The role of core evaluations within a comprehensive job and life satisfaction model: A longitudinal analysis

Previous research has examined the effects of either environmental conditions or of personality on job and life satisfaction, but few studies have included measures of both in a multivariate context. The present study examined a job and life satisfaction model that included both environmental conditions and personality measures within a longitudinal, national representative sample to better understand the relationship of job satisfaction and life satisfaction over time. Therefore, the present study had three interrelated goals: (1) to assess the relationship between job and life satisfaction in the context of a multivariate model with an enhanced set of predictor variables; (2) to examine whether the relationship between job satisfaction and life satisfaction is moderated by a broad personality variable called "core self-evaluations", thereby making the relationship stronger for some individuals and weaker for others; and (3) to investigate the causal relationships between job and life satisfaction over time.;A national representative and longitudinal data set collected by the survey research center at the University of Michigan (House, 1997) provided an outstanding sample for this study. The results of nine separate structural equation models indicated that personality was a stronger predictor of both job satisfaction and life satisfaction over time than were environmental conditions, and that job satisfaction was not significantly related to life satisfaction, after the effects of nonwork satisfaction and personality were taken into account. These results imply that managers wishing to increase employee life satisfaction should focus greater attention employee's personal characteristics and nonwork lives.