.
Costa and McCrae (1980) propose that personality traits are only indirectly associated
with SWB. According to these authors the direct outcomes of extraversion and neuroticism
are positive and negative affect, which in turn inuence well-being. This idea received
some experimental support. Several studies have shown that the extraverts are more
responsive than introverts to a positive experimental mood manipulation, while people
with high scores on neuroticism are more responsive than low neurotics to negative mood
manipulations (Larsen and Ketelaar, 1991; Rusting and Larsen, 1997). These studies
indicate that the relation between personality and SWB may be due to the fact that
individuals scoring high on certain traits tend to experience stronger positive or negative
affect.
Yet another possibility is that mood buffers or amplies personality regulation of SWB.
Raikkonen, Mathews, Flory, Owens and Gump (1999) have found that mood moderates
the effects of trait anxiety and pessimism on blood pressure. Subjects with high scores on
trait anxiety had an elevated BP regardless of their mood, whereas in low anxious subjects
elevations in BP occurred only when they were in a negative mood. Similarly, dispositional pessimists had higher BP levels than the optimists, although the optimists and low
pessimists who experienced negative mood had BP levels as high as those observed in the
pessimists.
Cote and Moskowitz (1998) have demonstrated that aggreable interpersonal behaviour
causes pleasant affect in the extraverts (and agreeable persons) but not in introverts.
According to these authors `the reverse direction of causality might also hold, so that
pleasant affect causes agreeable behaviour among extraverts' (p. 1044). Rusting (1998)
has found an interaction between neuroticism and negative affect in a free recall task: the
mood-congruency effect in the recall of negative adjectives was more important in high
than in low neurotic subjects. The latter study suggests that mood may inuence information processing and the personality-contingent interpretation of events and, more
specically, assessments of quality of life.
The present study seeks to examine in more detail the latter two propositions. The rst
goal is to investigate the degree to which two traits, reactivity and locus of control,
inuence SWB operationalized broadly as positive affect (and the lack of negative affect),
physical well-being, and life satisfaction. The second goal is to assess whether and how
affect accounts for these inuences.
I hypothesized that both reactivity and locus of control would predict positive and
negative affect, somatic health, and life satisfaction. More specically, my hypothesis is
that high reactivity and external locus of control would be related to more negative
Copyright # 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Reactivity and locus of control

33

(and less positive) affect, more somatic problems, and lower life satisfaction. Conversely,
low reactivity and internal locus of control were expected to be associated with more
positive and less negative affect, better somatic health, and greater life satisfaction. Hence,
the hypothesis addressed two issues: the relations between personality variables and
various components of SWB as well as the SWB structure.
Second, and more important, I was interested to know whether life satisfaction and
somatic complaints depended not only on personality variables, but also on affect. According to the second hypothesis the effects of reactivity and locus of control on somatic
health and life satisfaction would be mediated and/or moderated by affect. The hypothesis
addressed the mechanism by which personality inuences SWB.2
The term `mediator' is used for a variable `whose operational role involves transmission of inuence' (James and Brett, 1984; p. 317). In the context of present research
affect will be regarded as a mediator if it transmits the causal inuence of reactivity and/or
locus of control to somatic health and life satisfaction in such a way that the negative
inuences of reactivity and external control are shown as being due to a more negative
mood.
The variable is regarded as a `moderator' if there are interactive relationships, i.e. if the
relation between two or more other variables is a function of the level of this variable
(James and Brett, 1984; Parkes, 1994). Affect will be considered as moderator if the results
show that the effect of a trait on e.g. somatic health depends on the level of affect (or that
the inuence of affect depends on the level of trait intensity). The distinction between
mediators and moderators is not always clear: the variable may function in the same model
as both a moderator and a mediator (Baron and Kenny, 1986; James and Brett, 1984).
Recognizing this fact it was expected that affect may serve either as a vehicle for
transmitting the effects of personality on SWB or as a lter for interpreting specic events
and colouring one's perceptions, or both.
METHOD
Subjects
The study was carried out as part of a longitudinal research project on psychological costs
of, and coping with, the stress of unemployment. The data reported in this article were
gathered from unemployed persons who lived in seven cities with populations between
150 and 200 thousand, all of them located in central Poland. The sample represented a
section of unemployed people but was not intended to be a representative sample of the
unemployed workforce.
The sample consisted of 200 subjects, 99 men and 101 women, who had recently, i.e. 1
to 2 months earlier, lost their jobs and were between the ages of 32 and 44 (M 36.13;
SD 2.88). Participants selected for the study had at least an eighth-grade education;
education ranged from this minimal level (coded 1) to a maximum of a master's degree
(code 6) and as a whole was slightly above the national average (M 3.48; SD 1.13).
Qualied subjects were identied through local labour ofces and a call from a project
interviewer who requested a home interview. Subjects participated voluntarily and
received a modest fee for an interview.
2

To test the mechanism it will be necessary to change the status of affect from a dependent variable (a component
of SWB) to either the mediator or moderator variable.

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T. Klonowicz

Procedure
A three-wave design was used to follow participants from the time they were laid off (for the
rst time in their career) and up to about three months after they stopped receiving
unemployment compensation. (According to Polish legislation, a person is eligible for
unemployment compensation for six months after a layoff.) The reported results refer to
Wave 1 of the study. All data were collected by means of questionnaires on a condential
basis. The questionnaires contained measures of personal variables, well-being, and socioeconomic status.
Participants were interviewed in their homes; interviews lasted about 1 hour. Interviewers always offered help in lling out the questionnaire form and checked the materials
for missing data.
Measures
The following measures were used in the present study. Personal variables included the
traits of reactivity and locus of control. The SWB parameters were positive/negative affect,
current and expected life satisfaction, and somatic health (other assessed traits and SWB
components were not included in the analysis). All variables were assessed repeatedly, thus
permitting us to evaluate, among other things, psychometric properties of the tools.3
Reactivity
The assessment of reactivity was indirect, i.e. based on the Pavlovian strength of excitation
(cf. Strelau, 1983). Subjects completed the Pavlovian Temperament Survey (PTS; Strelau,
Angleitner and Newberry, 1998). Although Strelau now strongly advocates the use of the
newest diagnostic tool the Formal Characteristics of Behaviour Temperament Inventory
(FCB-TI; Strelau and Zawadzki, 1993) developed within the theoretical framework of the
Regulative Theory of Temperament (Strelau, 1998), in his recent work he still recognizes
that `on a psychological level the Strength of Excitation corresponds to resistance or low
reactivity and emotional endurance' (Strelau, Zawadzki and Angleitner, 1995, p. 23). The
FCB-TI undoubtedly ts better the new version of the Regulative Theory of Temperament
than the PTS. However, with all differences and similarities between the two concepts
considered, the PTS captures the important behavioural manifestations of reactivity and
gives us a close enough assessment of reactivity. The major advantages of the PTS over the
FCB-TI is a long tradition of use in stress-related research and its shortness.
The Inventory consists of 57 items and measures three temperament traits: the strength
of excitation, the strength of inhibition, and mobility. The items represent everyday
behaviours in a variety of common settings and the subjects are asked how well the item
describes their habitual behaviours. In responding to the items, subjects rate themselves on
four-point scales, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 4 (very well).
The PTS was scored for Strength of Excitation the lower the score on this Scale, the
higher is the person's reactivity. Cronbach's alpha obtained for the scale in the present
study was 0.77 and a testretest 4.5 months stability coefcient was 0.66.3 The two
coefcients are close to those reported by Strelau et al. (1995).
3

All stability coefcients are given for the period of 4.5 months (Wave 1 to Wave 2 of the study); the values of
alpha between Wave 1 and Wave 3 (approximately 9 months) were slightly but not signicantly lower than those
reported here.

Copyright # 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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35

Locus of control
Locus of control was measured by means of a specially developed scale. The scale
assesses the extent to which one regards one's life chances as being under one's control
(internal locus of control) versus being chance-determined, incidental, and unpredictable
(external locus of control). The scale contains ve pairs of items. The participants were
asked to choose the item that best represented their beliefs. The scale was rated for
externality (the higher the score, the more external locus of control). Cronbach's alpha was
0.64 and a 4.5 months test-retest stability coefcient was 0.57.
Positive/negative affect
Bradburn's Affect Balance Scale (Bradburn, 1969) was used to measure positive and
negative affect. The original scale includes ve positive and ve negative affect items;
these items are used to calculate separate positive and negative affect scores, emotional
balance, and emotional sensibility. Several important modications were introduced in the
present study. For one, instead of the yes/no format, the responses were phrased in terms of
ratings of how often one experienced a given feeling. Subjects were asked to rate on a vepoint scales ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very often)4 the frequency of emotional
experiences over the preceding two months.
The scale was scored for positive (PA) and negative affect (NA). The two subscales had
alphas of 0.81 (PA) and 0.84 (NA); a 4.5 months stability coefcient was 0.33 for the
positive affect subscale and 0.53 for the negative affect subscale. The alphas are higher
than those previously reported for Polish samples; the PA stability coefcient is lower than
obtained in Polish samples, whereas the NA stability coefcient corresponds to the values
reported in Polish studies (Czapinski, 1992). It is worth noting that negative affect was
experienced with greater consistency than positive affect. Similar data were reported by
Diener, Larsen, Levine and Emmons (1985), who found that positive affect was much
more inuenced by situational factors and therefore less stable than negative affect.
Life satisfaction
Life satisfaction was measured with the self-anchoring scale proposed by Cantril
(1965). Participants were asked to rate rst their current life and then to rate their past and
future life in three years on the best-to-worst scale. The rst measure is the index of
current life satisfaction and the second indicates the level of satisfaction expected in
future. The difference between these two indices, i.e. the difference score, calculated by
substracting current life satisfaction from future life satisfaction index, was used in
the present study as the measure of hope (the direct measure of expected satisfaction
was not analysed). Stability coefcients of these two measures were, respectively, 0.54
and 0.40.3
Somatic health
Somatic symptoms were measured by means of the Somatic Symptoms Checklist (Cofta,
1992, unpublished doctoral dissertation). This self-report measure consists of 16 physical
health concerns. Each concern is associated with its own ve-point frequency and severity
scales. The scale ranged from `not at all' (score 1) to `every day' (score 5) for symptom
frequency and from `not at all' to `extremely severe' for symptom intensity.
4

See Diener et al. (Diener and Larsen, 1993; Emmons and Diener, 1985) on the importance of frequency
measures of affect.

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T. Klonowicz

Cronbach's alphas were 0.79 for the frequency and 0.84 for the intensity of symptom
scale; 4.5 months stability coefcients were, respectively, 0.69 and 0.54. The two measures
were signicantly correlated (r 0.65) and the `somatic health' composite measure was
used in the present study.
Statistical analyses
As mentioned, subjects in the present study came from seven different cities. An initial
inspection suggested pronounced city, i.e. environmental, effects on all variables. (This
issue is currently under investigation). For the purposes of the present study to control for
the inuence of specic environment all variables were converted into z-scores according
to the city mean (cf. Wieczorkowska-Nejtardt, 1998). Given a relatively narrow age range
of the sample, the participants' age was not expected to signicantly inuence the relations
between personality and the SWB measures, the effect of gender was controlled in the
regression equations (see below),5 and all analyses were conducted on the sample as a whole.
A series of regression models was computed to test the hypothesis that affect may play
either a mediating or a moderator role between the trait life satisfaction and the trait
somatic health relations. The analyses were conducted separately for reactivity and locus
of control and for positive and negative affect. The dependent variables in these analyses
were the two life satisfaction and somatic health measures, in turn.
To test for mediation I adopted the view of Baron and Kenny (1986) that: (1) a mediator
should account for variation in the dependent variable, (2) the predicting variable should
account for variations in the mediator, and (3) the predicting variable should account for
the variation in the dependent variable. The mediation hypothesis was tested in the
following three steps: the rst regressed affect on a personality variable, the second
regressed life satisfaction or somatic health on a trait, and the third regressed life satisfaction (or somatic health) on both trait and affect.5 According to Barron and Kenny `the
effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable must be less in the third
equation than in the second. Perfect mediation holds if the independent variable has no
effect when the mediator is controlled' (p. 1177).
To test for moderation each of the two trait variables, affect valence and the interaction
between a trait and an affect were entered into hierarchical multiple regression models.
Gender and trait variables were always entered rst into each analysis, the affect was
entered on the second step, and the interaction term, on the last.
RESULTS
Descriptive statistics
The means, standard deviations, and zero-order correlations for all variables are shown in
Table 1.
5
Because gender was shown in past research to be a signicant predictor of both life satisfaction and somatic
health, this variable was entered into the regressions rst, before the other predictors were given opportunity to
explain variation in each of the dependent variables. To simplify the presentation the results of these analyses,
gender is not mentioned in the models. Note, however, that gender signicantly predicted current life satisfaction
(F 3.80), somatic health (F 4.72), and negative affect (F 6.21; df 1,197; p  0.05); R2 varied between 0.02
and 0.03. Women scored higher on NA and life satisfaction; they also reported lower health status. The effect of
gender on positive affect and hope was not signicant (F < 1).

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Copyright # 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Table 1. Means (M), standard deviations (SD), and zero-order correlations of variables
Variable

0.22***
0.16**
0.14**
0.13*
0.09
0.30***
48.51
6.10
26.0071.00

0.29***
0.39***
0.27***
0.24
0.15**
0.38
0.30
0.001.00

0.41***
0.06
0.37***
0.03
3.26
0.70
1.604.80

0.44***
0.31***
0.07
2.86
0.84
1.005.00

0.09
0.14**
1.41
0.36
1.313.68

0.46***
5.04
1.92
0.0010.00

1.44
2.55
4.333.04

37

Eur. J. Pers. 15: 2947 (2001)

The value for reactivity represents the mean sum of scores, whereas values for other variables represent the mean frequency of responses for a given scale divided by the number of
scale items. The signs of the correlation coefcients illustrate the relationships between high reactivity (and externality) and dependent variables. Life satisfaction is a measure of
current life satisfaction; hope is the difference between the future and the current life satisfaction scores.
N 197200.
*p < 0.10; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01.

Reactivity and locus of control

1. Reactivity
2. Locus of control
3. Positive affect
4. Negative affect
5. Somatic health
6. Life satisfaction
7. Hope
M
SD
Range

38

T. Klonowicz

The data indicate that the mean level of reactivity is within the range reported for Polish
samples by Strelau et al. (1995) who found that reactivity scores for this age group were
45.49 (SD 7.85) for women and 49.09 (SD 7.76) for men. The relation between
reactivity and locus of control is in line with previous ndings (Klonowicz, 1992): the data
show that low reactivity is associated with internal locus of control. The intercorrelation
between personality variables is, in general, lower than the correlations between the SWB
measures.
Mean positive affect is signicantly higher than mean negative affect (t 3.28; df 199,
p < 0.001). There is a signicant negative correlation between positive and negative affect.
The fact that the present study replicates the general rule that `most people are happy and
positive emotions are more normative than negative emotions' (Suh et al., 1996) seems
important and means that unemployment does not signicantly inuence the general
pattern of affective experiences.
Subjective assessments of somatic health are high: the composite score indicates that
frequency and intensity of somatic concerns are well below the average. Participants report
average levels of current life satisfaction; moreover, they rated themselves as hopeful but
not overly hopeful (the score is positive but the difference between current and future life
satisfaction is rather small).
As shown in Table 1, the correlations between reactivity, locus of control, and SWB
support the hypothesis that high reactivity and externality are associated with more NA,
less PA, and more somatic concerns. Externality, but not high reactivity is associated with
lower current life satisfaction, whereas hope is positively related to low reactivity.
Moreover, the data suggest that affect may play either a mediational or a moderational role
between each of the two traits and somatic health and between locus of control and current
life satisfaction.
Affect as a mediator
The tests for the mediating roles of positive/negative affect in the trait somatic health
relations and trait life satisfaction relations are shown in Figure 1 (only signicant results
are shown in the gure). The results of these tests also are relevant to the more general
problem of relations between the two traits, reactivity and locus of control, and SWB.
The Figure gives the results of the regression analyses and enables comparisons between
(1) the effect of reactivity or locus of control on the dependent variable (upper line) and (2)
the effect of each of the two traits and affect as mediators on the dependent variable (the
two triangles). On the basis of this evidence it should be possible to determine whether
affect serves as a mediator. It is also worth noting that although these regression models
focus on the second hypothesis, they also refer to and provide additional data concerning
the rst hypothesis, according to which reactivity and locus of control were expected to
signicantly inuence various components of SWB.
Reactivity, affect, and somatic health (Figure 1(A))
The regression models constructed for reactivity and separately for positive and
negative affect are signicant.6 However, the PA model explains only 4 per cent of the
6
Exact values of F for each model are given in Figure 1, whereas here the presentation is limited to the most general
outcomes of the analyses. As mentioned, each model consisted of three equations, which tested the roles of
temperament or personality variables and affect. The study focuses on these two predictors of SWB. However, I also
controlled for the effects of gender,4 which explains why the rst df term for each solution was three.

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Figure 1. Direct and indirect effects of reactivity and locus of control on somatic health (A) and life satisfaction (B and C). Values are beta coefcients. Note: The signs of regression
coefcients illustrate the relationships between high reactivity (and external locus of control) and the dependent variables. ***p < 0.01; **p < 0.05; *p < 0.10.

Reactivity and locus of control

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39

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40

T. Klonowicz

variance in somatic health (the adjusted R2 is 0.02), whereas the NA model explains 20 per
cent of the variance in symptoms (the adjusted R2 is 0.19). The data indicate that the lower
the reactivity, the higher the PA and the better somatic health; the higher the reactivity, the
more negative affect and the more pronounced somatic concerns. As shown in Figure 1(A),
only negative and not positive affect contributes to somatic health.
The test of the role of NA reveals that when entered into the equation, NA leads to
a change in R2 of 0.17; F change 40.80; p < 0.001. The data indicate that NA is the
strongest unique predictor of somatic health. The test for mediating role of NA indicates
that the inclusion of NA further narrows the role for reactivity: after NA is partialled out, the
effect of high reactivity on somatic health drops from 0.12 to 0.07 ( p 0.12). This suggests
that a small portion of the effect of high reactivity on somatic health may be due to more
negative affect. However, given the fact that reactivity is only marginally related to somatic
health and that the decrease after controlling for NA is, at best, modest, this result should be
interpreted with caution. Overall, the data disconrm the mediating role for positive affect
and support the idea that somatic health is associated with negative affect. Whether NA may
play a mediating role in the reactivitysomatic health relation remains an open question.
Locus of control, affect, and somatic health (Figure 1(B))
The models constructed to test the contribution of locus of control and affect to somatic
symptoms are signicant. The controlPA model accounts for 9 per cent of the variance,
whereas the controlNA model accounts for 21 per cent of the variance in somatic
symptoms (adjusted R2, respectively, 0.08 and 0.20). As shown in Figure 1(B), locus of
control is a signicant predictor of positive/negative affect and somatic health. External
control is positively related to NA and somatic symptoms, and negatively to positive affect.
Only NA signicantly predicts somatic health and thus may mediate the relation between locus of control and health. Analyses reveal that the inclusion of NA in the model
leads to a signicant change in R2 (increment in R2 0.12; F change 29.33; p < 0.001).
After controlling for NA the partial correlation between locus of control and somatic
health drops from 0.26 to 0.12, but still is marginally signicant (p 0.08). Overall, the
results indicate that negative, but not positive affect accounts for a considerable part of the
effect of locus of control on somatic health: the negative effect of external locus of control
on somatic health is to a large extent due to the fact that externals experience more
negative affect.
Locus of control, affect, and life satisfaction (Figure 1(C))
The models constructed to test the roles of locus of control and affect are statistically
signicant. Locus of control accounts for 6 per cent of the variance in life satisfaction
(F 17.53; p < 0.001); locus of control together with positive affect explain 18 per cent of
the variance in life satisfaction, while locus of control and negative affect account for 15
per cent of the variance in life satisfaction (adjusted R2 is 0.17 and 0.14, respectively). The
unique contribution of affect is also signicant: the inclusion of PA in the model leads to a
change of 0.11 in R2, the inclusion of NA leads to a change in R2 of 0.07 (F > 16.75;
p < 0.001).
As shown in Figure 1(C), locus of control signicantly predicts current life satisfaction
and both PA as well as NA. External locus of control is negatively related to current life
satisfaction and PA; the relation between external locus of control and NA is positive. As
expected, internals experience more PA and greater current life satisfaction, whereas
externals report more NA and lower current life satisfaction.
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41

After positive affect is partialled out, the negative effect of external locus of
control on life satisfaction decreases from 0.24 to 0.14, but is still signicant. After
negative affect is partialled out, the negative effect of external control decreases from
0.24 to 0.13 and is still marginally signicant. Overall, the data indicate that a considerable portion of the effect of locus of control on current life satisfaction is due
to affect and that both PA and NA may play a mediating role in the locus of control
current life satisfaction relation. However, the mediating role of affect does not
account for the entire impact of locus of control on current life satisfaction. Contrary to
expectations, locus of control and affect do not contribute signicantly to hope:
F  2.00; p  0.12.
Affect as a moderator
As mentioned earlier, the predictor variables in these regression analyses are separate
dispositions, reactivity and locus of control, each entered in turn with positive or negative
affect and with an interaction term that is the product of the disposition and affect. 7 The
results provide very limited support for the moderator role of affect, i.e. for the idea that
dispositions interact with affect in predicting subjective well-being. Out of twelve possible
dispositionaffect interactions, nine failed to reach statistical signicance and only three
might be considered of some interest.
The analyses reveal a signicant interaction between locus of control and negative affect
on current life satisfaction: F[4,191] 4.57; p < 0.05. The controlNA interaction effect
(beta 0.14) indicates that the externals are dissatised with their current life irrespective
of mood, whereas the internals are dissatised only when they experience negative mood.
Hope depends on the interaction of locus of control and negative affect: F[4,191]
2.80; p < 0.05. The controlNA interaction effect (beta 0.18; p 0.01) makes a
unique signicant contribution to the variance in hope. The result indicates that only the
externals who experience negative affect run low on hope.
The locus of controlPA model is marginally signicant: F(4,191) 2.24, p 0.07. The
signicant main effect of locus of control on hope (beta 0.16; p 0.01) means that the
externals have less hope than the internals. A marginally signicant locus of controlPA
interaction (beta 0.12; p 0.09) suggests a buffering effect of positive affect on the
externals.

DISCUSSION
This study conrmed the importance of relatively stable dispositions in determining
subjective well-being. Reactivity and locus of control were found to be related to affect,
physical well-being, and life satisfaction.
As expected, higher levels of reactivity and external locus of control were associated
with more negative affect, less positive affect, and more pronounced somatic concerns.
Lower levels of reactivity and more internal control were related to less negative and more
positive affect. These ndings are consistent with the evidence that there is a reliable
relation between personality variables and affect (e.g., Diener and Fujita, 1995; Costa and
McCrae, 1980; Eysenck and Eysenck, 1985; McCrae and Costa, 1991). Current life
7

The fourth predictor is gender which explains why the rst df term in the regression models is four.

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T. Klonowicz

satisfaction was related to locus of control: people with external locus of control reported
less satisfaction with their current life than people with internal locus of control. Hope was
related to reactivity: the low reactives have higher hopes for the future than the high
reactives. Moreover, somatic health was shown to be related to negative but not positive
affect, whereas life satisfaction was related to both positive and negative affect.
The effects of locus of control obtained in the present study fully corroborate the rst
hypothesis. As to the link between locus of control and affect one might argue that the
internals are capable either of better controlling their negative mood or of more effectively
securing positive outcomes and feelings, or of both.
The predictions concerning the effects of reactivity on SWB received only partial
support. Reactivity was found to be strongly related to hope but not to current life
satisfaction. To my knowledge this is the only study which directly has tested whether
reactivity was related to life satisfaction. The hypothesis was formulated on the basis of
relations between reactivity and extraversion and neuroticism (see above). Reactivity was
assumed to `energize' one's behavior (Klonowicz, 2000) and to loosely organize the
behaviour with regard to the individual need for stimulation (cf. Eliasz, 1981; Strelau,
1998). The importance of the amount of available energy to SWB was recently noted by
Diener and Fujita (1995). Participants in their study were asked to report on the terrible-todelighted scale how they felt, taking into account what they had experienced in the
preceding year and what they expected in the future. Life satisfaction was found to be
positively related to the energy resource. However, it follows from the above description
that the measure of life satisfaction aggregates all three time perspectives: the past, the
future, and the present. The data of the present study suggest that the energy aspect may be
more important for the expected outcomes and `strength' to face the future events rather
than for the assessment of the present.
Contrary to previous research demonstrating that high reactive individuals were
generally more self-focused and particularly more concentrated on their health (Cofta,
1992; Klonowicz, 2000), the results of the present research indicate that reactivity is only
marginally related to somatic health. One explanation of this nding is that somatic health
is rst and foremost related to negative affect, whereas the effect of stable dispositions on
somatic health is less pronounced. The data (see Figure 1(A) and 1(B)) conrm this view:
negative affect systematically appears as the strongest predictor of somatic concerns.
The fact that reactivity does not signicantly contribute to somatic health could also be
due to the specicity of the sample, namely individuals who are probably more preoccupied with nding a new job than with their bodily states. This suggests that the link
between reactivity and somatic health may be due to two interrelated factors: motives and
coping. Recently, Eliasz (2000) has shown that the differences between high and low
reactives in the frequency and intensity of somatic symptoms are masked by environmental factors, e.g. work settings and/or specic motives which require more immediate
attention. Emmons (1992) found that people who reported high-level strivings experienced more negative affect and less physical sickness. A similar pattern of results is obtained
in the present study suggesting that at this stage of unemployment the `sicknessnegative
affect' trade-off postulated by Emmons creates a greater risk for the appearance of
negative affect. Coping seems to be yet another important mediator between reactivity
andsomatic health (cf. Lazarus and Folkman, 1987). This issue is currently under
examination.
Another major nding of the study concerns the role of affect in the personalitysomatic
health and personalitylife satisfaction relations. The results corroborate the proposition
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Reactivity and locus of control

43

that affect mediates the effects of locus of control on both somatic health and life
satisfaction. Moreover, the data indicate that affect can function as a moderator variable at
times. The negative impact of external locus of control on health was at least partially
transmitted by negative affect. However, the data do not conrm the hypothesis that
negative affect mediates the relation between reactivity and somatic health. Neither
positive affect, nor the interaction effects between each of the two dispositions and affect,
inuenced somatic health. Positive and negative affect acted as both mediators and
moderators in the locus of controllife satisfaction relation.
The moderator effect of negative affect on current life satisfaction shows that only the
externals were sensitive to both disruptive as well as buffering effects of negative and
positive affect on hope. This nding suggests that people with a strong belief in control
may have a difcult time when faced with an uncontrollable event, such as unemployment
(cf. Wortman, Sheedy, Gluhoski and Kessler, 1992). However, this does not necessarily
affect their expectancies for the future.
Several other studies have either failed to nd mediating and/or moderator effects of
mood on SWB or they have found only limited effects. For instance, Brown and
Moskowitz (1997) reported that somatic symptoms depended on the direct inuence of
negative affect; the authors did not nd support for the idea that affect plays either a
mediating or a moderator role. However, Segerstrom, Taylor, Kemeny and Fahey (1998)
found that the relationship between dispositional optimism and the number of helper T
cells was, in part, mediated by negative feelings. Raikkonen et al. (1999) reported that
mood moderated the effects of optimism and anxiety on cardiovascular activity. The data
of the present study add to this discussion of the nature of relations between dispositions,
affect, and SWB and indicate that personality variables inuence SWB both directly and
indirectly, through affect.
What psychological reality underlies these models linking emotions and personality, on
the one hand, and reports of health status and life satisfaction, on the other? Perhaps the
broadest explanation is that individual's orientations towards internal states have an impact
on his/her appraisals of well-being.
An important conrmation of the proposed role for affect was obtained by Suh, Diener,
Oishi and Triandis (1998), who conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study on the
inuence of emotions versus norms on life satisfaction judgments in individualist and
collectivist cultures (in total, 41 nations). Emotional experience was measured by
Broadbent's Affect Balance Scale and life satisfaction was measured by asking how
satised people were with their lives. The results indicate that Western individuals, i.e.
representatives of a more individualist culture, more strongly depended in their judgments
of life satisfaction on their emotional experience than representatives of a more collectivist
culture. Interestingly, Staudinger, Fleeson and Baltes (1999) found that an intrapsychic
variable, such as personal fulllment, was less strongly related to subjective well-being in
a more structured German society than in a more heterogenous US society. The two studies
do not tell us whether people actually think about and/or are aware of their emotions
before they make a judgment concerning their life satisfaction.8 However, the data show
that to borrow the expression from Suh et al. (1998, p. 490) `this phenomenological
feeling permeates into and inuences other global aspects' of one's judgments of wellbeing. It also seems of interest that King and Napa (1998) have shown that the notion of
8

It seems plausible that irrespective of the culture people always rely on their emotions and other intrapsychic
processes and then adjust their reports to norms.

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T. Klonowicz

happiness played an important role in the implicit theories of the `good life' constructed by
laypersons: happy people were perceived as those living a desirable life.
Although the above cited data emphasize the fact that concerns for intrapsychic
processes are shaped by culture, they prove that internal experience, in general, and affect,
in particular, can be an important factor in life satisfaction judgments. Emotional experience also seems to inuence the reporting of health symptoms.
A number of investigators have looked at the relation between affect and physical
health. The evidence shows that somatic symptoms co-occur with unpleasant daily affect
(e.g. Emmons, 1991 and above). More interestingly, however, Salovey and Birnbaum
(1989) found that if inuenced with a pleasant mood, persons suffering from a cold
reported more symptoms of illness than similarly ill persons who underwent a negative
mood induction. Larsen and Kasimatis (1991) found that mood was a good predictor of
physical symptoms, whereas physical symptoms did not predict mood. Their study has
shown that pleasant mood predicted the symptom occurrence better than unpleasant mood,
thus emphasizing the role of contextual factors.9 My own data (Klonowicz, unpublished
data) indicate that the frequency of negative affect experienced at Wave 1 of the study
predicts later (Wave 3) somatization (and current life satisfaction), whereas somatic health
in Wave 1 does not predict later negative affect. Later somatization can be also predicted
from rare positive affect.
This research tells us that affect can be responsible for the colouring of and biases in the
reporting of both real and illusory physical symptoms. Several mechanisms have been
proposed to explain this effect. For example, it has been shown that negative affect results
in a tendency (1) to encode and recall more symptoms, (2) to negatively interpret somatic
experience, and (3) to self-focus and become more absorbed in one's somatic symptoms
(e.g. Brown and Moskowitz, 1997; Larsen, 1992; Rusting, 1998; Singer and Salovey,
1988; Watson, 1988; Watson and Pennebaker, 1989). These explanations obviously are not
mutually exclusive. Moreover, there is reason to believe that similar mechanisms explain
the impact of affect on life satisfaction and health appraisals.
To conclude, the ndings of the present study permit us to better understand both the
structure of subjective well-being and the relevance of reactivity and locus of control
variables to SWB. The data demonstrate (1) the complementary effects of high versus low
reactivity and of external versus internal locus of control, (2) functional similarities of high
reactivity and external control or low reactivity and internal control in the regulation of
SWB, and (3) the possibility that reactivity and locus of control may have different loci of
action. It is worth noting that external locus of control consistently predicted better than
reactivity. Following Suh et al. (1996), it might be interesting to probe whether cultural
norms affect the reporting of somatic symptoms. Moreover, the data seem to support the
idea that negative affect is more potent than positive affect (Taylor, 1991). In sum, the
ndings add to the existing literature by showing the effects of personality on a broad array
of components of SWB. Further research is needed to better understand the differential
effects of reactivity and locus of control on SWB. Moreover, the results explain the ways in
which personality variables exert their inuence on subjective well-being.
However, there is a substantial limitation to this study. The sample was limited to
unemployed men and women, aged 3244, who had recently lost their jobs. The results
9
Previous research has demonstrated that affect can serve as a retrieval cue for similarly valenced material stored
in memory (e.g. Singer and Salovey, 1988). The above reported data emphasize the important role of a contrast
between one's mood and current events.

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45

therefore may not generalize to the entire population. Thus, although the reported ndings
seem interesting, the conclusions should be drawn cautiously.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was supported by the National Committee for Scientic Research (Grant No.
1HO11F 022 12 to the author). The article is based on a larger, unpublished report
submitted to the Committee in 1999; the preparation of the article was supported by the
Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences. I wish to express my appreciation to
Grazyna Wieczorkowska for her help in the analyses and her comments on an earlier
version of this article.

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